Or at least, I would not make him acknowledge the fact that he surely saw otherwise in my face, too, just as I saw it in his.

I reached between us and aligned him with my entrance. Even the first press of his tip into me was enough to make my breath hitch. His fingers tightened at my hips—his desire, and his steadying guidance. The grip said, wordlessly, You are in control.

I wanted to take him hard and deep, but my body had other plans. He was so much bigger than I was used to. I had to lower myself slowly, inch by inch, allowing myself to adjust as he filled me.

Yet what little pain there was disappeared beneath a dizzying wave of lust once I finally had all of him. We were so close together, so tightly linked. I could swear I could feel every pulse of his blood, and he was buried so deep inside of me that surely he felt every throb of mine, too.

It was so much. Too much. It was—I couldn’t—

“You alright?” he whispered. His hand flattened against my thigh, a comforting stroke, and I realized that I was shaking, overwhelmed as every muscle contracted and responded to his presence within me.

My only response was to circle my hips, fractured moans escaping both of us even at that small movement.

Oh, Mother. This was going to end me. It was going to fucking annihilate me.

I pressed my palm to his stomach. Felt the taught, trembling muscles of his abdomen. My eyes locked with his.

“You’re holding back.”

His silence was my answer. Slowly, I rose again, so that only his tip was left within me, never looking away from him—from the feral desire in his eyes, the way his teeth closed around his lip.

“Don’t,” I whispered, and took his entire length in one sudden thrust.

The tension, the tenderness, shattered into a million pieces. Fucking him slowly was agonizing—fucking him hard was devastating. He released a growled curse as he grabbed my waist, helping me through each stroke, his hips rising and falling in time with mine. I didn’t know how it was possible that he seemed to get deeper with each one, branding every wall within me, every muscle.

I asked him not to hold back, and he didn’t.

His thrusts were deep and vicious, pistoning in and out of me with a force that left me incoherent. But it wasn’t enough—I wanted more. So much of my flesh still screamed for him. As if he read my mind, he sat up, seizing my mouth in a kiss just as fierce and thorough. The change of angle forced him to abandon speed for depth, moving slower, harder.

The sound that escaped my throat didn’t even sound human. He rolled his hips again, mine meeting the movement on nothing but instinct, and I realized the sound was a plea, begging for I-didn’t-even-know-what.

“Yes, Oraya,” he growled. “Fuck, yes. Anything.”

I clawed at him, my fingernails digging into his back—surely leaving marks—our kisses wild and messy and fighting for dominance. Every sensation sent me hurtling towards a pleasure beyond my control—his lips, his tongue, his skin, his chest pressed to my breasts, his hands gripping my hair, each torturous stroke of his cock.

Pleasure shot up my spine. My mouth escaped his, kissed his jaw, his ear, his neck. He gripped my hips and levied an especially powerful thrust, one that forced a curse from my lips, and I closed my teeth around the perfect flesh of his throat, tongue darting out against the iron warmth of his blood.

He groaned, his hold on me tightening. He was close—I was close. His hands roamed my back, my ass, my hips, my breasts—like he wanted all of me, and couldn’t decide what he most wanted to touch as he went.

I had to force myself away from his skin to look into his eyes.

“Say my name,” I gasped, echoing his words. “Say it when you come.”

He covered my words with his kiss, demanding, tongue claiming my mouth. I could feel his muscles coiling in time with mine—I knew what was coming. And as his lips moved to my throat, some distant part of me balked in memory of another moment, long ago.

But I was too far gone.

He drove deep into me, hard.

“Oraya.” He whispered it like a prayer against my skin. “Oraya, Oraya, Oraya.”

I cried out.

I felt his cock swell, twitch, as my walls contracted around him. Felt the warmth of him fill me, our hips wringing out the final waves of pleasure from each aftershock.

I didn’t fall back to earth so much as it all simply faded back. My senses returned to me in pieces. First the air rushing in and out of me with my heaving breaths. Then the warm solid wall of Raihn’s chest. His hand rubbing my back.

He had leaned back to the floor, and I had gone with him, now limp on his chest.

I was a little surprised that I was able to move at all when I lifted my hand and brought it to my throat. I felt only the raised bump of my scar, and the damp remnant of his kiss, and nothing else.

“Fuck, Oraya,” he breathed. “Just… fuck.”

His words from earlier echoed in my head:

You have destroyed me.

He had destroyed me, too. Perhaps it was good that we would die tomorrow. Because I didn’t know how to remake myself after this.

I pushed myself up enough to look at him. His hair fanned out around his head on the dark wood floor. A certain contentedness had overtaken the typically-harsh lines of his expression—albeit, still, with a lingering shine of lust to his eyes. But there was something else there, too. Softer than lust, gentler, and yet far more dangerous.

A drip of black-red rolled down his throat. He touched it and let out a wry chuckle.

“Why am I not surprised that you were the one to draw blood?”

I licked my lips, tasting a residual drop. “Maybe I understand what you see in it.”

I meant it as a joke, and he laughed, but oddly enough, I did see the appeal. He tasted like he smelled. All of him—his blood, his skin, his mouth.

“So.” I eyed him. “How long before you can do that again?”

“Hmm.” Abruptly, he rolled over, dumping me to the floor. He grinned, his nose touching mine. His cock brushed the inside of my thigh—already hardening.

“One night. I don’t plan on wasting any of it. I have a list, remember.”

A list, I thought as he kissed me again, hard, and my arms fell around his neck, and I lost myself in him all over again.

A fucking list.

The most beautiful word in the Goddess-damned world.

CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

We barely made it halfway through.

It was an impossible task. Every time I had him, I discovered a new piece of him I wanted to claim. It was the opposite of satisfaction. With each climax, I only desired more. By the time we found ourselves crawling into the bed out of sheer exhaustion, I had come up with far, far more than a single night’s worth of fantasies.

Yet I found myself not minding as I drifted too easily to sleep in his arms. And now, as I lay nose-to-nose beside him, watching the heavy fall of his lashes against his cheek and the steady rhythm of his sleeping breaths, I thought, It was worth it, to witness him this way.

I ran my fingers over the swell of muscle of his shoulder, down his back.

Mother. I hoped he had no clue how transfixed I was by him.

His eyes opened. The moment they landed on me, the smile warmed his lips immediately, like he was relieved that none of it had been a dream.

“Don’t tell me it’s time to go.”

“We have a few more hours.”

He stretched. “Wonderful. Not ready for death just yet. Maybe after I watch you come one more time I will be.”

Death.

The pit in my stomach, the one I had desperately been trying to ignore, grew larger.

Before, I could drown all those unpleasant thoughts beneath our shared mindless, carnal pleasure. But as I’d watched him sleep, alone, all those fears seeped into the silence.