Page 45 of Bonded By Stone & Blood

"I know." She isn't looking at me like she wants to argue. "Come here."

I don't move.

"Tovian, come here."

I close the distance between us and she tilts her head back to look up at me and doesn't flinch at what she finds.

"I need you to hear me," she says. "Not your instincts. Not the bond. You."

"Sabine—"

"I choose this." Her voice is quiet and completely without wavering. "I choose you because you are the most infuriating, terrifying, and wholly devoted creature I have ever encountered. And somewhere between the cavern I fell into and this tunnel, you became the only ground I trust to stand on."

"I love you." The words come out of me rough. "I love you, Sabine. That is mine. No ancient magic owns it."

She exhales slowly, reaches up, wraps both hands around the back of my neck, and pulls my face down to hers.

She is warm. That is what I notice first, always—the alarming, impossible warmth of her, radiating against my cooler stone-threaded skin like the sun has taken up residence inside her marrow.

I lift her carefully, both hands spanning her waist, and she wraps her legs around me without a moment of hesitation.

I carry her to the chamber wall. My wings spread wide and fold forward, sealing us inside the darkness together, blocking everything that isn't her.

My cock hardens against her belly, thick and aching, and she feels it. Her breath catches a bit, she doesn't pull away.

I work her clothing loose with deliberate patience, claws blunted carefully, always with her. When I drag my rough tongue across the silver markings running the length of her collarbone, she shudders violently, head falling back against the stone, the bond-marks glowing faintly in the dark like embers buried in pale earth. I follow the light with my mouth.

Then lower.

I take the full, warm weight of her breast against my tongue and she grabs both my horns with both hands, gripping hard for balance as her thighs lock tighter around my hips.

"Tovian." My name has never sounded like that before her.

I lose all composure.

I shift my grip, lifting her higher, and reach between us to guide the swollen, aching head of my cock through the slick heat between her thighs. She's wet enough that the contact alone makes us both inhale sharply, her arousal coating the broad tip of me as I press forward, not entering yet, just dragging slowlythrough her folds until she is trembling and her grip on my horns turns desperate.

Then I press in.

The first inch parts her open and she gasps so hard her whole body convulses. I stop. I feel her stretching around the tip — her entrance fluttering, trying to accommodate the girth, her slickness easing the breach but not erasing the stretch. The fit is obscenely tight. I can feel her pulse around me, rapid and frantic, her inner walls gripping the crown of my cock like they can’t decide whether to pull me in or push me out.

"Breathe," I tell her roughly.

She does and I push in another inch.

The sound she makes is half moan, half sob, and entirely involuntary. Her thighs shake around my hips and her wet heat slowly yields another fraction, her body beginning to understand mine. I pull back the smallest amount — dragging the thick ridge of my head back through the clutching grip of her entrance — then press forward again, deeper this time, working her open gradually with short, unhurried strokes that coat more of my length in her slickness with every pass.

"Too much?" I ask again.

She looks directly into my face. "Don't you dare."

I push in further. Three inches. Four. I feel the slight curve of my cock beginning to drag across the front of her inner wall and she makes a broken, high noise and her back arches away from the stone and I have to use the arm around her to hold her in place so I can keep the angle.

Her arousal is running freely now but she is still impossibly snug, her inner walls stretched taut and trembling around me, gripping my length like she was made for the specific, devastating purpose of undoing me completely.

Five inches. Six.

"Gods—" she chokes. Her head drops back against the stone wall. Her legs are shaking. Her hands on my horns must have gone white-knuckled. "You are—you are enormous?—"