Page 9 of Held

“Big boy,” she replied, rolling her hips as fast as she could, breath hitching on every pass of those gorgeous ridges. “D-do me a favor and come for me, will you?”

She squeezed her inner walls around him. It took tremendous effort, given how stretched she was around him. But it apparently worked because he threw back his head and let out a ragged roar that made her heart skip a beat.

He gripped her hips bruisingly tight, holding her still as he emptied inside her. Briar’s mouth fell open as she felt him pulse, his spend coating her insides.

It felt incredible. But more importantly, the curse-fire was leaking away from her chest.

She was safe for another day. And just in time.

She sagged over him, bracing herself on wobbly elbows. His chest was so broad she could rest on it easily.

For a moment, there was no sound in the cave but their heavy breathing. She trembled against him, her body racing with the aftermath of pleasure and the relief of living another day. It took her a moment to realize Wick was shaking, too.

She eased up, wincing as his soft cock slipped out of her. They hadn’t fit his whole cock inside, but they had gotten pretty damn close.

“Thanks,” she panted. “I can’t believe a Skullstalker just saved my life.”

Wick made a low, gurgling growl. He let go of her hips, digging instead into the nest. His claws flexed in the furs and pierced the thick hide like a knife through butter.

Briar giggled weakly and lay down on his chest. She meant to climb off and gather up her clothes, like she did after every coupling since she had been cursed. But she was so tired after the strange, exciting turn the night had taken, and the Skullstalker’s heart was beating so slowly under her cheek, like a lullaby.

Briar’s eyes drifted reluctantly shut. She would get up in a minute.

The last thing she felt before she fell asleep was a pair of huge arms closing hesitantly around her.

Four

Wick woke up panicked.

At first, he didn’t know why. Then he felt something small and warm shifting in his arms, an unfamiliar scent washing over him.

Wick looked down. The strange human from last night was dozing against his chest.

He sniffed her carefully, pulling her back to examine her naked body.

No blood. No scent of pain in the air. The amulet around her neck had worked its strange magic: he had not hurt her during the night.

Wick slumped with relief. He gathered her back in his arms, setting her cheek against his chest once again. She hummed, nuzzling against him.

Wick touched her hair, charmed. No one had ever touched him like this before. His encounters with other creatures were brief and bloody, and that was only when he couldn’t avoid them entirely. He sometimes talked to his brothers, but that was rare. When they did talk, they never touched unless it was to try to rip his throat out.

He had watched humans do this from a distance, once. A young couple curled together on a blanket, sweat cooling on their naked bodies. He had watched them through the trees until the blood frenzy started to itch under his skin, then he fled. But he hadn’t been able to shake that image from his head. How gently they’d held each other.

He rubbed a cautious hand down Briar’s bare back. It was even softer than he dreamed.

He stroked Briar’s cheek next. She was curled up against him with her limbs bunched tight against her body, like she was prepared to leap up and flee at any moment. She had scars decorating her body—knife marks and burn marks and other marks he didn’t recognize. Some of them looked several decades old. Or perhaps mortals’ scars aged differently from Skullstalkers’.

Briar stirred against him. Her body was so warm. Her thighs were covered with his dried come.

He buried his face in her hair and inhaled. Sweet with sleep and salty with his spend, it was such an intoxicating combination of scents he could feel himself getting hard again.

He looked down at his cock, filling out against his thigh. The ridges stiffened with it, flushing the same color as his cockhead. She had seemed especially eager whenever he fit those ridges into her. After the shock faded, anyhow. At the start, she had been so surprised it made him wonder if she’d slept with a man with a ridged cock before. Surely, she must. If she had to sleep with someone every day, she had to have run into a man with a ridged cock. Skullstalkers had a variety of cocks, human men must be the same.

Briar shifted. He glanced at her, curled so tightly against him, then down at his cock. He was still surprised how much had fit inside her. Hewassmaller than his brothers, but not by much.His older brother Slate had needed a magic spell for him to fit inside his wife.

A gurgling sound echoed around the cave. Wick startled, only to realize that it had come from Briar’s stomach.

Humans needed to eat more often than Skullstalkers, Wick remembered. Slate had experienced this very problem when he encountered his new wife. He had tried asking Wick about what humans ate, and Wick had given his best approximation of a mortal diet, only for Slate to realize that Wick was talking out of his tail. Wick had never been around mortals long enough to know what they ate.

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