Page 113 of The Crown's Awakening
He doesn't look away. Not once. He watches me watching him and his grip tightens and his pace builds and he finishes in his hand, raw and unrestrained, a low groan in his chest that he doesn't bother to suppress.
I pull him closer with a thread of lightcraft and he lets me. His breath shudders as I take his fingers into my mouth and drag my tongue slowly over them, tasting the salt of him. His eyes go dark in a way that has nothing to do with patience.
"Fuck, Asha." He says it like I've done something to him. Like I've broken something he was trying to hold together. "You're wrecking me."
He kneels between my thighs and cups my face in his hands. His voice is gruff but gentle. “We can stop. I’ll hold you all night if that’s what you need. But if we keep going—” his thumb traces my jaw, “—I will be relentless.” His voice lowers. “I have gone six months without you.” A pause. “Do you understand what that means?” His grip tightens slightly. “It means I will not be careful with you tonight, Asha Bear."
"I never want careful, husband," I say.
Something shifts in his expression. Then his hands drop to my thighs and hold them open.
"Touch yourself," he says. "Let me watch."
I slide my hand down my stomach and the air between us changes immediately. He goes completely still. The crackle of the fire, the distant creak of the palace settling, the faint smell of cedar and smoke and him filling the room. All of it intensifies as his eyes lock onto my hand. He is barely breathing. His jaw is tight. He looks at me like a man who has been surviving on the idea of this and is only now allowing himself to believe it's real. I can see the effort it costs him to stay where he is, the war between the part of him that wants to watch and the part that cannot stand anything touching me that isn't him.
The second part wins.
His hand closes around my wrist before I have barely started.
"No." He pins my wrist to the bed and leans over me, his mouth at my ear, his breath warm and uneven against my skin. "Don't touch what's mine." His free hand slides down my inner thigh, close enough that I feel the heat of his palm but not where I need him. "This belongs to me. Only me. Six months and it is still only mine."
"Colsar—"
"I know what you need." He does not hurry. "I know."
He guides his fingers inside me and I gasp at the stretch, the heel of his hand pressing where I ache. My hips start moving before I can stop them. He watches my face the entire time, cataloguing every sound, every shift of breath, the wet sounds of his handworking against me filling the quiet room. My fingers grip the sheets. My hips rock harder and the pressure builds fast and hot and my whole body pulls toward the edge?—
A knock sounds at the door.
His fingers do not stop.
"Tell them to come back," he says. Calm, utterly unbothered.
I try. I genuinely try. "Please, come ba?—"
The words dissolve. The wave breaks and I stop being able to form sentences, his name tearing out of me loud and unguarded, the slick sound of his hand against me, obscene and perfect as my hips jerk through it.
He watches every second of it.
When I come back down his fingers slow but don't leave. He looks at the soaked sheets beneath me and something moves across his face, dark and deeply satisfied.
"Look at that mess." He looks back up at me. "All of that is because of me."
"Yes," I manage.
"Good." He leans down, his mouth at my temple. "And we are just getting started, wife."
He moves up over me. "I love you," he murmurs. "And I am going to spend the rest of tonight reminding you who you belong to."
He turns me and before I can catch my breath he drags me up over his face, his grip on my hips absolute, the roughness of his hands grounding me.
"Do not move," he says against me. The vibration of his voice sends a shiver down my spine.
I last about four seconds before my hips buck.
He pulls back immediately. “I told you to stay still." His voice is quiet in the way it gets when it doesn't need to be loud. "No moving until I say. Say you understand."
"I understand," I gasp.
