He didn’t stop. Her legs were shaking, thighs squeezing, the sensitivity of herself radiating through her core as he continued to suck on her clit. She made herself sit up and she grabbed his hair, only to reveal the ravenous Venari grin that made her heart skip. He rose from his knees, and she pulled his face to hers, kissing him hard and tasting herself on his lips. His arm around her waist tightened, and she managed to take his length in her hand this time before he could push her away.
“Inside me,” she growled against his lips. “Now.”
His hands grasped her hips and he pulled her off the bed onto his waist. “Yes, my Queen.”
Just as swiftly as he pulled her onto his waist, her back hit the mattress, and his thick length filled her. And audible gasp left her lips, and her thighs squeezed around his waist. They both paused a moment, allowing the familiar moment to wash between them just as it had the first time—the warm chill, the raising hair, the arrested breath in their throats. His groan filled her ear, and she felt visible goosebumps rise beneath her fingers on his arms. Her legs clenched around him, and then he began to thrust in and out of her, his breath tickling her neck. Her fingers curled in his hair, and with every move, she felt herself once more coming to her end. Her vision blanked, eyes rolling into the back of her head, and her entire body tensed. Air couldn’t penetrate her lungs. And then—
Their cries filled the still forest air.
The explosion of it made her core shake. Her breath barely returned as he stilled atop her and then collapsed onto the bed at her side. The stars above them danced in her spotty vision. She couldn’t move, body exhausted from the pleasure of simply him. She closed her eyes for a moment to let it wash through her, calm her heartbeat.
After a few minutes, she felt the bed move, and she opened her eyes. Draven was stood from her side, and she watched him go to the table on which his pipe was sat. She turned over on her side, head resting in her hand as she watched him pack it with Blackened herb of his own garden. Her heart swelled as she stared at him, rippled back and taut bare cheeks illuminated in the moonslight above them.
This man.
This beautiful man.
With all his flaws, his darkness, his sarcasm, and his passions… he made her feel more alive than she’d ever pushed herself to feel. This man, who had driven her to her angered limits more times than she could count, who she had treated as her enemy for over two decades, was now the only man she ever wanted in her bed again. She wasn’t familiar with the full feeling in her chest upon watching him turn around and lean against the tabletop, lighting the pipe with the lit match in his hands. The fire illuminated his features once more, and she felt her mouth dry as his head tilted back slightly, and the smoke left his lips. His gaze traveled deliberately back over to her, and then over her body, making her squeeze her thighs together at the sight of his darkened gaze watching her predatorily.
She swallowed hard, but allowed herself the exaulted sigh of her lungs. “Are you aware of how much sexier the moons light and that pipe make you?” she asked, “or are you somehow completely oblivious?”
A small huff left his lips, and he slowly crossed over to the bed once more. His hand ran through his thick long hair and pushed it over to the side as he extended the pipe to her, and then he sat on the bed himself. She took it from his hands and took a long draw of it, allowing the herb to swim through her veins as she laid her back on the bed, legs bent sideways toward him. A low sigh of satisfaction left her throat.
Draven pulled one knee into his chest. He reached out, and his fingers traced a scar on her thigh behind her knee. He swallowed hard as he stared at her, his eyes traveling over her body as he’d done earlier in the night.
“What?” she asked as she handed the pipe back to him and sat up on her elbow once more.
He shook his head just slightly, and he inhaled a long draw from the pipe. “Yesterday, when I saw that Dreamer idiot kissing you…” he started slowly, “I had to remind myself not to slice his throat.”
She almost smiled. “Jealous, Venari?” she mused with a raised brow.
His eyes danced, and he exhaled the herb again. “He treats you as though you are fragile. As though your crown will break if he taps it too hard.”
“And how should someone treat me?”
He paused a moment, his gaze washing over her. “With respect for the woman you are, not as someone they want you to be. With equality, not as though you should be shielded behind a wall. And as nothing less than the most fearsome woman in all the land.”
She tucked her hair behind her ear and looked down at her hands. “You know, I would have blamed it on the boats if you had sliced his throat,” she told him. “No one would have known it was you.”
His smile met hers as he held out the herb for her to smoke once more. “Relentless,” he mused.
“Mmm…” She fell back on the bed and sighed as she stared at the stars above them. “I grow tired of the fake smiles and false niceties of my brother and all his minions,” she admitted. “Every laugh at meetings, every time they shake one another’s hands… Every time someone tells me I look lovely, I want to ram a knife across their wrists, watch them bleed out on the floor…”
“Graphic,” he said with an inhale of the herb.
