Page 38 of Bought By the Manticore

The venom dropped again. This time it landed on my bare thigh.

It didn’t burn. It spread like heat, like the first sip of strong wine, like sunlight through closed eyelids. My breath caught. The warmth pooled between my legs, sudden and shocking, a potent arousal that had nothing to do with thought or choice.

Skaros shuddered. I felt his tail go rigid under my hands. “Ianthe,” he breathed. “What—”

“We exchanged so much,” I said, my voice unsteady. “When you were healing me. You were in my blood. I was in yours.” I stroked the scales once more, and another bead formed and fell. “Your body knows me, just like mine knows you.”

The tight restraint keeping him still finally snapped.

Skaros turned, moving faster than my eyes could track. His large hands caught me by the waist, claws pricking but not breaking skin. Lifting me off my feet effortlessly, he carried me backward. He brought us down together onto the deepest pile of pelts near the fire pit, pinning me to the floor.

His heavily furred body covered mine. He braced his weight on his forearms, trapping me beneath his chest so he wouldn’t crush me. The golden curtain of his mane fell around us, blocking out the rest of the room, creating a world of our own.

“Mine,” he growled.

“Yours,” I answered, opening my legs to cradle his weight.

Skaros lowered his head and nuzzled my skin, his breath hot against my neck. He bit lightly at the side of my throat. His tongue dragged over the same spot, rough, but it soothed what his teeth had woken.

But he was nowhere near done with me. He moved lower, his mane brushing over my chest as he closed his mouth around my breast. He carefully held the aching peak between his teeth, his tongue lashing over my nipple with each harsh stroke.

It was too much. It was exactly enough. I arched beneath him, my hands tangling deep in his mane, pulling him closer. The temple’s stone floors were gone. The sickness’s insidious rot was gone. All of it was burned away by his mouth.

Skaros shifted his weight. He moved down my body, his hands gripping my hips to hold me still. He nudged my knees wider apart with his broad shoulders and buried his face between my thighs.

The first rough stroke of his tongue ripped a gasp from my throat. He devoured me, the heat and pressure of his mouth relentless. His tongue laved over my wet folds, again and again. Each pass scraped against the sensitive flesh with that coarse, ridged surface. I thrashed on the dark furs, my heels digging into the floor, my nails scoring his shoulders. He gripped my hips as if I might escape, making sounds against my flesh like he was tasting something he’d been denied for years.

He didn’t stop until my thighs were shaking, until I was panting, until I was so close to the edge that one more breath would send me over. Then he pulled away.

He crawled back up my body, settling his weight between my spread legs. His amber eyes burned in the dim light of the fire pit. He looked down at me, completely feral, driven entirely by his need to mate. The blunt, heavy head of his shaft pressed against my slick entrance.

It felt different from the smooth vines I remembered. The skin was incredibly hot, and as he shifted, I felt the distinct texturerunning along its length. Tiny, firm barbs, angled backward like the barb on his tail.

He pushed forward and buried himself inside my welcoming body. His shaft stretched me to the breaking point. As he drove deep, the firm ridges caught and dragged against my slick inner walls.

It was raw, physical ownership. The scrape of his barbs staked a brutal, undeniable claim on my body, igniting a wild heat that death energy never could.

“Mine,” he snarled, hiding his face in my neck.

Skaros set a hard, punishing pace. The thud of his body against mine echoed in the den. I wrapped my legs tightly around his waist and took every deep thrust. He was relentless, and I was unraveling, the coil in my belly pulled so tight my vision blurred.

“Skaros,” I sobbed aloud, my voice shattering. “Please—”

He answered with a deep, vibrating roar against my collarbone. He slid his hands beneath me, tilting me higher, angling me to take him deeper. He drove inward and held me there, his weight crushing me perfectly into the furs, his hips flush against mine.

Instinctively, I tilted my head, offering myself to my mate. All bride markets had their own practices, and all monsters their own ways to claim. But somehow, I knew this was what Skaros wanted.

Skaros sank his teeth into my skin and bit down hard. The blood welled up, hot and immediate, the pain bright and sudden. But it was exactly what I’d needed, what I’d hoped for. It anchored me to the earth just as the orgasm ripped through my body.

I screamed, pleasure erupting through me in suffocating waves. My muscles clamped down hard around his thick length, wringing every drop of sensation from the feel of his body inside mine.

At the exact moment my release peaked, a sudden, searing heat flared on the back of my right hand.

The magic of Asphodelia surged through the den, vicious but soothing. It recognized the choice I’d made in the infirmary and understood the words I’d spoken on the city’s dimly lit streets. It acknowledged the beast who had answered both. Skaros, the silent guardian who’d helped me when no one else could, the manticore who’d carved a roaring path through an avenue of Weaveguards.

The heat pulsed in time with my racing heart, sealing the bond deep into my very soul. A glowing mark manifested on my hand, its graceful amber lines mimicking Skaros’s scorpion tail.

The place where his teeth had broken skin began to burn too. The bond that had formed between us became infinitely more powerful. I felt him in my mind, not as a voice I could choose to hear, but as a presence that had settled into my skull. His fear, his relief, his desperate, aching love, all of it poured into me at once, too much, overwhelming.