Page 128 of Fractured Loyalties
I don’t stop. I lap at her through the aftershocks, drawing out every shudder, every sob, until she’s trembling and spent, her chest heaving like she’s run a marathon.
I crawl up her body, kissing a slow path over her quivering stomach, her heaving breasts, the marked skin of her throat. My cock is aching, so hard it’s almost painful, but I pause to look at her. Her eyes are wild, pupils blown, lips swollen and parted, her hair a tangled halo against the pillow. She’s a fucking vision, a goddess undone, and I’m the bastard who gets to ruin her.
She meets my gaze, unflinching, and nods once, her voice a low, broken rasp. “Now. Fucking take me.”
I don’t make her wait, but I don’t give her soft either. I settle between her thighs, my body a furnace, and when I thrust inside her—slow at first, letting her feel every thick inch stretching her—she gasps, legs wrapping around my waist, pulling me deeper. Her nails rake down my back, sharp and vicious, drawing blood, and I hiss, the pain igniting something primal in me. I move then, hard and deep, each thrust a claim, a punishment, a vow. She meets me, hips rising, her body as hungry as mine, her moans a chorus of need and defiance.
I angle my hips, hitting that spot inside her that makes her eyes roll back, her breath catch in her throat. My hand slides toher throat, not squeezing, just resting there, a reminder of who’s in control.
Her pulse hammers under my palm, and her eyes lock on mine, daring me to push further, to break her completely. I lean down, my lips brushing her ear, my voice a low growl. “You’re mine. Say it.”
“Yours,” she gasps, her voice breaking as another climax builds, her body tightening around me like a vice.
I fuck her through it, relentless, my own release clawing at the edges of my control. When she comes again, her cry is my name, a desperate, reverent thing that shatters me.
I follow, my orgasm ripping through me like a wildfire, spilling inside her with a force that leaves my whole body jerking, shaking, vision blurring, heart pounding like a war drum. For a moment, there’s nothing but her—her heat, her scent, her trembling body beneath mine.
This isn’t love. It’s possession. It’s a hunger that could burn the world to cinders. And as I collapse beside her, my arm curling around her waist, pulling her close, I know one thing: she’s the only altar I’ll ever worship at, and I’d rather die than let her go.
We lie in the dark, tangled in the ruin we made of the bed. Her thigh is draped over mine, my hand still sprawled low on her hip, fingers flexing slow and thoughtless, like they’re memorizing her shape in a new language.
The room smells like heat and salt and something buried. Not smoke. But the echo of it. Like whatever we just did might still be burning in the walls.
Mara doesn’t speak.
She just breathes. Quiet and steady. One palm pressed flat to my chest, right over the spot she kissed before I slid into her like the only answer she trusted.
I turn my face into her hair and breathe her in. Still her. But different.
Marked.
She shifts.
Then says, softly, “I thought you’d be angrier.”
I let the silence stretch a beat too long. Then: “Anger’s too soft for what I felt when I saw the message.”
Her fingers twitch.
“I wasn’t going to run,” she says again, like she’s repeating it for both of us. “But I needed to know if I still remembered how.”
“I know.”
That’s all I give her.
Because I do know. And it’s worse than not knowing at all.
She pulls back enough to look at me. Her face is flushed, lips still bruised from how hard I kissed her. But her eyes are sharp again. Awake.
“What happens now?” she asks.
I reach past her, grab the edge of the blanket, and pull it over us. Her body presses back into mine with the kind of ease that says she stopped trying to leave five minutes ago.
“Now?” I say. “We make a new plan.”
“And Vale?”
“Vale dies.”
