just as much as I did, this sensual little creature who terrified me, who enthralled me.
“Get me in you now,” I growled roughly when she stroked again. “Or I will come all over your thighs.”
My grip on her waist tightened, half-afraid she’d pull away, and I needed this.
“Hanniva,” I rasped, my eyes catching on hers. Begging now. “Please.”
Vienne took a shuddering breath before I felt her shift. She might have been inexperienced with sex but she was curious. About me. About this.
My cock slipped between her lips and it took a few swipes against her before her body gave…and I sunk inside.
“Lysi,” I hissed, even when I felt her tense around me. Still tender?
But she didn’t pause. She rocked her hips over me steadily and slowly. Maddeningly. A constant growl had risen from my throat by the time I was seated all the way inside her cunt.
“Ahh,” she cried when I lifted her slightly, when I slid out and then thrust back inside, hard enough that her breasts bobbed underneath her tunic.
Lysi.
This was what I needed, what I craved. A distraction. A moment away from old memories.
And yet, sex brings old memories too, I knew. Memories best left forgotten.
I could not win either way.
And yet…
Vienne’s moans and hitched breaths filled my ears…and they were like a balm on the ragged edges of those memories, dulling them until I felt more confident that I could keep them at bay. Her grey eyes were luminous and wide as they stared into mine.
The longer I looked into them, however, the more panic began to rise.
Something was happening between us, something I didn’t think I could stop, something that had sparked from the first moment I’d seen her—covered in filth and frightened in Dothik.
Nik, nik, nik.
To keep it away, I thrust harder into her body and a breath whistled out from her lungs. I pounded between her thighs, our flesh slapping together hard, filling the voliki with the sounds of mating and lust and anger.
“Davik,” she breathed. I growled when I felt her hands clasp my face and I tried to shake her off, not meeting her eyes. But she pulled me to her as I drove mercilessly into her until I was forced to look at her and look deep. “Gentle. Please. I know you can be.”
My chest expanded with a long draw of air. I stilled inside her, leaning forward to press my forehead to the side of her neck, my shoulders shaking. Her hands were stroking down my cheeks, drifting towards my jawline. Then down my neck, my chest. So soft and sweet.
I can give her this, I thought.
I decided right then that I wouldn’t fear this, that I wouldn’t fear her.
With a deep huff against her skin, I stood, still deep inside her body. She gasped, clinging to me.
I brought us down to the furs on my bed, tugging up her tunic until she was naked underneath me.
“You touch me like no one else has before,” I rasped quietly to her, pressing a kiss to her collarbone, reaching down to widen her thighs. I withdrew from her, holding my breath, the feel of her sublime.
She gave me a shy smile that thudded deep in my chest.
“I…I like touching you,” she said as her palms trailed down my chest. “Is it okay that I do?”
“Lysi,” I hissed, feeling like her hands were stroking every inch of me.
She gasped, a lush cry falling from her lips when I thrust forward slowly, filling her, stretching her.
“Good?”
“Yes,” she whispered, her eyes falling shut when my dakke pressed against the bundle of nerves between her legs.
“Gentle,” I murmured, pressing more kisses to her flesh. Her neck, her breasts, before finding her lips. “Lysi?”
Her eyes met mine as I kissed her slowly.
“Yes,” she whispered against me.
I wondered if this was how wild pyroki felt before they were tamed. I thought of Nillima, my own pyroki, how I’d found her in the wildlands, injured, alone, scared, rejected by her mother. I’d brought her back and though she’d nearly tried to kill me in her fright in the days afterwards, I cared for her until she learned to trust me.
I had the strangest sense that Vienne was doing the same thing to me. Taming me with her gentle touches and her gentle, knowing eyes and her soft smiles. I was rebelling against her, lashing out at her, fighting against what I truly wanted: to give in, to find peace.