His mouth opened, and then closed, as black scales erupted on his forearms and dark clouds scudded across the sky, blocking the sun. Then his fingers clenched into fists, and he took a single, unsteady step back.
I was close enough to grab his arm. He flinched, and his eyes flared.
“What you don’t understand,” I said, “Is that I am fucking dangerous, too. Do I scare you?”
“Yes,” he hissed. “But not because of what you can do. Because of who you are.”
“And who am I?”
His arm beneath my hand was like iron, and I wasn’t sure he was going to answer. When his lips moved, I couldn’t hear what he said.
I stepped so close to him that I could feel his body heat. “Who am I?” I repeated.
His eyes altered to Iskar’s amethyst and then went dark again. “Mate,” he rasped so low I barely made it out.
“Say it louder,” I demanded.
He exhaled, and the Centaur’s sunbursts appeared. “You are my mate,” he repeated. His voice was steadier this time.
I reached a hand up to his face. “Do you want me?”
He closed his eyes. “You have no idea…”
My fingers caressed his jaw. “Look at me, Marcus.”
When he refused, I let small talons grow from my fingers and pinched him, ever so slightly.
“Let me make one thing clear.” I leaned into him. “I make the decisions here. And you are MINE.”
I felt a shudder pass through him. Then he growled, and reached for me.
His strong arms pulled me into his hard body. The kiss wasn’t gentle, but a thing of nipping teeth and tangled tongues. Thunder rolled overhead, and his talons—glowing white—ripped away my bra.
Our scales chased along our bodies, running on the tops of our arms. I slid my hands up beneath his shirt, feeling a line of spikes along his spine, then drifted them around the front to touch those on his belly.
As I stepped out of my pants, he inhaled hard and used his talons to rip his tee shirt away. It revealed an intoxicating combination of smooth skin and armor, and I danced my own small talons between the scales.
He shivered beneath my touch, and lifted the weight of my breasts, flicking his talons ever so lightly over the tips, sending electric zings through to my core. I gasped and slid my hand beneath the waistband of his sweats. Didn’t have to go far—he was right there, rigid and eager and huge. And lined with a single, small ridge of smooth scales, right up the center of his shaft, to the very tip.
When I stroked, he shuddered again, and suddenly my fingers slipped and slid. The sky forked with lightning, and thunder shook the earth beneath our feet.
His lips left mine to slide along my neck. The teeth felt sharper than they should be, and they sent a pool of pure heat flooding through me. I growled, and the sound wasn’t human.
He pushed his thigh between my legs, and I rubbed along it, humping with a quiet desperation before he hooked a talon along the sides of my panties and ripped them away. I pushed eagerly at his sweats, revealing his glistening length.
His breath was coming out as a rumbling growl with no beginning or end. But despite the scales, we stayed mostly human as we writhed together, desperately trying to become one entity. His thigh was like iron beneath me, but it wasn’t what I wanted. When he lifted me and pushed me up against a moss-covered tree trunk, I wrapped my legs around him and beckoned him home.
That huge dick sliding so deep—the scales activated every nerve ending I possessed, and I squirmed and moaned as I took him, one glorious inch at a time. With a final, satisfied groan, he was fully seated, and it was then that I discovered the extra scale cluster at the base of him. Positioned right where I needed it to be.
I gasped as he began to thrust, at first slowly, and then my hands, spread over his hips, urged him on faster. When I added a twist at the end, he started doing it himself, and that cluster sent me spiraling toward oblivion.
His mouth moved down my throat and across to where my neck joined my shoulder. I shivered as his hot tongue added sensation to what his dick was doing to me. My entire body was on fire. So was the sky—lightning hit the ground all around us, lining everything in a white light.
“Riley,” he groaned my name, and in it was both an urgent request, and a query.
“Yesss,” I hissed.
Centaurs didn’t bite to mate. But apparently, Storm Drakes did.
