Chapter 335: And There He Fucking Was

The hand on her neck slid lower. Down her spine. Over the curve of her lower back. His fingers fanned wide, spanning her, and pressed until the gap between their bodies closed with a contact so complete she could feel his pulse in three places at once.

Then he moved beneath her. Once. The kind of slow, grinding roll that communicated a full thesis in one motion and the thesis was not about bath salts.

"Maddox." His name came out like a warning and a prayer stitched together by a woman who was losing the argument with her own composure.

"Right here." The answer landed on her pulse point. Then his teeth scraped the skin there and the sound that left her throat had no business existing in a bathing chamber at this hour.

His hands moved from her jaw to her hips. The runes flared brighter where his skin met hers. The green water turned gold at the contact points and the bathwater was losing its identity crisis one glow at a time.

She could feel everything through their matebond. His hunger. His exhaustion. Relief so sharp it had edges. The combination was devastating and she understood, without being told, that this man had been carrying both for longer than she could account for.

His hands pulled her closer. The water protested with a soft slap against the tub edge. She could feel him beneath her. Hard. Thick. Pressed against her stomach through the water with zero ambiguity about what his body wanted and the patience to wait for the rest of her to catch up.

She kissed him.

The decision to kiss him came from somewhere her memories couldn’t reach but her body could. Her mouth knew his. Her lips knew the pressure. Her hands knew where to land on his jaw without being guided there. The muscle memory of loving this man was intact even though the love itself was locked behind a door she couldn’t open, and kissing him felt like knocking on it from the wrong side.

His entire body went still. One heartbeat of absolute frozen stillness, the stillness of a man receiving something he had been wanting.

She felt his reaction through the matebond. It was the kind of shock that comes from receiving something you had convinced yourself you would never get. The weight of what that meant to a man whose wife couldn’t remember him landed in her chest through their connection and the grief inside it almost made her pull away.

Her fingers found the back of his neck like they had been reaching for it in the dark for days and had finally landed.

Then he broke.

His hands locked on her hips and yanked her down, knocking the wind from her lungs. She winced, every muscle locking, the burn much worse than she was anticipating.

She was sore. As in very sore. And he was thrusting again, forcing another inch, then another, slamming her onto him in short, claiming drops until she took all of him.

"Fuck you feel so good."

He lifted her like he was going to be kind about it. His jaw was locked. She could feel him restraining himself through the matebond, the leash he had on his own need, and the cost of it was visible in the cords of his neck and the controlled tremor in his thighs.

Then his hands changed their mind. He pulled her down hard. Then he was bouncing her down onto him with a force that pushed the water up and over the rim.

The soreness was still there. She registered it the way you register a bruise while someone is kissing the skin above it. Present. Fading. Becoming part of the sensation instead of separate from it until the distinction collapsed and her body stopped trying to tell the difference.

Each downward stroke sent two messages at once. The first was the dull, bruised protest of muscles she couldn’t remember earning. The second was pleasure building beneath the ache.

At some point the ache stopped mattering. She couldn’t identify the exact thrust where pain became background noise and the pressure building low in her core took over. But it happened. And once it did, her hands went into his wet hair and rational thought left the goddamn building.

"Such a good fucking girl. Take my cock just like that, baby."

The praise hit a nerve she didn’t know she had. Her body craved his approval in a way that bypassed every filter between her brain and her hips, and the moan that followed was involuntary and loud enough to echo.

He responded by fucking her harder. The controlled, patient husband evaporated and the dragon replacing him was snarling into the curve of her neck while his hips drove upward with a rhythm that was less lovemaking and more reclamation.

"Mine." Each word was a thrust. "Every. Goddamn. Inch."

Heat spiked so fast she couldn’t brace for it. Her whole body flushed as tension coiled tighter, low and merciless and building towards something that her muscles were already bracing for.

"Cum for me."

The command went through her like voltage.

Her orgasm detonated. Every sore muscle she had been ignoring seized at once, the ache in her ribs and the rawness between her legs compressing into a single point that shattered outward. She gasped, body jerking against him, clenching around his cock in waves.

Maddox’s hips stuttered. "That’s it. Milk me, baby. Every drop."

He released in long, heavy surges, holding her flush against him, grinding through the shared orgasm while green water sloshed over the rim and onto the floor in a mess that nobody was going to clean up anytime soon.

Her orgasm was still throbbing through her when someone appeared in her peripheral.

Her head snapped towards the movement on instinct. Maddox didn’t stop. His hips were still driving into her, his face buried in her neck, his arms locked around her waist in a grip that said his dragon was steering and his brain had clocked out three thrusts ago.