Chapter 215: Sleep-Talking To Sleep-Fucking
The shower stung exactly as much as expected. The lashes across her back were healing but a few had reopened.
When the hot water hit them, she kept thinking about what Cassian had done to her. He was so cruel. As far as she was concerned, he could stay in that prison cell until their father got home.
She shut the water off. Towel on. Hair dripping.
She cracked the bathing chamber door by an inch and peered through the gap.
Kael was still unconscious. Good. The last thing she needed was a conscious dragon watching her walk around in a towel. She crept across the room like a burglar in her own home.
Clothing acquired. Towel dropped. Dressed like the room was on fire. Dignity at a marginal net positive.
When she came back out, he was talking again.
"...tried to... I tried..."
She stopped.
"...protect her. I tried to..."
His voice was wrecked.
"...every single one of them. Before they... I tried."
She closed the distance and took his hand. "You did protect her. You saved an entire pack."
She grabbed a wet cloth and cleaned him best she could, her strokes slow and careful around his bruises and avoiding the bandage wrapped around his torso.
She looked at his pants then at the pained expression on his face.
This was crazy. Particularly if he turned out not to be her husband. He could wake up mid-undressing and react exactly as poorly as expected.
"Fuck it."
She unbuttoned his pants and saw he had briefs on under. Thank fuck. She hadn’t considered the alternative until just now.
Her face heated.
Focus, Guinevere. Focus.
His boots were still on. Easy.
She got one boot off. Progress. She got the second boot off. More progress. She grabbed his waistband with the confidence of a woman on a roll and pulled. The roll ended.
How much did this man weigh?
"Don’t drop me. I’m delicate," he mumbled.
One leg at a time. That was the strategy. She got the left side down to his knee and ran out of strength. He was half-pantless. This was worse than fully pantless. This was a crime scene.
"...no, the left goat... the RIGHT goat is fine... the left goat is the problem..."
She froze, glancing at his face. Still blissfully asleep.
She gave up on dignity, climbed onto the bed, straddled his legs, and pulled from above. The trousers slid. Finally. FINALLY. She threw them across the room with more aggression than any garment deserved.
Victory.
Then heat came. It rolled through her in a thick, unexpected wave, starting between her legs. It left her light-headed and unsure, like her body knew something her mind hadn’t caught up to yet.
Her heart was thudding in her ears.
She glanced down. Gold light, both of them. She was sitting on him, which meant physical contact, which meant the glowing made perfect sense.
White runes started forming on her skin in real time. For a moment, she was caught in between panic and outright horror.
What the hell was happening to her?
His eyes snapped open.
Pure gold with a black slit for a pupil. Blazing. Fully aware.
Neither of them moved for a moment.
"Kael?"
He didn’t respond. His gaze was locked on her, but his eyes weren’t his eyes.
In a blur, he shoved the hem of her dress up, ripped her undergarments, and freed himself.
She barely had time to suck in a breath—
He thrust up into her in one hard, unbroken stroke.
She gasped, completely stunned. The burn was immediate, sharp, deep. It hurt.
Her brain went white. Not the light. Not the runes. Pure, unprocessed shock that locked every thought in her head behind a door she couldn’t reach. As far as her memory served she was a virgin. But she was marked, so that meant she wasn’t.
He lifted her almost off him, then yanked her straight back down onto his cock. This man was stabbed and he was moving her like she weighed nothing.
Shock punched the air from her lungs. She couldn’t think. Couldn’t breathe. She was frozen.
He did it again, quicker.
"Kael—"
Then he started bouncing her on his dick so fast her vision blurred. She was just along for the ride, completely at the mercy of how hard and deep he wanted to bury himself.
Her mouth was open but nothing came out. No words. No sound. Just the hollow silence of a woman whose brain had been unplugged and whose body was running the entire operation without supervision.
Pain blurred into pleasure and pressure built.
She had no say in the transition. Her hips moved on their own, meeting him every thrust. Her body had decided without her.
It belonged to whatever was running her now, the light, the matebond, the wolf, all three, she didn’t know and couldn’t ask because her mouth wouldn’t form words.
Waves of pure heat pulsed outward from her core in ruthless succession, each one sharper and more consuming than the last.
They were fucking like animals and she had no idea how or what she was doing. Instinct was overriding thought and she couldn’t stop.
She was watching herself from the inside, aware of every sensation but in control of none of them. Her back arched without permission.
"That’s it, baby. Your pussy is so perfect." His voice wasn’t his voice. It was layered with something else. "Cum for me. Now."
The command went through her like voltage.
Her body contracted as pleasure flooded every nerve at once. The intensity was almost too much to hold; it burned through her in heavy, throbbing rushes, drowning everything else until there was nothing left but the raw, flooding pleasure and the relentless feel of him still buried inside it.
She realized white light was pulsing from her body into his. She was rain and he was the desert, drinking every drop of it.
Her wolf surged at that moment. It all happened so quickly she didn’t understand it until she was marking him.
Her fangs were in him, on the muscle between his shoulder and neck. Her chest was against his and he was thrusting into her still gripping her ass.
There was a sting in her neck and a different, new white hot ecstasy started flooding into her. Then a second orgasm hit like lightning.
He groaned into her neck, spreading her cheeks apart as he released into her. The first jet was almost startling in its heat and volume, thick, pulsing, forced deep. Then another. And another.
Each one a hot, heavy throb that coated her walls and left her feeling stretched, claimed, and completely full of him.
She didn’t even know if this man was fully conscious or if this was his dragon or something fucked, pun intended.