“You have a spot that likes to be licked very much and I want to be the one to show you that.” Seconds ticked by as my mind fought to come up with a conscious response to that. I felt like I was being swept up in a fiery tide, but I was unsure if it was going to lull me sweetly or drown me. “Perhaps it’s a concept better demonstrated than described.”

“Oh!” My hand slapped down against Gael’s skull, my fingers gripping his hair rudely, but I couldn’t stop myself. Something sweet, soft, slick and altogether imprecise slid over a place I hadn’t yet discovered fully. I’d felt a kind of agonising pleasure when any of them placed their palm over my pelvis, but this was something else. It was a much sharper, much more intense pleasure. A sharp knife that I leaned into the bite of. “Gael!”

“Tell me you want more, love. You taste so sweet.” His voice was shaded with a strange kind of desperation, one that burned just as hard in me.

“Gael, please…”

“With pleasure, my love.”

If I’d thought he could make me feel good before, I realised I was to discover new heights. This caress seemed broader and more encompassing, awakening nerve endings abruptly as his tongue passed, leaving me panting for more. And pant I did, as he performed this manoeuvre over and over, getting faster, harder with each pass. My grip on his hair was brutal, something I would’ve regretted if I was in my right mind, but I wasn’t. Some devil writhed inside me, turning me into a steely armed virago, forcing him to go back again and again. Or was it a goddess that stirred within me? Whatever it was, it knew exactly what to do.

“You’re going to shove my face into your wet little pussy?” Gael said as I began moving him downward. “I’m going to push my tongue inside you and suck every drop of nectar you produce.”

I didn’t even know what that meant, until I did.

Something long and mobile flickered inside me, pulsing, filling me in ways I’d never experienced. His stubble rasped against me, his chin, his face grinding. And I ground back, my breath coming in short little pants. Then he pulled away gasping and, right as I began to whine in protest, his tongue was replaced by something much harder.

“If you want to take me, I need to put my cock here,” he said, moving his finger back and forth, letting me get used to a sensation that felt like too much and not enough, all at the same time. “You won’t be able to be knotted, not the first time, because it will hurt, Darcy.”

I got a slight sense of that, as he pulled his finger back, then pressed two inside me.

“Your maidenhead, the thing those Granians twitter on about endlessly? It will be gone. It’s just a small piece of skin that people invest too much energy into, but for you it might be important. You’ve seen – with Axe, with Weyland – the different things we can do. Honestly, just making you come will be enough for me, love. I can work my fingers inside you, get you used to the way this feels. I can suck your little clit until your claws scratch the bedding to shreds, and I’ll be well pleased. You’ll be mine either way, love.”

“Or…” I ground out, feeling too full and yet craving more.

“Or I can replace my fingers with my cock, taking my time to let you adjust and then I’ll drive myself into you, over and over, grinding into your clit on every downstroke until your cunt snatches tight around me and milks all the cum out of my balls…”

His eyes went wide then, as if he was surprised by his words.

“Fuck, sorry. I meant to—”

I reached down, pulling his hands out of me and then hauled him up, my claws pricking his flesh as I did so, because when his hips settled between my legs, this felt completely right. I hadn’t gone running through the streets, hunting him, for only half-measures. I knew in my heart that doing this would close off so many doors. The Maidens wouldn’t accept me, my own people would see me as a fallen woman, rutting with a man who wasn’t my husband, but whatever it was that burned between us, it went well and truly beyond anything I’d ever seen or experienced.

As I gripped the swollen base of Gael’s cock, as I brushed it against my folds, finding the place that ached for him and then notching the head there, I knew I was done being defined by that tiny piece of flesh he’d described.

“Make me yours, Gael,” I commanded and he let out a gods-awful groan. My knee was jerked up, the angle of my hips changed and suddenly I was as physically open as I’d ever been to another person.

“I’ll love you until the end of time, my mate,” he said, and then he pushed in.