Already?”

Satira didn’t know how to guide him, didn’t know if it was madness to try at all. “I want to hear your desires. To know the ways you’ll take me.”

He drew back to his knees, tugging at his belt as he loomed above her. “I’ll taste you first. Tease your cunt with my tongue and fingers.”

The bedroll scraped under her fingernails as she closed her fingers on it in a desperate attempt not to reach for him. “Do you mean to make me come? Or only tease me?”

“To make you come.” The corner of his mouth ticked up in a wicked smile. “Eventually.” Time would have no meaning to him. Not tonight, or for the two nights to come. In a brothel, he might have had several women to see to his needs. Here, there would be only her. Not enough to give him relief, if he fought to hold himself back. If he feared hurting her… terrifying her.


She could show him he had nothing to fear. She started by reaching for him, sliding her fingers over his. “May I help?”

Wilder grasped her hands, twining his fingers with hers, and pressed them back to the bed. “You said you trusted me,” he reminded her. “Trust me now, Satira.”

“With everything.” That was simple. Harder was admitting the truth. “I don’t trust myself to be enough.”

Something softened in his implacable gaze, and he bent his mouth to her ear. “You are, believe me.

But if you push… I could hurt you, darling.”

A more challenging task had never been set for her. To feel instead of think, to let go instead of clutching at control. She turned her head and brushed a kiss to his stubbled cheek. “You may have to remind me. I’ve always been a bit pushy.”

His laughter blew warm on her ear. “I like that about you. Usually.” She squeezed his hands where they pressed hers to the mattress. “Do you want me to keep my hands like this?”

He squeezed back. “Right there. Just like that.”

Such a simple little request. She should be able to obey, even if growing arousal made it hard to lie still when she wanted to arch up against him.

When he released her, he trailed his fingers down her arms to her breasts. “Is this what you want?” He caught her nipples between his fingers and pinched lightly.

The sensation shot straight through her, like she’d shocked herself on one of her own inventions. Only this time pleasure rode that edge, and a moan caught in her throat, coming out sounding small and needy.

She tried to speak and only managed a whisper. “Yes.”

He pinched harder.

She couldn’t tell if it was pleasure or pain that arched her back. Both, perhaps, in an alchemical reaction more impressive than her finest explosive round. Too late she noticed she was reaching for him and scrambled to clutch at the bedroll again.

“Good girl.” He gave her his mouth then, his tongue teasing around her nipple.

Her body came alive for him. He’d learned it already, even in the short time they’d been together, and now he seemed willing to use that knowledge to relieve her of what remained of her sanity. It felt so good that she had the strands of his hair tangled around her fingers, this time, before she realized she’d moved.

He murmured to her, though his voice had dropped to a low growl. “Almost ready for me, aren’t you?” His hand eased between her thighs. “So fucking ready.”

“All of me.” She eased her hand above her head again, afraid she’d push too far if she didn’t. “I’m always wet for you, as soon as you touch me.”

His hands wrapped around her thighs and jerked them wider. “All of you?”

He’d taken her in so many ways, and never the most basic, fundamental one. Plenty of working women swore that a bloodhound couldn’t get a woman pregnant during the new moon.

It might even be true—it seemed improbable she’d never heard of it happening if it could—but Satira had always been too logical to let herself hide behind such an excuse. She didn’t believe herself safe. She simply thought it worth the risk.

He was worth the risk, and if the worst happened…

Satira pushed the thought away and gave herself over to the moment. To him. He held her spread wide, bare to his gaze, and the erotic power of it stole her breath. So did the words that tumbled forth, crude and illicit. “What do you want, Wilder? My cunt, tight around your cock?” His gaze burned as his hands tightened on her legs. “You want that?” So much. Her hand trembled as she edged it down—her own body, this time, instead of his. She bit back a whimper as two fingers slid through her slick folds, narrowly avoiding the temptation to let her fingers linger where she might give herself relief from twisting tension.

Instead she spread her fingers wide. “Can you see how much?” Several quick breaths soughed in and out of Wilder, but he didn’t answer. Instead, he slid down, putting his mouth close to her hand. Then he licked her fingers, licked her, probing with his tongue.

Even feral, half out of his mind, he was clever. Attentive. Satira squeezed her eyes shut and moaned with every rasping lick, every wicked thrust. Her heels scraped helplessly against the blankets as she curled her toes and trembled at the precipice of something vast and beautiful.

Two of his thick fingers thrust into her as his tongue played over her clitoris.

“Oh—” Both of her hands tangled in the blanket and she couldn’t recall how they’d gotten there, only knew that she would fly away if she let go. He stroked and worked into her, and heat became a fire, an inferno focused on each wicked lick. Every one drove her higher, until she was writhing, pushing up against his hand with sharp little jerks of her hips, each one accompanying a sobbing plea. “Please, please—”

Wilder lifted his head, though he continued to fuck her with his fingers, adding a third before curling them, rubbing inside her. “Like this. So much pleasure, darling. Constant, until you can’t take any more.” It was his voice that did it, the low endearment, hoarse and hungry. He wanted her— needed her—and the empty, lonely place inside her vanished. Tension snapped, and every muscle in her body tensed at the same time before pure, clean relief flooded her, riding a wave of tempestuous pleasure.

“Yes. ” He kept murmuring as he moved above her. His hands closed around her wrists again, pushing them above her head. One thrust, and he slid home, all the way inside her.

Climax faded into a tense pressure, her body struggling to adjust to the size of him. Satira gasped in a breath, then another, still trembling as her oversensitive nerves registered even the faint stretching pain as something pleasurable.

Or maybe he was pleasurable. So close, she could feel his heat, his breath stirring her hair.

“Wilder…I’ve wanted this so much.”

“I know.” The words were a low growl, and he took her mouth, kissing her deep and hard.

The unyielding thrust of his tongue made her hungry for another kind of claiming. Her hands were trapped, but she was free to ease her legs up, bending her knees until his cock edged deeper, driving a moan from her.

“Satira.” He urged her legs higher, tighter around him. “Pull me in, sweetheart. That’s it.” She dug one heel into his back, urging him to move. She felt more tightly wound than a crossbow string, but he was implacable. The only recourse she had was words. “Please, it’s better than anything else.

I—I need more. Please, give me more.”

Finally, he did. He eased away and drove against her with a groan. “Fuck, yes.” No pain now, just beautiful friction. She pressed her open mouth to his cheek and his jaw, kissing anywhere she could reach as she fell into him. “More of you. I need all of you.” It freed something in him, unleashed a flood of desire that he rained down on her with long thrusts and his lips on her skin. Fierce. Untamed.

But still careful. With her pulse pounding in her ears and his claiming trembling through her, she was painfully aware of how easily he could have hurt her. That his grip could have shattered bone, that the need inside him was so vast he could leave her broken.

She wasn’t frightened. He surrounded her, filled her, took her higher with every moment—and when pleasure crested with an intensity close to pain, she felt safe coming apart. Felt safe crying out, letting his name leave her lips again and again as she dug her fingernails into his shoulder and held on to the only solid thing in her world.

He whispered, the words too low and scattered for her to hear. His hips pumped faster, and he kissed her once, then held her gaze. “Again.”

Dark. He was so dark, his eyes swallowed by the beast. Maybe another woman would have feared it, but Satira closed her fingers around his rigid biceps and felt her own power. He was desperate for her pleasure, fixated on it.

As much as she needed him, he needed her so much more.

Satira lifted her chin, offering her throat to him. “Help me.” He bit her hard, with an almost savage growl. His rhythm faltered and resumed, faster. Frenzied.

“Satira—”

“I—I need—” There. A tiny shift of her hips and everything tilted sideways. “You,” she gasped, as climax consumed her.

He howled with triumph, but he didn’t stop. Instead, he coaxed her through the orgasm with slow, firm thrusts and grinned when she whimpered her disbelief at feeling him still hard and ready inside her.

“That’s a start, sweetheart.”

A start.

For one moment, fear tightened its fist around her heart, and she closed her eyes to prevent him from seeing it. She’d been a fool to think she understood, to imagine a bloodhound in the grip of the new moon was nothing more than a particularly lusty man. This was magic, pure and simple, the sort her analytical mind had always shied away from.