Page 208 of What Lies Within Blood & Heirs

Alora’s answering whimper was fractured, and her question came out breathy, “Who?”

“The stars,” he answered. “Starsdamn.Look at you—my wife—mine.”

His words… The reverence, awe, and undiluted love within them struck a deep-seated longing to be lovedlike this,andhad her choking out a sob.

Aloraneededhim,now.No more waiting. The world and who they were and everything outside this realm didn’t matter. She twisted in his arms and met him with a soul-mending kiss because she couldn’t portray the words as beautifully as he had.

Garrik kept her pace, panting and just as starved. Fingers splayed in her hair, across her jaw. Drawing her tight against him as he backed them to the bed with the same urgency, shethrew down their silver tether until it tightened around his soul and intertwined with hers.

Alora’s thighs hit smooth sheets. She placed a hand to his chest—over the star-shaped scar wildly beating—and lowered herself to the bed.

His throat worked. For a moment, terror stole his face as she surveyed the steely muscles and …

The scars—the ones she hadn’t yet seen below his waistline.

The ones marring his inner thighs.

But Alora’s eyes softened as she refused to look away. Every nerve-ending in her body utterly mystified, burning like an inferno at the mesmerizing sight of him towering over her. Amber flames from the hearth gilded him in perfect light, displaying him as borderline angelic with a halo gleaming around him.

“Beautiful,” Alora warmly breathed. Awestruck by her strong and worthy and selfless male standing before her—because he was. So, sobeautiful.

Something unreadable flashed across his face. Garrik’s words were strangled enough they collected as a timid whisper, “You think I am beautiful?”

She leaned forward and kissed a scar on his abdomen, throwing that word to him again. Over and over as she kissed him. Avoiding his hardness because he wasn’t an object to be used, there would be time, so much time to worship him there later, and kissed down his thighs, showing him how incrediblybeautifulhe truly was. “The most beautiful male I have ever seen.”

That terror and remnants of shame transformed into something like the heat of lightning and was just as deadly.

Alora backed across the silken sheets and Garrik crawled over her—the first female he’d ever willingly shared his bed with. Trembling, giving her a moment to reconsider even nowas vowed and bonded, Garrik stilled. Breathing unsteadily with uncertainty in his eyes as he settled between her thighs.

Garrik,she whispered down their tether, at the thoughts and memories surely running through him. Whispered with such a gentleness that the entire night sky blazed in his eyes. Enough to remind him of where he was. Who he was with. That he was in control.

And because of it all, the same longing and desire outshining the stars flared and ignited.

She wrapped her hand around his cock, guiding him, marveling at how he filled her hand, at how much he would fill her. At the silken touch, hard and weeping for her as she stroked him tenderly and ran her thumb across his slit.

Garrik’s eyes fluttered; his cock twitched. “I’m afraid I have to break my promise,” he rasped, but she didn’t understand, drawing back amidst the sheets and pillows, disturbing her hair and crown. “This may hurt a little.” And lowered his mouth to hers.

Alora gasped against his lips as the broad tip of Garrik’s cock nudged her entrance, and she decided she craved every ounce of pain and hurt he could give her.

Tortuously slow, he rolled his hips. Sinking into her only an inch when her fingers curled around the hard muscles of his shoulders.

Another glorious inch?—

Garrik stopped, bracing himself with one arm at the sound of her blissfully pained cry. “Forgive me?—”

“Don’t stop,” she mewled, flexing her thighs to ease the burning ache, the need to have him deeper.Deeper, deeper, deeper.Her body craved it so terribly her skin felt aflame.

“I don’t want to hurt you.”

By his caring words, liquid burned her eyes. The echoes of her past attempted to sink in their fangs, but Alora stared intoGarrik’s loving gaze and knew his desires weren’t fulfilled by screams of pain, and said, “You won’t. Please, Garrik.”

His name was enough of a plea that he slowly nodded his head. He withdrew nearly to the tip and pushed back in. Further this time. And again. And again.

Garrik laced their hands together on that last inch, resting them intertwined beside her head as he seated himself fully. He groaned her name like a treasured prayer as her inner muscles flexed around him, adjusting to the considerable size of him stretching her to the point of delicious pain.

“You feel.” Garrik cursed, retreated, and slowly,so slowly, sunk back in. “Better than I ever imagined.”

Alora tensed underneath him, squeezing his hand to will herself not to burst into embers as the other slid to his arm. “So do you,” she panted, and he rolled his hips.

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