Page 71 of Palingenesis

I’m shaking when I feel those same hands shred the shorts I’m wearing and expose my ass. I shiver when I feel the soft, blunt touch of something on my puckered hole.

The bark digs into the skin of my arms as it enters me, slowly stretching my rim in a way that almost makes me forget we’re so high up that the air is thinner up here.

I’m engorged by his length, talons digging haphazardly into the flesh of my ass, my hips. It’s like I can feel every rigid inch, each ribbed imprint as he takes what he wants from me. What he needs from me.

I am helpless, suspended between reality and my worst fear, impaled by this monster.

And I’m dizzy.

From the panic hovering just beneath or the way my spine tingles, I can’t tell.

This is… hot. Feral.

Reckless.

The desperate, untamed urge to fuck has me meeting each of his thrusts with as much force as I dare, my mind spinning. Fingers clinging. Bark digging into my nails and hands and arms and I—

I come.

The rush of warmth inside me follows, the vibration of Ilios’s roar shaking the forest around us.

A pinch I was half expecting engages under my sac, some part of Ilios piercing me like last time and I find that instead of flinching, it’s almost… relaxing.

It’s not nearly as painful as I recall, though there is some burn as he practically barbs me.

In the taint.

Again.

With his talons sunk into my ribs, holding me in place.

And I sigh.

A full body, melting into the bark, completely forgetting that I’m dangling above the forest floor, breath I didn’t know I’d been holding onto.

Slowly, he releases me, withdrawing from my clenching hole, my smile spreading at the same speed as his retreat.

But then he has to go and ruin it by poking into my mind and saying the only thing I’ve been fucking asking to do since I found him.

I will take you home now.

Chapter 37

Shannon

True to his word, Ilios carries me to my truck, stealing the rest of my orgasm high when he leaves me on the bench seat and disappears into the night. His wings even glowed and I’d watched them until he was nothing more than a streak of light across the sky.

I have no idea how long I sit there, half naked and dripping things I don’t want to think about on my leather.

When I finally fish my spare glasses from the glovebox and pull the truck from the space, it feels like I’m ripping away a piece of myself, leaving some part of me behind in the woods.

Watching the trail shrink in the rearview mirror has me rubbing at the ache it’s leaving in my chest.

I can’t, I tell myself over and over.

It’s a fairytale.

It’ll never be more than that.