Page 89 of The Beast King's Bride

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TALEN

The thought that nobody has touched her this way heats my blood until it burns under my skin. The fact she trusts me enough to let me touch her, taste her… It’s more potent than the strongest magic.

Lust grips my body in a vise, clenching every muscle, turning my cock hard as a rock. All I want is to shed my bloodied clothes, bury myself in her and stay there forever.

But I want to pleasure her first, pleasure her until she relaxes and opens up for me, until she loses control and comes apart in my arms. No pain. I want there to be no pain for her, only bliss.

“Talen.” Her hands smooth over my chest, grabbing again at the laces, her lower lip tucked between her small white teeth in concentration, and it warms a part of me I hadn’t realized was frozen—that she wants me, too, that she cannot wait to put her hands on me.

Reluctantly, I pull back and smile down at her. “We have time.”

A lie, but we have tonight, and if she stays, if she stays for more days and nights, I will make them count. Tonight can stretch into eternity if I do all the things I’ve wanted to do to her, with her, if I make the pleasure stretch. After all, what is time? It’s flexible and unpredictable. Incomprehensible. It can be cut short at any moment. If you use it right, one moment is worth a lifetime.

And I have wasted too much of it already.

Her taste lingers on my tongue, and I want more. I’m greedy for her, hungry for her body. Grabbing her, I lift her in my arms again, loving the feel of her against me, the way her arms unhesitantly wrap around my neck. Sending a spark into the fireplace, I light up the fire to dancing flames, snag with magic an animal skin and pull it closer to the warmth. Then I send tendrils of power to pull the last scraps of fabric off her and the pins from her gleaming brown-gold hair so that I can see the whole of her, no obstructions, nothing hidden.

She gasps and then laughs, that crystal bell sound making me smile again. I cannot remember the last time I smiled so much.

I shouldn’t be using magic for this, but I don’t care about the land tonight, about the curse. There is only her and me.

The bear skin is thick and soft, and I lay her on it gently, lifting myself up on my hands to take in the sight of her, her pale body against the dark fur, the curves of her breasts and hips, of her waist and her neck, her pink nipples, the darkness between her legs. Raising my gaze back to her face, I find her watching me, her eyes luminous, her lush lips tilted in a smile, her hair spread in bronze waves around her.

Lovely. Beguiling. Arousing.

I sit back on my heels and put my hands on her knees, pushing her legs apart. She resists a little, letting out a huffing breath, her cheeks bright red.

“Talen,” she starts, then stops.

“I want to taste you properly,” I inform her.

“Taste me,” she squeaks. “But—”

“Are they ignorant of this sort of thing in the human world? They’re missing out.” I make a show of licking my chops and then her scent of arousal hits me and it is not a show anymore. My mouth waters. “Let me show you how it’s done.”

Kneeling on the bearskin, I lift her legs, tucking her knees over my shoulders. She whimpers softly when I take a long lick where her folds part like rose petals. She tastes as she is—bright and sweet and delicious. She squirms when I tease the small bud at the apex, then cries out when I suck on it.

Ignoring my arousal, my cock that’s full and heavy between my legs, trapped inside the leather, pressing painfully into the seam, I use my tongue, my lips, my teeth to coax more sounds from her lips, gasps and moans and little yelps. Her taste intensifies and I grab her thighs to keep her from bucking as she comes against my lips and tongue, her hands scrabbling at the bearskin, her head thrown back.

I lap at her one last time, making her tremble, and lower her legs to the soft fur. My grin is smug as she lies there, panting, cheeks flushed pink, nipples hard, chest rising and falling fast. The inside of her thighs is slick with her release, as is my chin.

When she reaches up for me, cupping my face, my control starts to slip.

“Ash,” I growl as her fingers trace my jaw, my cheekbones, my lips. I pull away to shed my clothes. I rip the laces off my shirt as I tear it off me, sit back to kick off my boots, and struggle with my pants, cursing as the leather sticks to my legs.

And I find her there, pulling on the legs of my pants, laughing—laughing at me, with me, and I chuckle, too, my frustration giving way to joy. This is the lightest I have ever felt in my life.

But the moment the damn leathers are off me, I tackle her back to the bearskin and she squeals, still laughing, pinned underneath me.

She lifts her hands to caress my curled horns and I go still. I had forgotten all about them for a while. But her smile is soft, full of wonder, and I have to swallow hard against all the protests, all the cursing inside my head because she is not afraid, not disgusted.

She’s mine.

The thought hits me like a punch and I lower myself over her, bracing my elbows by her head to kiss her, my cock nudging at the dark entrance between her legs.

She gasps when I push a little into her, as I capture her lips with mine in another kiss, as I struggle to control the urge to thrust all the way into her at once, to feel her clench around my aching cock. Already she’s snug and hot around the head of my cock and it’s taking all of my willpower to wait, to let her adjust.

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