Chapter 279: Say My Name.....

A tremor went through him.

He caught her mouth in a kiss so fierce it stole her breath. His arms locked around her, and he stood, carrying her with him, and she gasped as the movement drove him deeper. Her legs wrapped around his waist. He took three strides to the bed and laid her down on it, still inside her, still kissing her, with his body heavy and hot over hers.

He pulled out.

She made a sound of protest. He rolled her gently onto her side, and curled behind her, and she felt his chest against her back, hot and slick with sweat. His arm slid under her head. His other hand came around and cupped her breast, and he pressed his mouth to the back of her neck.

"Slowly," he said, against her skin. "Let me do this slowly."

"Why?"

"Because I want to feel all of you."

He lifted her leg, hooked it back over his thigh, and she felt the head of his cock nudge at her entrance from behind. He slid in. It was slow and deep and perfect, a long, smooth glide, and she moaned out loud.

"Gods," he breathed. "Morgana. You’re so....."

"Don’t stop."

"I won’t."

He moved.

It was nothing like the door or the chair. It was gentle, almost aching, a slow rolling rhythm that filled her again and again. His hand held her breast, thumb stroking her nipple. His mouth moved across her shoulder and her neck and the sensitive spot behind her ear, kissing and nipping. His breath came in hot, ragged pants against her skin.

"I’ve waited so long for you," he whispered.

Her eyes stung.

"Draeven...."

"You’re perfect. You’re so perfect. I didn’t know it could feel like this." His voice cracked. "I didn’t know."

She turned her head and found his mouth.

They kissed, slow and wet and endless, while his hips rolled steadily against her. She felt him swelling inside her. She felt the pressure building again, deep and low, a slow coil she had thought was spent. His hand slid down her stomach. His fingers found her clit and began to circle it in lazy rhythm, in time with his thrusts.

"I can’t," she gasped. "I already....I can’t again....."

"You can."

"Draeven....."

"You can, and you will." He said it low, and fond, and the words brushed her ear like a kiss. "And I’m coming with you."

The pace changed.

It wasn’t sudden. It built, thrust by thrust, deeper and harder, until the bed was creaking and her breath was coming in sobs. His hand held her hip. His fingers on her clit sped up. She felt him lose control, bit by bit, the way a dam gives way, one crack and then another.

"Say my name," he growled.

"Draeven."

"Again."

"Draeven....."

"Morgana," he said, and his voice broke. "I....gods...."

She felt the change in him.

A low, vast, rumbling sound rose from his chest, and it wasn’t human. It shivered up through her back and into her ribs, and the whole room seemed to hum. The scales along his arm blazed gold. His thrusts turned wild, and she cried out, and the pressure inside her snapped.

She came with a scream.

Her whole body convulsed. Her pussy clamped around him, pulsing and pulsing, and she heard him roar. He drove into her one last time and held, buried to the root, and she felt him come, hot and endless, flooding her. His arms locked around her. His mouth was against her neck, his teeth just grazing her skin, and he shuddered all over.

And something clicked.

She felt it in her chest. Not a sound but a pull, a deep gold tug beneath her ribs, as though a thread had been drawn tight between her heart and his. It snapped taut. She gasped. Beneath the roar of her own pulse, she felt another heartbeat, slower, steady, vast, a second rhythm beating against her own.

Draeven’s.

She could feel him. All of him. His joy and his fear and two hundred years of loneliness, the weight of the curse, the aching want he’d carried for her in silence. It poured into her through the thread, and she felt it all, and she was weeping, she realized, silently, with tears running down her face.

Behind her, he made a soft broken sound.

"Do you feel it?" he whispered.

"Yes."

"Is it.....are you all right?"

"Yes. Yes. It’s....." She couldn’t speak. "It’s you."

"It’s us."

His arms tightened around her.

Somewhere deep in his chest, INFERNUS purred. It was a vast low sound, rolling and golden, like the first note of a great bell. The room seemed to glow. Every candle in the chamber flared bright. The lamp on the floor, fallen on its side, burned steady and gold.

And at the window, a single pane sang.

It was a thin, clear, trembling note, like a finger on the rim of a glass. Frost bloomed across it, delicate and white, and then, as quickly as it had come, it melted.

***

Draeven lay awake a long time.

She had fallen asleep slowly, in pieces. First her breathing had steadied. Then her hand, which had been curled around his wrist, had loosened. Her last words had been a drowsy, half-formed question about whether the bed was always this warm, and he had said, yes, always, and kissed her hair, and she had smiled into the pillow and gone.

She didn’t pass out. She didn’t faint. She slept like a woman who had been tired for a very long time and had finally been allowed to stop.

He did not.

He lay on his side with her back against his chest, one arm curled around her, her dark hair spread across his shoulder. The lamp had burned low. The room was warm and quiet. Somewhere beyond the walls, a night bird called and fell silent.

He could feel her.

It was the strangest thing. He had spent two hundred years with a dragon in his chest, and he had thought he knew what it was to be inhabited. He had not. Now there was a second presence, small and bright and warm, a steady pulse beneath his own. It was like having a window open in a house that had been shuttered for centuries. He could feel her sleeping. He could feel her dreaming, faintly, the soft flicker of images he couldn’t see.

"Mine," INFERNUS murmured, drowsy, content.