Samael took her lips, no hesitation in him this time, no need to back away.
…
My mate.
After everything he’d done to fuck it up, he could hardly believe the woman in his arms was giving herself to him so beautifully.
She moaned against his lips, tasting of Meira and smelling of jasmine and flame.
How on earth was he going to survive this woman, who’d made her his with a single look in a mirror? Whose quiet intelligence and gentle patience won over a lowborn boy from a rough life who’d grown into an agent of death and destruction.
“I’ll keep you safe, Meira. Always.” Protect this precious gift the fates had graced him with. He whispered the promise even as he tugged her clothes off her body with anxious hands.
She was soft and silky, her breasts made for his hands as he cupped her. She arched into him with a sexy shudder as he tweaked her nipples.
Wanting to make her shudder more, he lowered his head, feasting on her, sucking those sensitive points until she writhed beneath him, bombarding him with whimpers that surged through his body to his heavy, aching cock.
Samael pulled back to look at her, at his mate. Naked beneath him, all long legs and curves, her strawberry-blond curls a riot against the white pillow. In his bed and watching him with eyes gone dark blue and alight. For him.
Samael grinned, and Meira laughed, the sound shooting to his heart.
“You look like a pirate all of a sudden. Ready to take what’s yours.”
“Damn straight,” he growled.
Only he didn’t immediately take. Instead, he made his way down her abdomen, pausing to kiss each swath of skin, nipping at her hips, to settle between her thighs. The scent of her arousal only fed his more.
Mine. My mate. My love.
Keeping his eyes on her face, he watched as he stroked his tongue against her flesh, merciless. She gasped then bit into her lip with each lash of his tongue against her clit. He wanted to watch her come apart, then watch as he fed his cock to that lush mouth. He needed her. Not only for the pleasure she could bring. He needed her steadiness. Her faith in him. Her inner core of strength, iron forged in fire and tempered by her heart.
And tonight…tonight was about more.
So he devoured his mate’s body until she was begging for release, determined to bring her the greatest possible pleasure, making tonight about her. About them.
Lifting his head, he smiled at her loud moan of protest.
“I’m so close,” she complained.
“Me too, love.” Fuck, was he.
Her eyes went wide. “But I haven’t done much yet. It’s all been you.”
“It’s all been us. Together.”
He raised up, snagging her legs under the knees and parting her wider, wrapping those long legs around him as he positioned himself at her core.
His erection was hard as the mountain, pulsing with the need to lay his seed inside her. To claim her once more as his own. Deep in his belly, fire bloomed, adding to the heat raging through him.
“I need you inside me,” she demanded, gaze locked to his.
On one long stroke, Samael entered her, sheathed himself in her tight, wet heat, stretching her until he settled deep. And never took his eyes from hers. Watching the pleasure tauten the skin over her cheekbones as he slowly pulled out, then surged back in.
He wanted to lose himself in her, lose the man who only knew blood and fighting to find the man she made him into. A man who would rise to the challenge of leading his people through the worst era in their long history.
Because he could only do that with her.
“I’m yours,” he said, thrusting harder.
Meira nodded, panting as he claimed her body.
“Meira…” He dropped to his elbows, his hips still moving. “I’m yours.”
She lifted her hands between them to cup his face and kissed him, slowly, her tongue tangling with his in an imitation of what his cock was doing to her. Then pulled back and smiled. “I know.”
Samael thrust harder, and she took it with a moan. “No, love. I don’t think you do.” Another hard push. “I was yours when the heavens formed us, I am yours now, and I will be yours forever, even into the afterlife.”
With each word he pushed into her. Her body was starting to ripple around his cock, her orgasm close.
With each word, her eyes grew wider, and she searched his expression.
He stopped his thrusting, their pleasure on the tipping point hanging between them, and smoothed her hair from her forehead. “Do you understand?”
No alpha dragon shifter ceded control to anyone. Ever. Not even to a mate, to a certain extent. But he’d learned the hard way what forcing that control over his mate could do. Putting them both in danger. For this woman, he would lay bare everything, give her everything he was. Hers to command. Hers to control.
His dragon, quiet in his head, hummed his own agreement.
“I adore you, Samael Veles.” Somewhere in those words, he heard her understanding. And her acceptance.
She would never make him regret giving her that control.
Even more, releasing himself from that control lifted a weight from him that he’d hardly known was there. Together, he and his dragon let go and truly gave themselves to their mate.
Samael growled and slammed into her.
“Yes,” Meira cried out.
Setting a punishing pace, he pumped into his mate in hard, brutal pulses that only drove both of their pleasure to a higher precipice.
Then she screamed, clamping down on him hard as her orgasm slammed through her, dragging his own pleasure from his body as his balls drew up and he filled his mate with his essence, willing a child into being. Sensation so vicious he roared his own release, his fire joining them together yet again, not stopping until he’d milked every last ounce of pleasure from her.
As the slowing came over him, Samael
