“You didn’t…”
“We’re not finished.”
“Oh.”
He drags me off the rock and turns me around, shoving my shift down around my ankles before he bends me over and enters me roughly from behind.
“—gods,” I sob.
He hits new parts of me from this angle. I arch my spine, seeking more of him. He bottoms out with a low groan. My elbows lose the battle to support my torso and I sink down inchby inch, until he fists my long hair and drags my head up. This changes the way he hits inside me, but each stroke and tug of my hair unleashes something wild in me. I can’t claw or fight, only take, and gods, do I love the way he’s handling me.
Not like a fragile flower.
Like I’m strong enough to take it.
Strong enough to love every second of it.
“You don’t know what you do to me, Briar,” he says through clenched teeth.
But I do. He’s a monster, like me. The beasts are drawn to me, the beauty. My curse was terrifying enough to make my own family abandon me, and I feared they could cost me everything I held dear.
They still might.
I can’t be caged in Alistair’s castle. They’ll tear it apart to get to me. This is why Killian is meant to be mine. He is the one man strong enough to defeat them and stand at my side.
I can’t think enough to form words, but in this fleeting moment, face-down and naked on a mossy rock, I finally understand what brought us together—and what could yet tear us apart to the destruction of all Belterre.
He drags my hips back with a fierce grip on my hip. I bump my knee painfully against the rock and hiss, wincing. I’m too lost to truly feel it. I don’t know if I can take one more climax, but if I can get there before he does, I want it. “Close, Killian, I’m so close. Wait for me.”
“I shouldn’t,” he pants. “Not inside you.”
“Don’t you dare pull out.” I shift my weight onto one arm and twine my free hand around his neck to bring his face near mine.
“Couldn’t stop now if my life depended on it.”
His brusque admission is enough to push me over the edge a third time. I’m already weak at the knees from all this sex, and the force of this climax is enough to crumple me onto therock. He yanks my hair and tenses, barely withdrawing between thrusts.
Killian releases my hair and leans over me, his manhood impossibly hard within me. He braces his hands on either side of my ribs and takes me like this, until a rush of hot fluid takes me by surprise.
It shouldn’t. I knew what would happen, but experiencing it is different. The idea of my belly swelling with his child rolls through me with a shiver of desperate need.
I brace myself partially upright, cold moss sticking to my breasts, as the enormity of what I’ve done dawns on me.
I could go to my marriage bed pregnant, and I don’t even care.
I have no intention of marrying Alistair. After this, there’s no way Killian will refuse to take me away from here. He’ll have to save me from my fate now.
Killian kisses my shoulder. My temple.
“You all right, Princess?”
“Never been better.”
I’m face down in moss, my hair festooned with twigs and bits of leaves, my knee bleeding, and already sore in places I didn’t know existed, but I finally feel whole. Despite my contentedness, the rocks are digging into my stomach and thighs. My hair is a tangle over my face, and there’s dirt everywhere. My dress is torn.
I can’t lay here trapped beneath Killian’s hard body indefinitely.
He withdraws, a graceless exercise that sends a gush of liquid down my inner thighs. Brushing away the dirt, embarrassment creeps over me. There is a vulnerability to letting another person put you in such a disordered state.
