LILLIAN
“You’re insufferable,” I say, but the water is already doing something to my voice, softening the edges of it.
“And you’re still talking.” His mouth curves, wicked and unhurried.
“I could think of better uses for that mouth.”
Heat rushes up my neck, into my face, and I open my mouth to fire something back—
He kisses me before I get the chance.
It isn’t slow.
It isn’t careful like before.
His mouth takes mine with a hunger that leaves no room for anything else, one hand fisting in my wet hair, the other splayed hard against my spine, and for one furious second I plant my palms against his chest and push.
He doesn’t move.
Of course, he doesn’t move.
And then I stop pushing.
I kiss him back the way he’s kissing me—open-mouthed, starving, my fingers curling into his shoulders instead of shoving them away—and some small, humiliated part of me registers the surrender even as the rest of me stops caring.
He walks me backward until my shoulders meet stone.
The rock is cool where the water doesn’t reach, a sharp contrast to the heat of him pressed along the length of my body.
He catches the backs of my thighs and lifts.
I go up without thinking, my legs wrapping around him on instinct.
He pushes into me slowly, and every thought vanishes at once.
“Azriel—”
“I know.” His voice is rough against my ear, low enough that it seems to vibrate straight into my bones.
“I know exactly what you feel.”
He moves.
Slow, deliberate, pressing me harder into the stone with every thrust, and his mouth finds my neck—finds the mark already there—and licks over it before his teeth close down, worrying at the sensitive skin until I gasp.
“Mine,” he says against my throat.
“Every part of this.
Mine.”
I don’t answer.
I can’t.
My head falls back against the rock, and my fingers dig into his shoulders.
The water churns around us, warm and endless, and somewhere in the part of my mind still capable of thought, I know I should be quieter than this, should hold something back—
A sound tears out of me that I don’t recognize as my own.
“There it is.” He sounds satisfied, almost smug, his rhythm never faltering.
“You can pretend all you like.
Your body doesn’t lie the way you do.”
“Shut up,” I gasp, and it comes out as a plea instead of an order.
“Tell me I’m wrong.”
I can’t.
I want to, want it more than I’ve wanted anything in days, but every roll of his hips drives the denial further out of reach, until there’s nothing left in me but the climb toward something bright and inevitable.
It breaks over me all at once.
I shake against him, my body clenching around him as a cry rips from my throat and echoes off the cave walls before I can swallow it back.
My nails score down his shoulders.
He groans low in his chest, feels it happen to me, and doesn’t stop.
He isn’t finished.
He turns me before I’ve even come back to myself—bracing me forward against the stone this time, one hand splayed flat between my shoulder blades, the other gripping my hip hard enough to bruise—and drives into me again from behind, deeper, less patient than before.
“Again,” he murmurs against my ear, his voice gone rough and filthy at the edges.
“I want to feel you do that again.”
“I can’t.”
“You can.” His hand slides around to press flat against my stomach, holding me steady against him.
“You will.”
The pleasure is already building again, faster this time, my body apparently done listening to anything my mind has to say about restraint.
“Say it.” His teeth graze my ear.
“Tell me how badly you want this.
Tell me, Lillian.”
I bite my lip hard enough to taste copper.
“Say it,” he says again, quieter, more dangerous.
I don’t.
I won’t give him the words—not when it’s the one door I still have a hand on, even as everything else about me gives itself away without permission.
My breath comes in useless little gasps instead, my body arching back into him of its own accord, answering the question he refuses to let me leave unspoken while my mouth stays shut.
He feels me tightening again.
I feel him notice.
And then, without warning, he stops.
He turns me to face him, water sluicing between us, his eyes dark and intent on mine.
“Defiant,” he says, like it’s an accusation.
Like it offends him.
I lift my chin.
Somewhere in the exhaustion and the heat and the ache still throbbing through me, something sharp and reckless surfaces—the same thing that’s kept me alive for eighteen years.
“My Alpha King,” I say, sweet as poison, and let just enough of a taunt bleed into it to make sure he hears it.
Something flares behind his eyes.
He groans—a sound torn loose rather than given—and pulls me back against him, rougher now, no patience left in the way he moves.
His mouth drops to my shoulder, to the curve where neck meets collarbone, and he bites down hard enough that it stings sharp and immediate.
I don’t flinch.
Somewhere beneath the haze, I understand exactly what I’m doing.
Every taunt, every flicker of defiance is a hook I set myself—proof that I can still make him lose the composure he wears like armor, still make him choose want over control.
It isn’t submission.
It’s the only weapon I have left, and I use it.
He drives into me harder, and I meet him, and the ache and the pleasure blur together until I can’t tell which one is which anymore.
I climax again just as he does, his whole body going taut against mine, his groan rough against my throat as he releases inside me.
For one long, suspended moment there is nothing between us but breath and heat and the frantic beat of both our hearts.
“You aren’t fertile yet,” he says, when he can speak again, his voice still uneven.
His hand smooths once over my stomach, low and deliberate.
“But you will be.
And when you are—” His eyes lift to mine, dark and absolute.
“I intend to make sure you carry my child.”
The words settle into me like a verdict.
Then, all at once, the warmth goes out of him.
It happens the way it always happens—like a door closing somewhere behind his eyes.
He steps back, putting distance between us in the water, and by the time he speaks again his voice has gone even and cool, stripped of everything that was just in it.
“Get dressed,” he says.
“Hurry back to camp.
Melva and Leo are waiting.”
He turns and wades toward the far edge of the spring without looking back.
I stand there in the cooling water, my body still trembling, the ache of him still everywhere, and watch him go.
Why is it only this?
I wrap my arms around myself in the water’s fading warmth.
Why is he only ever warm with me when we’re fucking, and never once after?