The Warrior King (Inferno Rising) by Owen, Abigail (reading a book txt) 📕

before dropping it, baring herself to him, her skin aglow in the firelight, beckoning, turning deliciously pink as her blush spread to every part of her skin. But she also refused to look away, chin tilted proudly.

Samael’s dragon lunged for her, and he barely held back from doing the same. “Meira—” He clenched his eyes shut, but the image was burned into his mind’s eye.

Earlier, when he’d undressed them both, it had been clinical, all about making sure they didn’t die of exposure. But now… This. What she was offering…

“I want you,” she murmured. “I always have.”

He opened his eyes to find her watching him with eyes swirling with pure white consuming the blue, such open longing that his soul cried out for her. Unbidden, he released her hand and ran the backs of his fingers softly over her breast, tracing the shape.

She moved restively beneath his touch, and he continued to lightly trace the contour of that heavy breast, feathering under the bottom before traveling back up.

“This isn’t a snap decision,” she said. “We couldn’t. Now we can, and I don’t want to let the chance pass us by. Not again. We don’t know how Brock is tracking us, but what if he finds us here? Takes me away? Or we make it to Ararat and we wait until you’re established as the king, only they don’t want me, too? There are so many things against us. I couldn’t handle—” She broke off. “I can’t lose you…”

She gasped as he brushed her nipple. Then swallowed and took his hand by the wrist, first raising it to kiss the puckered, scarred skin, an action that swelled his heart, before lowering that same hand until he cupped the soft, damp curls at the juncture of her thighs.

The gesture was bold, the real Meira emerging from the flames, tested by fire and forged into something amazing. His phoenix. He knew she meant everything she was saying. Her heart was there in her eyes for him to see. No more distance. No more denying.

“I want to be your mate, Samael Veles,” she said, her gaze steady on his. “Forever. Yours.”

On a groan, Samael leaned forward and captured her lips, his hand at the back of her head, winding in her curls and holding her to him. “Mine,” he growled against her softness.

She smiled against him. “And you’ll be mine.”

A claim and a promise dropping from her lips like rain from heaven.

“Do we dare claim each other?”

After all her bravado, her insistence and logic, she still asked?

“I don’t think we dare go against the fates,” he said against her lips.

…

Could this be happening?

Meira was afraid to search for a true answer to that question, lest she wake to find this was all a dream.

Except Samael’s emotions bound tightly around her—need and desire, yes, but also a profound understanding and connection. As though they were two parts of the same. Like a circuit and signal, both not working without the other. At the same time, his lips were real against hers—hot and urgent and demanding. Each press, each kiss, the stroke of his tongue against hers led her deeper into a haze of wanting. Needing his touch like shelter from a storm.

In his arms, the world became…perfect.

His hand, still cupping her mound, heated her, turning her molten in his arms. Then he moved one finger, brushing in just the right spot, and she widened her legs, wanting more.

Samael buried his face in the curve of her neck and inhaled deeply. “Jasmine,” he whispered, and she smiled.

“In some cultures, jasmine is thought of as the scent of sex, a true aphrodisiac.” Then she grimaced. Way to ruin the mood with facts.

Only Samael chuckled against her. Then left her gasping as he sucked on her earlobe. “I’m definitely aroused.”

Then he pressed a hand to her back, moving her into his touch. Slowly he trailed those tantalizing fingers lower, teasing her with the barest of touches, stroking through her rapidly dampening folds until, finally, he slipped one finger inside her in an agonizing, slow slide that had Meira panting by the time he was done.

He paused there, and her breathing hitched as she waited for his next move. Using his thumb, he pressed into her clit, pressure and sensation stealing all her reason. At the same time, he ran his other hand up her thigh, over the curve of her hip, the dip of her waist, brushing the underside of her breast, and the barest flick over her nipple before moving higher to cup her neck.

Through the pulsing desire buffeting her from him came another emotion that set her own desire to screaming pitch. Pure alpha control.

“I’m going to love you slowly,” he murmured, low and rough, his dragon hovering at the surface. “I want to memorize every part of your body. Learn what makes you catch your breath.”

Meira closed her eyes and gave up all her control, willing to follow wherever her mate wanted to lead.

That thumb pressing steadily against her, moving in the slightest of circles, held most of her attention. “You’re doing a good job so far,” she choked.

His smile tickled against her neck. “I’ve been thinking about this since I saw you in that mirror.”

She had, too, if she was honest. In dark corners of the nights when she shut down her own guilt by assuring herself that fantasies were only that.

Keeping that torturous hand in place as she knelt, legs spread wide for him, open to him, he claimed her lips, possessing her in such a way, with the softest kisses that reached into her soul, that her brain went fuzzy. She hardly noticed how he ran his other hand down her arm, then brought her own hand up to his mouth.

He released her lips so that he could press kisses to the pads of each of her fingers, and one in the center of her palm. He blew a stream of fire, caressing her skin with heat as he drew away, then