Page 76 of An Alien for Her Heart

With a deep growl, he moves, withdrawing almost completely before slamming back in, driving a rhythm that has me seeing stars.

“Catherine,” he groans, his hips churning relentlessly into mine. “My Catherine…” His thrusts grow harder, faster, spurred by the rut and my pleasured cries. “Going to fill you…”

The words send a dark thrill through me. The “yes” that pants past my lips makes him roar, the sound primal and triumphant. His body practically blurs with the force of his thrusts, every stroke reaching that secret place inside me that makes me see white. I feel the tension coiling tighter and tighter at the base of my spine, my inner muscles fluttering wildly around his plunging length.

Then one broad claw snakes between our straining bodies, his fingers finding the swollen pearl at the apex of my thighs. He rubs the sensitive nub in tight, knowing circles and that’s all it takes to send me hurtling over the edge into ecstasy.

I scream his name as I shatter, my release crashing over me in wave after wave of searing bliss. I clamp down on him like a vise, rippling along his shaft, trying to milk his own climax from him.

With a harsh shout, he buries himself to the root, forcing that impossibly wide bit at the base of his shaft inside me. It swells, becomes so engorged I feel my core stretch to its limit. There, he stills, his hips jerking as his scorching seed pulses deep inside me. He’s so swollen, it locks us together as he marks me from the inside out, staking his claim.

For long moments, we simply cling to each other, shuddering through the aftershocks, lost in the haze.

A little giggle rises in my throat. Chest heaving with heavy breaths, I gaze down up at him. “That…that wasn’t so bad.”

But as Varek eases up enough so he can look at me, the look in his eyes sends a deep thrill through me. As if I’m looking in the eyes of something I shouldn’t face head-on. Like a rabbit caught in the hypnotic stare of a wolf. There’s something so raw and untamed in those molten depths, a wildness that sends a thrill of both fear and exhilaration racing down my spine.

“Again,” he rumbles, his claws kneading my hips as he nips at my shoulder. “Going to take you again and again, until the whole nestkans knows you’ve been well and thoroughly claimed.”

With a growl, he flips me onto my stomach, blanketing my back with his muscular torso, his still-hard shaft nestled along the cleft of my bottom.

I moan at the dark promise in his words, my body already stirring back to life, empty and aching despite the seed runningdown my thighs. With a ravenous snarl, he sheathes himself to the hilt once more.

The moment Vareksurrenders to the rut, it’s as if a switch is flipped inside him, turning him from a rational being into a creature of pure instinct and primal need.

One large claw fists in my hair, holding me still for his taking, while the other roams feverishly over me, his claws leaving stinging trails in their wake. There’s no art or finesse to his touch, only a blind need to map and mark every inch of me, to imprint himself on my very skin.

I can do nothing but surrender to the onslaught, my own hands scrabbling desperately at his back, my nails raking down the corded planes of muscle as I give myself over to him. Time doesn’t seem to matter anymore. We move from the bed to the floor. The floor to the wall. At one point, I’m even sure we switch rooms. Things crash and shatter. Things are ripped and torn. And all the while, Varek takes me.

There’s an edge of pain to the pleasure, a sharpness that only serves to wind me higher, tighter, until I’m writhing mindlessly beneath him, mewling into his mouth, his neck, his skin.

He tears himself away from the kiss with a ragged growl, his chest heaving as he stares down at me with those wild, glowing eyes.

He doesn’t give me time to adjust, just pulls back and then surges forward again, setting a punishing pace that has the bed slamming against the wall with every jarring thrust. He’s so deep, I swear I can feel him in my throat.

I’ve never been loved like this and I know I never will be again. And even then, I know this is what I needed. This. Him.

There’s no tenderness here, no gentle lovemaking. This is raw and rough and almost brutal, a carnal claiming in the truest sense of the word. Hours pass. Days I suppose. I keep track of the passing time by little changes of light my consciousness picks up. And though some distant part of me knows I’ll be sore, aching, bruised after this…I can’t bring myself to care.

Because there’s something profoundly, primitively satisfying about being taken like this, about being the sole focus of all that strength, all that fierce, wild need.

So I give myself over to it, my body going soft and pliant even as my inner muscles clench greedily around his pistoning length. Let him wring cries and moans and broken pleas from my lips, the sounds muffled by the ripped bedding my face is pressed into as he ruts into me with single-minded purpose. Let him use me, fill me, flood me with his seed, until there can be no doubt that I belong to him, that I was made for him and him alone.

The thought has me clenching even tighter around him, my nails scrabbling uselessly against whatever I can grasp as I hurtle toward the edge of some great, looming precipice. I can feel it building at the base of my spine, in the uncontrollable flutters of my core around his driving hardness.

“Oh!” I keen, the sound thin and thready and desperate. “I don’t know if I can again…I’m going to…”

He snarls in response, his pace growing even more frantic, more relentless. He leans down over me, his chest pressing me into the pillow on the floor as his fangs find the curve where my neck meets my shoulder. He bites down hard, the bright burst of pain, the final spark that sends me into oblivion.

I scream as I shatter, my body convulsing almost violently as wave after wave of ecstasy crashes over me. I feel him crash into his own release, but the moment is not done.

I’m lifted and spun as he settles over me again, his lips lapping at my core to soothe me for the next round and I am lost…so lost…lost without him.

23

VAREK

Iwake in a haze.

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