cat – and that she was sitting on his crotch, and that he was growing steadily harder beneath her. She gave an experimental circle with her hips, and he groaned into her mouth.
And purred. The sound rippled out from inside him, vibrating through his chest, and through her hands.
She pulled back with a shocked gasp, and felt wetness flood her sex.
He was panting, his pupils expanded into tall, vertical slits that threatened to swallow all the golden glow. “I always was an animal dressed up like a man,” he said, ruefully. “This makes sense, I guess.”
“I like it.”
He groaned again, his purr swelling into a growl in the air between them, and he dragged her back for another kiss. Wet and messy, fangs scraping hard across her lip. When she circled her hips again, he lifted up to meet her, the ridge of his hard cock grinding along the center seam of her tac pants. Then it was her turn to groan, breaths harsh and quick against his lips.
“Rose. Rosie.” He raked his claws back through her hair, and down her throat, petting at her almost frantically. His chest and his belly heaved as he fought for breath. He was straining against her, wings rustling. Something coiled around her ankle – his tail, she realized, pulsing in time to his ragged breaths. “Please don’t tease me, sweetheart. Not if–”
She kissed him hard. “Not teasing.” And started fumbling at the zipper of her jacket with clumsy fingers.
He helped her push it off her shoulders – nothing mask-like about his face, now, its lines taut with anticipation and want, his eyes blazing, his mouth soft and wet and gleaming from kissing. The sight of it had her stomach tightening almost painfully – and that was before he took the hem of her shirt in both hands – claws scraping teasingly against her skin – and pushed it up.
When she’d pulled it off over her head, and dropped it behind her on the dirty floor, uncaring, she glanced down to find Beck staring at her chest. At the two pendants hanging there from the chain around her neck: the rose and the crown.
He reached out slowly, his hand trembling at the last, and pressed one clawed finger to the pendants, one and then the other. “You kept them,” he breathed.
“I wanted to keep more, but there was too much…so I took what was most important.” She covered his hand with hers, pressed it more firmly to her chest. “These are the most valuable things I’ve ever owned.”
“No, the dagger–”
“The dagger was a useful tool. And an even more useful offering to help me bring you back. But it wasn’t valuable. It wasn’t a token of love, like these.”
He stared another moment – and then lifted his hand away, drawing hers with it. She saw his long lashes flutter down on his cheeks as he closed his eyes and tipped forward to rest his forehead at the base of her throat. He nosed faintly at the pendants, his breath rushing warm down her breastbone, tightening her nipples inside her bra.
She touched his shoulders, his neck – and then, drawn by its silky softness against the backs of her hands, his hair. It was a different color, but it felt the same sliding through her fingers, heavy and slippery and addictive.
He opened his mouth against her sternum, tasted her skin with his tongue. Shifted downward, his hands tightening on her waist until she felt the prick of his claws.
She pressed her fingertips to his scalp, cupped the back of his skull in both hands.
He dropped a row of heated kisses across the top of her breast – and then hooked his claws in her sports bra, and ripped it down the front.
“Beck.” It came out more plea than reprimand, and she could read the satisfaction in the low growl he rumbled against her skin.
He tongued at her nipple, and then drew it into his mouth. Careful, claw-tipped hands cupped her breasts, squeezing and shaping.
Rose clutched at his hair and surged forward against his mouth, silently asking for more.
Every inch of her he touched – with mouth, fingers, claws – burned. By the time he’d bent her back over his arm, and his lips were trailing down the center of her stomach, she was grinding shameless in his lap, rubbing herself against the proud, hard line of his erection. He was purring constantly, now, hips twitching.
“Beck.”
“I know, I know, baby.”
She stood at his urging, wobbly and