The corners of his lips curled with pride. Such a guy.

“I felt you coming.” He didn’t bother trying to keep the amazement out of his voice.

With a grin, she clenched her sheath around him; his eyes went wide.

“I felt you, too.” She supposed she should be worried about him spilling inside her, but she was still high from their sex. She was addicted to this male. Not just physically, but . . . emotionally.

His honesty had affected her, coaxing her to lower all her guards. Tonight she’d learned that, for her, trust was the strongest aphrodisiac.

His eyes gleamed with excitement. “I always thought my seed would, I don’t know, flow from me. I had no idea the pressure would be so intense. When it releases, it’s almost . . . violent—but in the best way.”

Already his shaft stirred for more. She grinned, realizing her Vrekener was only getting warmed up for the night. “So, was I worth the wait? I talked a big game.”

“You’d every right to, sorceress. Just as you said”—he dipped a kiss to her lips—“you broke me down at a molecular level.”

FORTY-EIGHT

Thronos was a male transformed, with too many thoughts for his mind to handle, too many emotions to be contained.

He remained inside her, still hard. He could feel the dampness of his se**n in her—and that satisfied him so deeply. “I never want to leave,” he told her. Like him, she seemed in no hurry for their bodies to part. “Can we sleep like this?”

She nodded. “I could lie over you. Though I think sleep would be the last thing we’d be interested in. Speaking of which, when can you do it again?”

“I’m pretty sure I can do it as much as you like,” he said with a thrust.

“That’s the best news I’ve heard all night.” Her eyes were merry.

He reached out, stroking his thumb over her silken cheek. She turned her head into his palm, drawing his thumb between her lips to suckle.

“Uhn.” How could that enflame his entire body so fiercely? The jolt of sensation was startling—not to mention the memories she conjured, of when she’d sucked his shaft thus . . .

Now that he had seed to give her, would she take it between her lips? Spending se**n like that was an offendment, but if Lanthe would drink, he’d give and give till she’d had her fill.

Just like that, he was desperate for her, his h*ps beginning to pump into her hot glove. When she released him with a last lick, he cupped her nape, drawing her closer—

“Wait!” she cried. “Let me up, let me up.”

He jerked back. “Have I hurt you?”

“Roll onto your back.”

With a frown, he did, reversing their positions.

Once she was on top, she gracefully dismounted, leaving the sheet’s opening to ring the base of his shaft.

She’d turned the claiming sheet around on him.

His eyes widened at his rampant erection protruding from the sacred sheet. “Lanthe, this . . . this might be blasphemy.”

“You did it to me, and I’ll do it to you. That’s what our marriage will be like—equal and a little subversive to both of our factions. But it’ll work for us.”

His heart pounded. Though he was convinced, her certainty surprised him. “Will it work for us?”

“That depends on how much grief you give me about the freaking sheet.”

Realization struck him with the force of an anvil. If they continued to make concessions for each other, they would not only be wed forever, but wed well. She’d traveled here for him—no other reason—and she’d surrendered much; he would meet her halfway. “No grief, wife.”

“Good man,” she said softly. “So are we done with the sheet now?”

“Yes. But only because we’re married.” He enjoyed saying that. “It’s served its purpose.”

She tugged the material off him, tossing it to a far corner of the bed. “Back to business, then.” With a smile, she straddled him, kneeling up above his shaft. “So, this is what I like to call Thronos and Lanthe’s Pandemonian position.”

His grin faded when she began to slip down his length. He could only stare as her sex swallowed him inch by torturous inch. . . .

Altering.

Once she’d taken him as deep as he could go, he gazed up at his exquisite wife. Her hair was a glossy tangle all around her heartbreakingly lovely face, her sorcery shimmering. He dimly noted that her swollen ni**les were the same shade as her curving lips.

While he beheld her, she’d been gazing at him. “Look how big and hard your body is. And it’s all for me. The greedy sorceress in me is well pleased.”

Gods, she made his chest bow with pride.

She rasped one of his ni**les with a nail, and the jolt of pleasure was as unexpected as when she’d suckled his thumb!

Then she pressed her hands on his shoulders to rise up. . . .

The night air cooled his heated testicles, the base of his wetted shaft. When his h*ps bucked, chasing her tight heat, she dropped down at the same time.

His eyes rolled back in his head.

He roused when she began to slowly ride him, her br**sts bouncing for his enthralled gaze. Mesmerized by the way they moved, he fought the urge to knead them. “So damned lovely—”

His words were cut off. As she slipped up and down his length, she squeezed it—from the inside.

“Lanthe!”

“Do you like that?” she asked in a siren’s voice.

“Never want this to end!” Part of him still disbelieved he was inside her. He realized it would take him a while to accept this turnaround.

To accept that his dream woman was in their bed sating her lusts with his body, as he did the same.

She bent her arms over her head, crossing her wrists as she snapped her hips. The way she writhed atop him robbed him of breath. Hypnotic female.

Her hands glided down, one to cup a breast, one to masturbate her sex. In the future, he would watch her self-pleasure; for now, he brushed that hand away. When he stroked the swollen bud with his forefinger, she threw back her head.

The ends of her hair tickled his thighs; added sensation for a male awash in it. The more he rubbed her sex, the harder she writhed. Rubbing her, petting . . . “I grow nigh again!”

She faced him. “I won’t do anything to stop you this time.”

He grated, “Good to know.” He had another urge to contend with. The need to wrap his protective wings around her was overwhelming.

He’d marked her with his horns—and his fangs. She’d accepted his most primal drives. So he leaned up to take her in his arms. As his wings closed around her, she grew even slicker, her tempo increasing.

“I think you like my wings.”

She nodded breathlessly. “You are such a surprise to me. Everything about you . . .”

When he enfolded her against him, she wrapped her arms around his neck, and the satisfaction made him quake. It was just the two of them, cocooned against the world, bodies lit by his pulselines.

Her ni**les raked up and down his chest. “So when I scream—soon—do you think anyone could hear me past your wings?”

“Come, I’m eager to introduce you to our people.”

Bully.

“We’ll find you a grand breakfast. Apple tartlets, maybe? Or honey bread?”

She was hungry. “Okay, okay. I need a shower first.” When she rose and knotted her hair above her head, his gaze fell on her br**sts, his brows drawn tight. As she padded into the bathroom, she knew he was ogling her ass so she put an extra spring in her step.

His growl made her grin. She’d wager she wasn’t leaving this house before he took her again.