Page 38 of Ash and Feather

It was automatic, the way my body bent, the way it moved to accommodate him as his fingers drew achingly near to my center. And as soon as my knees had bent, it was hard to resist dropping the rest of the way down. Soon I was kneeling, most of my body braced on the landing except my knees, which were on the step below.

Dravyn stood on the steps just beneath me, watching me as I followed his command, and he didn’t move after this—not right away. He didn’t speak. Didn’t touch me. He scarcely seemed to be breathing.

It felt deliciously vulnerable, exhilarating,maddeningwaiting for whatever he planned to do next.

Then came his hands, slowly working their way around the top of my leggings, sliding them and my undergarments down inch by inch until my backside was fully exposed for him.

He left the unraveled clothing bunched around my ankles, a sort of restraint that added to the feeling of vulnerability and surrender, that raised chills over every inch of my exposed skin.

Another few tantalizing moments of nothing but the sound of his harsh breaths, followed by the sound of the rest of his clothing slowly being pulled off and dropping to the stone steps.

Then his hands were on me once more, caressing, tapping, stretching. Positioning me better against the steps as he knelt behind me. He traced his fingers over my curves, gliding the tips lightly over the dampness between my thighs a few times before plunging two of them inside of me. While they beckoned thefirst shivers of orgasm forward from inside, his thumb worked against the sensitive bud outside.

He drew his hand away far too soon, but his mouth followed before I could protest, kissing a similar path. His tongue was more brutal than his fingers had been as it swept over me and inside me, tasting me relentlessly, like a man half-starved, reducing me to a quivering mess.

My body shook against the steps, already prepared to curl into my release and let it rock through my body. The magic seemed to beintensifyingthis, too—what usually started as a slight tingling already felt close to a full blown release, and somehow it was continuing to build. I was going to shatter quickly. Violently. Fear gripped me for an instant, though it was still mingled with arousal—I felt too hot, too out of control.

“Not yet.” Dravyn’s voice hummed with the command and control I lacked in that moment. If I’d been with anybody else, the panic might have continued to grip me more and more tightly, but his voice was all I needed to bring me back to the state of pure bliss I’d been in.

“Not yet,” he repeated. He cupped a hand between my legs and pulled me back into my original position. “Not yet, Wildfire. Not until you’ve taken all of me.”

Some cross between a whimper and a moan of pleasure left me as he said this, as he shifted his stance and took hold of my legs, urging them farther apart before easing his length between them. He moved back and forth against me for a minute, sliding the tip of his cock over my center and adding to the wetness he’d already created there until finally,finallyhe pushed inside me.

He grabbed my sides and pulled me back to him, thrusting slowly, filling me more fully with every lift and sway of his hips.

I quickly understood why he’d decided against the bedroom—the stairs created precisely the height difference needed to allow him to drive more deeply into me than ever before. Hepulled me down while he pushed up, and it was almost too much, the way this position filled and stretched and wrecked me so utterly and completely.

“Fuck,”I cried out as he began to drive harder into me—though I didn’t realize I’d said the word out loud until I heard him laugh.

“That one echoed,” he murmured approvingly.

I moaned something incoherent in response.

The sound urged him back to his thrusting. He placed one hand between my shoulder blades, pressing me more firmly down. Holding my upper body in place against the stone landing gave him the leverage he needed to push deeper and faster.

The stairwell was soon filled with the echoing cries of our combined gasps, our curses, and the swishing, rushing sound of sweat-slicked skin meeting skin.

As my upper body melted against the landing—too spent to move thanks to the waves of pleasure rocking through me—Dravyn’s hands slid from my back and hooked around my hips. He gripped them tightly, lifting me up to more fully meet each of his increasingly ravenous movements.

The next cry that left my lips eclipsed all the sounds we’d made thus far.

He answered it by raking his fingers into my hair once more, gathering the strands together into a fistful which he tugged, forcing my back to arch, drawing him more completely into me.

His other hand slipped between my legs, caressing as he pushed in. It was the last touch I could take before unraveling—I came with a breathy cry and was lost in a field of fiery stars bursting before my eyes, in an inferno of passionate flames swirling around us.

Some of those flames were real, responsible for an increasing number of scorch marks on the stone around us. Some of them were likely imagined. I couldn’t tell the difference. I didn’t careto. All of the burning felt good in that moment, and I just wanted it to keep building, swallowing me up, incinerating every thought from my mind.

Dravyn continued to move. To pound into me with ever-increasing speed and power. His hands moved from my hair and roamed along my body, grasping at my flushed skin, keeping me close as I trembled and tingled with the rush of my release.

As I coasted along the ripples of that release, he pulled me upright, my back flush against his stomach. His arms crossed tightly around my breasts, holding me in place as he balanced himself and then drove upward, deep into my tightly-clenched core. Another peal of orgasm rang through me with the motion, his own following with an answering roar, his hold turning crushingly tight as he emptied himself into me.

After several breathless moments, he finally loosened his hold. I managed a few shallow breaths. He moved toward the support of the wall, dragging me with him. As he settled against it, I turned around so I was facing him, his knees hemming me in.

I stared at him for a moment, overcome by the way the wisps of fire around us caught on every beautiful edge of his face. My breaths remained ragged and shallow. I planted a clumsy kiss on his lips, still halfway caught up in a shaky, delirious euphoria.

He took the sides of my face in his hands and held me still before drawing me in for a slower, steadier kiss. As it ended, I closed my eyes and leaned forward, falling against his chest as his arms gathered me in.

I was still coming down from my high when I felt him lifting me, carrying me up the steps toward his room. Everywhere his fingers touched was still sensitive, setting off little explosions that all ran together, cocooning me in blissful heat.

---