Their mouths still joined in a fevered kiss, he reached down to caress her, too, hungry to feel her naked flesh in his hands. Her nipples were pebbled and hot as he rolled and tweaked them between his fingers. Her belly was firm and smooth like velvet under his palms as he skimmed lower, nudging her thighs apart when he reached the silkiness of her sex.
She moaned as he delved into the wet cleft of her body. She moved in soft undulations as he stroked her, his fingers slipping between her satiny folds. Her clit was ripe and swollen, a temptation he could not resist. She writhed as he teased and caressed her, her spine arching when he entered her with one finger, then another.
“Zael,” she whispered breathlessly against his mouth as he thrust in and out, his thumb working her clit in a relentless rhythm. “Oh, God.”
He didn’t let up until she came. And when she shuddered and broke with her release, he swallowed her sharp cry with a possessive, claiming kiss.
He wanted to be inside her. His cock was more than eager, engorged and dripping with need for her.
But Brynne had other plans.
Still panting from her climax, she reached down to grasp his heavy shaft. Her fingers slid up and down his length, over the broad crown that was slick with his juices. He hissed with the pleasure of her touch, the firm and steady power of her strokes.
She moved in closer to him, taking one of his nipples into her mouth as she continued to torment him with her hands on him. And then she moved lower, her pink little tongue lapping at stray water droplets on his abdomen and hip before her mouth closed around the head of his cock.
Her lips held him firmly as her tongue flicked along the underside of his shaft with each deep stroke of her mouth. “Fuck, that feels good,” he groaned, coiling her hair around his fist like a rope because he needed something to ground him as she licked and sucked every hard inch of him.
He moaned sharply at the light graze of her teeth and fangs against his flesh—not because it startled him, but because of how badly he wanted to know her bite. Anywhere. Everywhere. He just didn’t want her to stop.
When she glanced up at him, her eyes glowed with hot amber sparks. She was beautiful, even like this. Hell, especially like this.
Fierce.
Carnal.
His.
He held her transformed gaze, needing her to see that he was still with her. Ready to take her as far as she wanted to go.
It stunned him how deeply he felt it.
From the flicker of understanding in her eyes, he saw that it stunned her too.
But while he wasn’t uncertain, she drew back from him, averting her gaze. He refused to let her retreat. And he needed to be inside her.
Catching her shoulders in his hands, he eased her back onto the bed and followed her down, spreading her legs as he positioned himself between them. She closed her eyes as he settled atop her.
“No, Brynne.” He stroked her cheek. “Look at me, love. See me now.”
Her lids flicked open, the glow of her transformed eyes radiating otherworldly heat.
And desire.
Those amber coals surged brighter as he entered her with a slow, filling thrust. He refused to let her look away, holding her gaze as he rocked in and out of her, one arm propped beside her, his free hand stroking the elegant patterns and changeable colors of her dermaglyphs.
God, had he actually been idiot enough to suggest that she take another male as her mate? The idea of her bonding with someone else, in blood or affection, raked at him like daggers.
“You’re mine,” he growled as he drove into her. “Look at me and know it’s true, Brynne.”
A defeated sound slipped past her lips. But she held his gaze with a ferocity that shook him. She knew. Even if she wasn’t prepared to say the words, she knew it in her heart.
She belonged to him.
Zael didn’t know where they were heading together.
Their worlds had never seemed further apart than they had earlier tonight. Now, with their eyes locked on each other as they both tumbled into a staggering release, their lives had never seemed so impossibly entwined.
CHAPTER 24
It had taken several hours to clear the city and put down all of the Rogues. With dawn soon to break, Lucan and the patrol teams had returned to headquarters. He’d barely had a chance to clean his weapons and wash away the grit and filth of combat when Gideon excitedly summoned him down to the command center’s tech lab.
Lucan entered the room filled with computer equipment. Monitors were mounted on nearly every square inch of wall space, all of them busy with scrolling data and images. “I hope you’ve got good news.”
“I think we could be only minutes away from something,” Gideon said, giving him a distracted glance over his shoulder as he continued typing on a keyboard with one hand, while the other swiped through data on a tablet.
Darion was in the room, too, seated in front of one of the large monitors. “He broke through a second layer of encryption. This machine is running a series of decryption key programs and looking for vulnerabilities in the network security.”
Dare must have come straight from his post-patrol shower to the tech lab. His dark chestnut hair was still damp above the collar of his black T-shirt as he avidly studied Gideon’s work.
Lucan’s son had always been possessed of a curious mind in addition to his shrewd tactical skills and dauntless courage in the field. Gabrielle liked to say their son was a born leader,
