KANE’S FIRST THRUST WAS SLOW AND CAUTIOUS, AND I COULDN’T HELP

the shameless mewl that tore through me as he slowed. More. I needed so, so much more.

“Is this all right?” He sounded like he’d punctured a lung. I couldn’t even answer. I was in shambles.

From the sheer onslaught of emotion—being with him, held by him, loved by him after all this time—breathless just from the beauty of his forehead pressed gently against my own.

That, and the sting. I knew he was large. Had seen him handle himself when he made me come with his mouth. I hadn’t been able to look away that night—his cock was perfect. Not that I had seen so many in my life, but there was no denying the symmetry of it, the heft, the thickness.

But I hadn’t been prepared for this—heavy and hard and long—I felt like my entire body was stretching to accommodate him. The stretch was painful, and yet the most pleasurable sensation I’d felt in my life. I needed more friction, more movement, just more, but Kane hadn’t moved since pushing into me—

Why hadn’t he moved?

“More,” I begged, rocking against him. The need was near ruinous.

Liquefying my core and making me lightheaded.

His silver eyes were raised up to the gossamer canopy of the bed as if he were praying to those Fae Gods. Pools of sunset light highlighted his

furrowed brow and taut cheekbones. His jaw tight, teeth clenched. I lifted a hand to his face to ease the tension.

“I’m fine, Kane,” I whispered. Was that what he was worried about? “You don’t have to be so gentle with me.”

“Please, stop,” he ground out. “Just for— I just need a moment.” “Stop?”

“Talking, moving, breathing . . .” he said between clenched teeth.

I laughed a bit and dragged my hands down his long back until I felt him shiver. “I thought you were the great Kane Ravenwood, king of sex, stamina of a racehorse, unwavering will of a dragon—”

“Look who’s being cruel now,” he said, eyes finally meeting mine with a tilted grin that told me how much he liked it. “I can’t help it. You unravel me.”

He pushed into me just a little more, and I clenched around him. Clawed at him. This was—

It was too—

Oh, Stones.

“Again,” I begged him, breathless.

His impressive length sank even deeper inside of me than I thought possible, and a delicious, satisfying ache spread from my core across my limbs. I stifled a moan. And that spot at the apex of my thighs, throbbing, pulsing with need—

My breath hitched in my chest and he edged into me until I was sealed tight around him and I knew he couldn’t thrust any deeper. Until a moment later he did just that, and an absurd moan split from me. I slapped a hand over my mouth to cover the mortifying noise.

But Kane pried my fingers from my lips. “Never do that again,” he warned, eyes lit with something primal. “I want to hear every sound you make when I am inside you.”

I held his gaze as he shifted my legs to open me up wider, to accommodate just a bit more of his length. My eyes rolled back as the angle pressed him into my innermost wall, and I squirmed from the chaos it released across my body.

And the noises. The sound of our joining, of him rutting inside of me.

Filthy, obscene, soaking wet—

Kane pulled out almost fully, and I nearly clawed at his chest to bring him back, to sheath him inside me once again, but he did just that. He thrust into me nearly to the hilt. Pleasure built. Low in my stomach, and pinching at my nipples—

“Does that feel good?” he asked with no cockiness, no pride. “So, so good,” I babbled. “Kane—”

It was so good I wasn’t sure I’d be able to stand it, but he didn’t relent, pushing into me at a steady rhythm, and nudging that spot deep inside me that wound me tighter and tighter and tighter—

“Say it—” A slow pumping. A stifled groan. “Say it again.”

I knew what he was asking for. “I love you,” I said. And repeated it, over and over, lifting my lips to his, sighing into his mouth as he thrust, too dazed by explicit splendor to really kiss, but still shivering from the feeling of his tongue against my parted lips.

He lifted my knee a little, and I was already so close, so lewdly, shamefully wet, our friction had soaked my thighs and the silky sheets beneath us, and I needed—needed—that release and—

I cried out with the new fullness of him as he sank in again. He groaned once, looking down at that spot where our joined bodies met. At me, so full of him.

I didn’t ever want it to be over. I wanted to stay in this moment with him. To continue to be one.

As if he could feel me holding on, his lips curved and he wrapped an arm underneath me, rolling us so I was on top of him.

I groaned at the sensation of our shift, and he swore in unison. I wouldn’t be able to handle it—

“Use me,” he growled.

I did as I was told, sinking down deeper onto him, my own body sucking him in. Bracing my hands on his muscled chest. He felt like hot, slick marble. Carved and cut and strong.

If my movements were too jerky or disjointed, he didn’t seem to mind. His glazed eyes, that rigid jaw, those guttural grunts from the back of his throat—all told me he, too, was struggling to hold on much longer. I ground myself against him, the friction bringing me closer and closer, while beneath me, Kane bucked his hips in smooth, pulsing thrusts, winding me tauter, until I felt myself falling over the edge.

Ripples of pleasure tore through me—

My vision blurred and shattered. My hands shook and I sobbed through the sensation, the contractions, the rapture of being with Kane.

Satiated and still swimming in the heady fog of my climax, I noticed Kane moving to draw out of me.

“No,” I cried out. “Do not stop.”

“We shouldn’t—” He sounded like he was barely breathing. “I don’t want to impregnate you.”

I adjusted my hips to sink him in deeper. “I’ll brew something for that.”

Kane looked as if he had never heard better news in his life. “Are you sure?”

“Please,” I begged. I wanted to feel him.

It was all the encouragement he needed. Kane proceeded to pound into me, grasping my hips hard enough to bruise and slamming himself upward with stifled groans. The friction was too good . . . Knowing that he was spilling himself inside me only wound me tighter, and I rode him until I came again.

Exhausted, weary, and limp, I collapsed onto his slick chest, sucking in lungfuls of air. For a moment, I could only hear our twin, ragged breaths. That, and the faraway hoot of a single owl in the early night. The soft rustle of leaves through the open balcony window.

“How do you feel?”

I peered up at him, only to find that satisfied male grin I loved so dearly. But more than that, there was a quiet joy in his eyes. A peace there that I’d never seen before. “Wonderful. You?”

“There is no word for what I feel right now.”

I crawled off him, despite his yowl of protest, and snuggled into the crease between his neck and shoulder. It smelled like sweat and fir and leather.

“I live here now,” I said into his neck.

“In Shadowhold?” he mumbled, already half-asleep.

“In this nook. The nook of your neck.” I was babbling. Satiated and sleepy and silly with happiness.

“You can live in my nook forever, bird.” “I love you.”

“I have always loved you.”

Then a blissful, heavy slumber overtook me.

MY EYES SHOT OPEN, PULSE RACING, BROW CLAMMY, AND HANDS FISTED IN

Kane’s luxurious dark sheets. As my eyes adjusted to the pitch-blackness of his room, I tried to remember what dream had shaken me so violently from my sleep . . .

I rolled over and a pleasurable soreness pinched between my legs. I was still sticky with Kane’s come, but my own wetness had gathered there, too, and the restless, unchecked need that coursed through me told me plainly what had awoken me.

My eyes fell to Kane, breathing evenly on his back beside me.

Desire spread through my body like ink in water. The single shining lock of hair that had fallen in front of his eyes, his cheekbones jutting in the filtered bars of moonlight, those full masculine lips . . .

Feeling the mattress sink underneath my careful movements, I snuggled into him and inhaled cedar and the heady sweat of a deep sleep. Kane shifted, nuzzling me slightly, but his eyes remained closed as his chest rose and fell.

Still lying on my side as I faced him, I brought my hand down his chest in lazy caresses. More admiring than anything—the taut golden skin, his defined muscles, a few varied scars here and there. I pressed one kiss into

his neck, inhaling like he was fresh air after a storm, then lingered another kiss along his jaw.

“Something I can help you with, bird?” Kane murmured through a fog of sleep, his eyes still closed.

I fought the blush that rose to my cheeks. “I was hoping I could help you,” I whispered into his shoulder before I dragged my teeth across the skin there and listened as he groaned softly.

“By all means,” he purred, widening his legs as if to say, have at it.

A little thrill hummed through my veins as I let my hand travel down his stomach and under the sheets, where Kane was still bare. He was velvet soft and impossibly hard by the time I wrapped my hand around him. I whimpered and dropped my forehead to his shoulder, already feeling swollen and damp. My nipples tight and sensitive against Kane’s arm, my breasts heavy and full. I stroked him slowly, addicted to the low sounds that fell from him, and his involuntary upward bucks into my hand.

Pumping faster, I moved to crawl on top of him and use my mouth, some absolutely base and filthy part of me dying to feel him spill against my tongue, to taste his release, but Kane sat up in one fluid push and pressed a broad palm to my collarbone, pinning me against the pillows.

“Not this time,” he said, fully awake now. “Why not?”

He grinned that wolflike smile at me through the darkness. I could have caught fire from the raw lust alone. “I can’t come too quickly again. You’ll never let me hear the end of it.”

I wanted to tell him I had just been teasing earlier, that I was actually flattered by how attracted he was to me, but he silenced my thoughts when he covered my lips with his own.

He tasted of sleep and warmth and fresh mint, and I groaned into the kiss, releasing his now-twitching cock and wrapping my arms around his neck. I could kiss him for ages. Forever.

His calloused hands drifted along my naked body as he ran his nose over my neck, my collarbone, my sternum. He brought his mouth to my nipple and sucked the bud indulgently, bringing a hum to my lips.

“Can I have you from behind?” he asked roughly around my breast.

I nodded, body tightly coiled and mind clouded with desire. He could do whatever he wanted to me, but I wasn’t able to form words right now, and he knew it.

“Arwen?” he asked, his voice a little like silk as he flicked his tongue over my breast and rubbed my other nipple between his thumb and forefinger.

“Anything,” I groaned, not sounding at all like myself. “You can do anything.”

Kane gently flipped me over so I was on my stomach and moved behind me, lifting my hips up and nudging my legs apart with his knee until I was spread open for him.

He swore, pulling my thighs up and nearer to him. But he didn’t touch me further, and I could feel the cool air dance across where I was already pooling for him—my own need and his from earlier leaking from me.

But I wouldn’t ask again.

If this was a game between us, I was determined to win at least once.

I arched my back, and—feeling some kind of boldness I never had before—reached a hand behind me to part myself even wider for him. I wondered if he could see the mess he had made inside of me. If he liked that.

Kane grunted at the sight, a deep rumble, and I could have purred. He rubbed a huge hand across my ass and thighs, grazing my already wet center. My answering gasp made him hum with satisfaction and he brought his mouth down to that aching spot between my legs and ran his tongue across me.

I cried out, louder than I expected to, and squirmed as he licked up and down, teasing me with open-mouthed kisses at the apex of my thighs, and from such an obscene, vulnerable angle.

I waited for the shame to come, but it never did. I trusted Kane.

Implicitly so. I would have let him do anything to me. From any angle.

The thought only made me hotter for him.

Finally he ran a single finger through my plump folds—my own need and his spit and come dripping from me, nearly down my thighs. He plunged the finger inside as he continued to work that spot with his lips and tongue and teeth. And the noises, wet, rhythmic— Oh, Stones . . .

“Kane,” I groaned, burying my face in the mattress below me. “Oh, oh, I can’t—”

“Relax,” Kane whispered, still surging that finger in and out of me. “I’ve got you.”

I tried to take a calming inhale but the pleasure— It was too much.

I was going to come apart. I needed to.

But he was slowing his finger, pulling it out . . .

Rather than bring his mouth back to where I craved it, he placed soft kisses along my thighs and up to the base of my spine, caressing the sensitive skin, grasping my backside as roughly as he seemed to let himself. And then he moved those lips to my hip bone, his fingers still rubbing between my legs lazily, the other hand massaging my back, my shoulder, my thigh, as if he was soothing me through the delicious torture he was inflicting.

Sadist . . . I loved it.

I bucked and keened and wrang myself out begging for more. His mouth. I needed his mouth. I squeezed my eyes shut as my hands twisted in the nearest pillow.

“Kane,” I pleaded. “Let me come.” I nearly ripped off a silk tassel. “I can’t stop,” he purred between my legs. “I’m too greedy.”

I was beside myself with a need so indecent it was teetering on agony. “Please, please,” I whimpered.

“Fine, fine. No need to yell,” he drawled casually, his voice husky and low.

Relief flooded me. Finally, finally, finally—

Kane lifted up to his knees and nudged inside.