Page 61 of Untethering Dark

As his silken tongue worked her sensitive flesh, its sinuous glide delivering such exquisite, attentive stimulation, she took his length back into her mouth, and attempted to return the favor. But she was helpless to the way his tongue molded to her core, applying varying degrees of pressure and speed to her nerve center. Embracing every tremor—learning, adapting, reading the very pulse of her pleasure. Under such studious ministrations, no bit of her was left wanting.

Astrid clung to Gudariks’s thighs, her mouth tightening around his cock each time her body jerked or spasmed.

Abandoning a breast to attend to her clit, he tenderly stroked her, using the rounded backs of his claws, devoting his tongue instead to plumbing her slick depths. Tension coiled tight in her belly, steadily raising her higher and higher toward that sacred peak. And that’s when his fingers, those faithful appendages, began to vibrate.

Nostrils flaring, she mewled around the forest god’s cock. Wave after wave hit her body in an avalanche of pleasure. She dug her nails into his haunches, trying to keep herself upright, and he emitted a deep, answering groan as he pulsed, unloading cum into her mouth that really did taste a lot like the Plätzchen she’d been feeding him.

When they finished coming down from their highs, she released his cock and swallowed, wiping her chin with a shaky hand.

Gudariks helped her up, eyes glowing red in the diminished light.

Dusk had fallen.

“The vibration was a pleasant surprise.” She laced her fingers with his.

“I rather liked using that on you,” he said, pulling her flush to his body. “I’m not done with you yet, little witch. Come back to my den and warm my bed.”

Desire immolated Astrid from the inside out. Already she was burning again for his masterful attentions.

“Show me the way.” Wrapping her arms around his neck, she stretched upward to press a kiss to the column of his throat. “And I will gladly do so.”

He lifted her off the ground, and she hugged his hips with her legs.

“Grab the scarf,” he bid, dipping her toward the ground.

Laughter on her lips, she snatched it from where it lay rumpled in the snow, along with her thermos, and kissed his bony cheek.

Chapter Twenty-Four

“You’ll not get much sleep tonight, Liebling,” Gudariks vowed, already fantasizing about the many ways he’d fulfill his promise.

Mirth sparkled in her eyes as her hold on him tightened. “Oh? And what grand designs do you have in store for me?”

He was about to answer when he was interrupted. Drunken singing, full of hearty, raucous cheer, carried across the mountains on a shift in the wind.

Astrid’s body tensed in his arms, her head snapping toward the direction of the sound.

Damnably ill-timed humans! Quiet for days, and now they wanted to restart their revelry?

“It’s okay,” Astrid whispered. “If you need to go, go.”

What he needed was for their elusive adversaries to shut up long enough for him to thoroughly bed his witch. “That’s not what I want.”

“Me neither, but...” She buried her face in the crook of his neck. “I don’t like hearing them taunt you.”

That was an effective mood killer.

One didn’t live as long as he without an immense well of patience, but this sapped it bone-dry. He kept the irritation out of his voice when he asked, “Shall I take you home?”

“I think it’s for the best.”

Mutual disappointment leached between them, but it only made him hold her closer, salvaging what he could of their time together. He carried her the whole way home, using his new scarf to keep her exposed flesh warm and covered from the biting cold. It was the least he could do after ruining her pants.

He left her tucked away inside her cottage, and of course, just as he left, the revelry stopped.

The haunted campsite and its living, elusive specters burrowed into Gudariks’s every thought, so tenacious a fixation it was no wonder his nighttime wandering led him back to it. And just like every time that came before, there appeared to be nothing more than disturbed snow and a scorched patch of earth from a smothered fire.

Who would dare challenge him? This had been his forest for twelve thousand years, and it would remain so for twelve thousand more. Poachers might be involved in the puzzle, but they weren’t the sum of its parts.

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