Page 69 of Monster Queen Rising

I take him in by inches because I have to. He's too much and I have to work for it, breathing, my hands braced on the broad of his chest, and he's shaking under me before I'm halfway. Not from effort.

I take the rest of him and sit down and we both stop breathing. Full. All the way. The wrist-mark sears and the patch at my sternum answers it and he is looking at me like nobody has ever done one thing for him.

Then I move. I ride him and he doesn't touch me.

His hands come up off the bed once. I take his wrists and put them back and he growls — the first real one I've ever pulled out of him — and I feel it go through where we're joined and up my spine.

"Down."

They go down.

I work him. Not slow for long, because my body's figured out the shape of him and the mark on my wrist is burning like a coal and I want this.

The stone's gone out of his face. His jaw's slack, the tusks catching what light there is, his breath ragged, and every time I come down on him he makes a sound like it's being cut out of him.

I get my hand between us and work my clit and his eyes go straight to it and he groans out loud.

"Look at me."

He does.

I come like that — all the way down on him with his palms flat on the bed and my own fingers finishing it, clenched so hard around him he chokes on my name.

He doesn't come. Of course he doesn't. He's holding that too.

I lean down over him with him still in me and put my mouth at his ear.

"Now. Hands."

They come up off the bed like something let go of them. They close on my hips and they grip — actually grip, hard enough that I'll see it tomorrow — and he starts driving up into me from under, deep and hard and fast, and it's so much I have to put my forearms on his chest and hang on.

"That's it. That's it —"

He rolls us over, still in me, gets his legs under me and fucks into me with his mouth at my throat and one arm banded across my shoulders, and I take all of it and tell him to give me more.

He does.

I come again with the tusks against my throat and my hand fisted in the back of his head, and I hold on to him with everything I have and say it into his ear.

"Mine."

He breaks. Not from the fucking. From the word. He goes stiff against me for one second, and breaks.

"I've got you," I tell him. His own words, turned around. The ones he's said to every one of us and never once heard. "I have you. You don't have to do anything."

He makes a sound against my throat that isn't a word. He comes with his face buried in my neck and his arm locked across me and my name wrecked in his mouth, and after, he doesn'tmove. Doesn't pull out. Doesn't take his weight off. Breathes against my skin until he's ready.

A while later he tries to shift off me anyway. Reflex.

"Stay." My hand light on the shoulder, over the healing. "I have you."

He goes still again. The other stillness now. The settled one.

"You have me," he says. Like he's checking the words for a trick.

"I have you. Sleep."

And the man who's up before everyone and down last and never first to rest puts his head on my shoulder in the room that smells like bread.