Page 86 of Sanctuary with Kings

"Need to taste you," he muttered. "But fuck, I need to beinsideof you."

"Conall," I repeated, a little sharper.

He stiffened, almost flinched, and looked up, eyes wild and glowing in the darkness.

"Conall, what happened?" I asked, scooting back and pulling my legs free of the skirt. He stared at my limbs as they appeared, licking his lips. "Are you all right?"

He blinked, shook himself, and then delivered me a crooked smile that didn't quite reach his eyes. "Mo chroí, you don't need to worry yourself for me."

I frowned and tucked my legs closer and he blinked at me, at the wadded-up dress he was lying on top of now, torn down to the waist. He sat up, drawing in a deep breath, shoving a hand into his hair to comb it back and wincing as his fingers caught in tangles. He shook his hand free and then stood at the foot of the bed, tearing off his coat and dropping it to the floor, claws tugging ruthlessly at the buttons of his waistcoat and then shirt until they both hung open over his chest.

"Come back to me, Evie," he said gently, kneeling on the bed and already crawling in my direction.

I stretched and he caught me, pulling me close so our bare chests pressed firmly together. He sighed and tucked his face into my shoulder, cradling me in his arms.

"I came at you like a beast, I'm sorry," he whispered.

I settled my hands in his hair, my own gentler, patient fingers working at the tangles for him. "I don't mind that. But you seem…on edge."

He leaned back, rolling to lie down on the bed with me clasped to his side. There was a little light from the woods outside the window and a faint glow from the staircase we'd entered the room from, just enough for me to make out his face as he gazed up at me.

"I meant what I said—I missed you," he said, one hand stroking slowly up the back of my thigh, over my ass, to cup and squeeze briefly before moving up and over to my shoulder. "I missed your mouth, your skin, your taste." He lifted his chin and I bent, offering him a slow, shallow kiss that teased. "The sounds you make. The way you smell. Asterion's not here, is he? Idiot. I should've stayed."

"Hush." I kissed him again, smoothing my fingers through his hair before sliding them down his chest to clasp his length through his trousers.

Conall groaned eagerly, bucking up into my grip, his cock jumping and jerking through the fabric. "Need you," he ground out through bared teeth.

"I know you do. Help me undress you."

Conall was as respectful of his own clothes as he had been of my borrowed dress, and a button of his trousers went popping off and rattling over the stone floor. I had to climb off him to avoid being elbowed as he tore his pants off and tried to tear his shirt away without managing the waistcoat first. He still had an arm tangled in one sleeve, cuff buttoned too tightly, when I leaned into him, laughing at his urgency, and his control snapped.

I was thrown to my back, Conall's arms tight around my thighs, holding them open and high, his face buried against my cunt. I howled as he feasted, and my fingers made new tangles in their grip. Conall's mouth was deadly on a woman's sex, I thought. He worshiped me with his mouth, kissing my body like a lover he'd lost for years, starving sounds echoing into my tender skin. When I moved, shamelessly grinding myself into his face, he only encouraged more, rocking my body in his hands, painting my arousal over his chin and cheeks and nose, lapping his tongue inside of me to draw out more.

Hywel would laugh and goad him on. They'd make a sport of eating me in this way, a lewd meal of my pleasure, I thought, and then Conall nipped and sucked on my clit, kissed it sweetly before claiming it roughly with his lips. Ecstasy flashed, whip-quick and just as fierce. I let out a sharp cry, tipped at the edge and falling, when Conall pulled away.

I moaned at the deprivation, tumbling weakly over the edge but without his touch to heighten the sensation.

He scrambled over me, and I was just about to pout, to scold him for abandoning his efforts, when he plunged mercilessly inside of me.

The knife's edge returned as if dragging me backward through the release. I shouted, my body enfolding him in my grip, legs and arms and cunt clasping him to me. His mouth found mine in that same hungry possession he'd lavished on my sex, and I licked my own tangy flavor from his tongue, our bodies rolling into one another. He was speaking into me, groaning and growling, but I couldn't tear myself away to make out the words. One clawed hand clasped around the back of my neck, the other digging into my ass as we rutted clumsily, desperately, all appetite to make up for the lack of seduction, the failure of finesse.

"Yes, those sounds, those wet sounds your body makes as I fuck you," Conall hissed in my ear. "I missed those."

I shook my head, face hot, now trying toignorethose sounds.

"You get so slick when I talk to you," Conall said, and this time his grin was wild and broad and real, sparkling in the dark as he raised himself enough to meet my eyes. "I tell you that when I snap my hips like this, push my knot at your opening" —I moaned and my heels pressed into his ass to make him do it again— "you splash against me, and you turn pink all over and justgusha little, even before you come."

I turned my face away and Conall's hand on my neck tightened, forcing my stare back to his.

"You smell like dragon cum. And gryphon too. You have them all over you, you practicallyshinewith it. But when I'm in you, you smell like a bitch inheat."

I growled at him and darted up, snapping my teeth into the flesh on his shoulder. Conall yelped, and his whole body tensed and stretched, and then his weight flattened me on the bed and his hips pressed hard, and that heavy stone of pressure that pounded against my openingpushedandburrowed.I howled, and Conall snarled and stopped, making to draw away.

I smacked his back without thinking. "Don't. I want it," I gasped out, my hips trying to rise to chase his knot. "You said—you said, in a bed—"

Conall whimpered. "Fuck. Fuck,mo chroí, you don't know what you're doing to me."

The fragile tear in the words made me pause and I tried to twist, to find his face, to ask him to explain, but then he was pushing again, nudging and digging at my body, the dense hard heat of his knot threatening to tear me open. Conall groaned, head thrown back, throat flexing, and then he wiggled, just a little shake of his hips, the same way he'd shimmied the dress off my hips, but this wasin, forcing and shoving and—

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