Page 44 of Tharn's Hunt
"Why does that happen?" she vocalizes. "That glowing thing. Is it... normal for your kind?"
She sees it. She wonders at it.
Her sounds are questions. Questions I do not have the words for, even in my own mind. How can I explain this to her? That the soft, controlled glow of a calm Drakav is nothing like this? That this wild, brilliant fire under my skin is a betrayal. A light that has its own will, that answers only to her presence, to her touch. That my skin burns with this light only for her. That it both terrifies and fascinates me.
She inches closer. When she's near enough, she reaches out, her fingers hovering just above my skin, not quite touching.
"May I?" she vocalizes, voice soft.
My body leans toward her hand before my mind realizes I’ve moved. Her touch, when it comes, is breath-light against my forearm. The glow flares instantly, brightening to almost painful intensity where her skin meets mine.
We both gasp at the sensation—a jolt of something electric that races through my veins. It doesn't hurt. Quite the opposite. It feels...good. Like completing a circuit I didn't know was broken.
She doesn't pull away. Instead, her fingers trace a slow path up my arm, following the glow as it spreads. Her touch is curious, exploratory, without fear or hesitation.
"It's beautiful," she whispers, her gaze fixed on the patterns of light beneath my skin. "Like... like you've swallowed the sun."
The wonder in her voice makes my chest tight. Makes me want things I cannot name, let alone understand.
Makes me wanther.
The need to have her should send me away. Should make me put stone walls between us. But I do not move. I let her touch. I let her stay close.
She looks up at me then, her water-blue eyes locking with mine. In that quiet, a spark jumps between us. Not the light under the skin. Something else. Something that does not need words or mind-thoughts to be understood. It is a feeling of…rightness. A quiet in my blood that I have never known.
My claws ache to answer her touch. To trace the lines of her face, to feel the softness of her skin. But I keep them sheathed. My claws are made for hunting, for fighting, for breaking things. She is small. Soft. I could tear her skin with a careless move.
The thought is a spear in my gut.
I cannot risk it. Cannot riskher.
So I remain perfectly still as her fingers continue their journey, mapping the contours of my arm, my shoulder, careful to avoid the healing wound. When she reaches my chest, just above where my dra-kir thunders beneath bone and muscle, she pauses.
"Your heart," she vocalizes, splaying her fingers over the spot. "It's racing."
The air freezes in my lungs.I cannot draw a breath. I cannot let one out. The glow under my skin pulses in time with my dra-kir, a frantic, silent betrayal of the control I pretend to have.
Her fingers press a fraction harder, as if she could feel the thunder of it, and something in me tightens to the point of breaking.
She is too close. Her scent is a storm in my head, wiping out all other thought. My claws slide from their sheaths. My fangs ache, a deep, sharp pressure in my jaw.
A fire ignites in my gut, and it isnotthe clean fire of the hunt. This is a greedy, molten heat that pools low. Heavy. Demanding. It is not pain. It is… purpose. A truth that lives in my blood.
Itwants.
It wants to drag her into my lap. To bury my face in the soft curve of her neck and breathe her in until I am full of her scent. It wants to sink my fangs into the swell of her shoulder. Tomarkher. To taste the heat of her skin.
It wants to push her down onto the sand, part her soft thighs, and find the secret heat between them. Find that hidden spring and push into it. Push and push until she is full of me, overflowing with me, until every part of her screamsmine.
The vision is a fire in my blood. My body clenches, a pleasure so sharp it is almost pain. My member strains, hard as stone, a singular, focused ache. Yes. This is what it wants. This is whatIwant.
Then, through the red haze of need, a second vision forms. My strength against her softness. My claws, my teeth, my weight… I would tear her apart. I would break her. This starving beast inside me would devour her.
She is not prey.
The thoughtshatters through me like cracking stone. It breaks whatever spell her touch has cast, sending me flying backward so suddenly that she topples with a startled yelp.
"Sorry," she says, catching herself on her palms. "Did I hurt you?"
