His voice was raw now, his willpower split between holding himself back and stomping down old, haunting memories. “The Heat does not make us gentle. The things I have seen it drive my kind to do…”
Leyloni tugged on her hands, and Arysteon relinquished them after a moment’s hesitation. She cupped his face, angled his head so he was looking down at her, and stroked his cheeks with her thumbs.
“I want you, Arysteon. I have wanted you again and again for days, in any way I could have you, even if it was to only provide you pleasure. I want this with you, too. I trust you.” She lifted her head and grazed her lips across his in a tender kiss without looking away from him. “I have always trusted you, my dragon, my heart”—she smoothed one of her hands up to trail her fingers along his horns—“my love.”
My love.
The strength and conviction in those words made his heart ache in the best of ways, and the pressure in his chest quickly rivaled that in his loins.
Love. His mate loved him.
Though he’d never experienced love of this sort before, he knew that he loved her too—it was distinct from the love he’d felt for his clanmates, his kin. It was different from the love he felt for Serek.
This belonged to Arysteon and Leyloni alone. No one else was privy to it, no one else would share in it, no one else could taste it or feel it.
Arysteon closed the remaining distance between them—for as small as it was, it would always be too much to tolerate—and covered her mouth with his.
He claimed her lips hungrily, and she yielded to him, opening her mouth to allow his tongue the entry it demanded. She moaned and wrapped her fingers around his horns. He captured her sound, devoured it, and gave it back to her in a growl as her desirous scent flooded his senses. His stem, trapped between their bodies, so close to her entrance, jolted, spilling more droplets of seed onto her skin.
Need. Need her. Now.
Arysteon drew his hips back. His shaft glided over her sex until its tip was poised at her entrance.
Leyloni shivered, spread her thighs wider, and rasped against his mouth, “Now, Arysteon. Make me yours again.”
His tail lashed behind him. “You are and will always be mine.”
He thrust his hips forward, plunging into her wet, hot depths. Her breath caught, and her body tensed, but Arysteon could not stop now that he was inside her, now that her sex was tightening around him. He needed to be deeper, needed to keep moving, needed to spill his scalding seed in her womb and mark her as his again and again.
Arysteon curled his fingers, claws pricking through the blanket to catch the ground beneath, and anchored himself in place as he pumped his hips. His harsh breaths, her panting moans, and the meeting of his scales and her flesh became their new song, each note of which pushed him on faster, harder.
The already impossible, unbearable pressure within him only heightened, clouding his vision with crimson that hid all the world from his sight but for Leyloni.
Need deeper.
He pulled back, withdrawing from her body, and hissed as the cool air touched his stem. Leyloni’s gaze met his just before he caught her by the hips, flipped her onto her belly, and raised her backside. He thrust forward even as he pulled her back with his hands, burying himself in her sex.
Leyloni cried out, grasping fistfuls of the blanket and pressing her cheek down atop it. Her quivering sex clenched around his shaft, creating a burst of pleasure in Arysteon that was so immense it made his limbs weak and his lungs seize.
More. Need more.
He forced his body into motion, defying that pleasure, chasing it, dominating it, pumping his hips in a fierce rhythm that left him unable to distinguish pleasure from pain. Snarls, grunts, and growls escaped him unbidden, but it was Leyloni’s gasping pleas—and her ragged invocations of his name—that drove him on harder. His toe claws dug into the ground, adding to his momentum.
Leyloni suddenly tensed, and her cries rose in pitch for an instant before she cut them off by pressing her mouth to her forearm. Her sex clamped even tighter, and liquid heat, as scalding as the fire inside Arysteon, flowed around his shaft.
Her climax was the catalyst the sent him over the edge. The internal pressure, that raging firestorm, which had already been empowered by her