Page 80 of Fanged Embrace
Her fingertips skimmed beneath the hem of my shirt, skating an electric path across my bare stomach. I flinched—not from fear, but from sudden, blazing awareness.
She paused, searching my face. “Still okay?”
“Yeah.” My voice cracked. I cleared my throat and kissed her again, a little bolder this time. Her hands stayed, mapping slow circles over skin no one had touched with such tenderness before.
Between breaths—awkward, gasping, and downright wonderful in my humble opinion—River pulled back, lips brushing my jaw. “Can I ask you something?”
“M-mm.” I wasn’t sure if it was permission or a sound of salacious need.
She hesitated. “If you had a… child… how are you still?—?”
The question lodged somewhere between clinical curiosity and gentle caution, and my hand moved instinctively to the C-section scar below my navel. River’s hand followed and her eyes flared in sudden shock when the pads of her fingers brushed the faint ridges in otherwise smooth skin.
“It was artificial insemination,” I murmured, defaulting to textbook cadence. “Embryo implantation, rapid gestational protocol, surgical extraction at thirty-two weeks. No penetrativeintercourse required.” The words tumbled out sterile and rehearsed, like reciting from a lab manual.
River’s brows lifted. “They… grew you a glossary as well as a baby.”
I gave a brittle shrug. “Picked up the terms while they monitored me. Easier to cope if I treated it like I was studying for an exam.”
Her eyes softened with an ache so fierce I had to look away. But River tipped my chin back, kissing the corner of my mouth.
“Well… Thank you for telling me,” she whispered against my skin. Then she was quiet for a beat, lips hovering over mine. Her next words were a low murmur, laden with melancholy that made my heart ache. “I’m sorry they turned something so sacred into something else.”
A tremor rippled through me—anger, grief, relief, I wasn’t sure. River waited, hand warm over my scar until the tightness eased.
I looked into her eyes, wishing for the hundredth time tonight that we’d met under different circumstances. Wishing that I’d lived a normal life, not one steeped in loss and misery. Maybe then I’d be less fragile, less broken. Easier for her to hold without pricking her finger on jagged edges. But there was no alternate timeline, this was all I was and all I could offer her.
And she was willing to hold me anyway.
I let out a breath, a long slow exhale, and relaxed under her touch. River watched the motion, eyes tracking every slight twitch of my face, tense until she saw the permission offered in my eyes. Then she slid her fingers higher, dancing along my rib cage, coaxing a gasp from my lips when she reached bare breast, soft fingers kneading into softer flesh.
River caught the sound with a kiss, angling herself over me and lifting her free hand to cup my face. Her other hand, hot under my shirt, closed palm-down over one hard, sensitive nipple. I arched up into the sensation, back lifting from the bedwhile her lips traveled across my cheek, down my throat—pausing to suck a bruise under my jaw.
She guided my shirt up over my head, lips returning to my bare chest to pepper kisses down my sternum. Her robe came off, along with her bralette, and when she lay her full weight down on me, I groaned into the alcove of her neck—skin-on-skin contact, so foreign and so necessary, nearly bringing me to tears. My fingers dug into her back and I clung to her.
It was enough. It was everything I didn’t know I needed. We could have never taken it further, never moved from that moment and it would have been enough. Simply holding her, and being held in return, was enough.
Then her hands traveled lower, dipping gently under the seam of my pants, and my eyes flew open. The growing heat between my legs radiated outward, near aching in its intensity before she’d even reached the apex of my thighs. And when she did—when those gentle fingers found their mark—I found my voice.
“Oh my god,” I yelped, and dug nails deep into her shoulders when River tried to jerk away. “No, no, it’s fine. It’s just—” her fingers brushed up against that collection of nerves again, sending shockwaves through the rest of my body, “Fuck.”
“Language,” River murmured in my ear, but I could hear the smile in her voice.
“Since when have you cared about that—” Another startled gasp had me cutting my own quip short, and the moan that followed when she licked a tongue up my throat was deep and guttural in its intensity.
I lay back, breath coming in short, sharp stutters when she ran a finger through soft—and to my surprise, very wet—folds. Those same fingers circled my clit again, gentle coaxing strokes that had my hands fisting in the bedsheets and obscene little sounds rising from the back of my throat.
My body’s reaction was immediate, every muscle tensing asthe pads of her finger curled against that sensitive spot over and over again before dipping lower, lightly gliding at my entrance, and moving back again. She kept up that pace—toying with me, I realized, when I caught a glimpse of her fanged grin before she crushed her mouth to mine.
“River…” I murmured the plea against her mouth, bucking my hips up and hoping like hell that conveyed exactly what I wanted her to do. “Please.”
“Hmm?” Her tongue licked into my mouth, her fingers still working that slow circle around my clit, driving me deeper and deeper into a hot, heady haze of arousal.
“Please…” It was getting harder to form words, harder to haul myself out of my stupor when she was kissing me senseless. “Just—” I bucked my hips again, chasing her fingers, eager to feel all of her. “Please.”
The hoarse request was received loud and clear, and another gasp shook my body when her fingers moved inside me, slipping in with ease and sending me into a frenzy. The intrusion burned, but only for a moment, before the faint discomfort gave way to screaming euphoria.
My voice rang around the room and I buried my face in her neck, groaning through the motions when her hand began to move. I tensed around her fingers as she pushed deeper, clinging to her for dear life and groaning a stuttering string of profanities when those fingers curled inside me, stroking some hidden place I hadn’t even known existed until now.
