“Can you? Show me?”
He swallowed hard. His eyes didn’t waver, but something flickered. Possibly control frying at the edges. “I can’t share my emotions,” he murmured. “But I can manipulate yours. Shape them to mirror mine.”
Beth knew what that meant. Emotional manipulation wasn’t just taboo, it was illegal. The deepest violation of autonomy. Magiks were tried for less. But hell, she wanted it. She wanted to feel him the way he felt her, wanted to burn where he burned. “Do it.”
Gael exhaled sharply, like her permission broke something in him. He didn’t touch her and didn’t say a word. His eyes flared–then it hit her.
Not gentle. Not gradual. Heat slammed into her, raw, unrelenting. Not a wave meant to carry, but one meant to drown. Her body jolted. Breath punched from her lungs as need, feral and blinding, crashed through her. She felt everything. The way his cock throbbed for her. The memory of her mouth on his skin and how close that had brought him to losing it. Deep, brutal ache for her, to be inside her and stay there. Claim her likesomeone he’d spent a lifetime waiting for and would burn the world to keep.
It wasn’t sweet, it wasn’t tender. It was ruthless, and it broke her only to make her anew, as if she had been rewritten in his hunger.
Her back arched like her body was no longer hers, her nerves hijacked by his want. Her knees gave out as a raw, wrecked sound tore from her throat. His voice was suddenly at her ear, low and dark and dangerous. “That’s what you do to me.”
Beth staggered slightly, her heart slowing as the wave of heat began to pull away. Her body was still thrumming, her skin tingling, but the overwhelming rush was fading. She felt herself coming back into the edges of her own awareness. And lord, she missed it already. That tether, that fusion. The impossible sweetness of him inside her.
But the need didn’t disappear. If anything, it deepened and settled lower, all hers and unsatisfied.
She looked at him, still so close. “Take them off,” she murmured, fingers brushing the waistband of her pants. “What’s left. Please.”
Gael stepped in, eyes locked on hers, and slid his hands to the button of her jeans. Undid them. Shoved the denim and underwear down her hips. He pushed her into the mattress and caught her mouth in a kiss that landed like a rough, possessive, and a long overdue promise. It was teeth and tongue and the rough press of his body as he had her back into the mattress like he needed her under him to exist.
His hands skimmed down her thighs, then gripped them hard. Skin to skin, need meeting need without anything in between. Everything he’d felt, everything she still felt echoing through her skin, was right there in the way he touched her. The drag of his hands. The bite of his mouth. His body aligned with hers like it was always meant to be this way.
He kissed her like it would never be enough. His hand trailed down her belly like every inch of her mattered.
When he reached her pussy, he didn’t rush. He stroked her first, learning the heat of her, her rhythm, before slipping a single finger inside her. The groan he gave was low and guttural, like even that much undid him. “So wet,” he growled.
He curled his finger just right, dragging it over a spot that made her hips jerk and her breath hiss. Focused and merciless, his thumb brushed her clit and she moaned, her hands clutching at the sheets, her spine arching as he worked her to a place of pleasure only. The slick sounds of his fingers moving in her filled the space between gasps until she writhed beneath him. Her muscles tightened. Breath coming in short, broken bursts. Pleasure coiled tighter, sharp enough to hurt. Her thighs trembled, her body straining against the edge.
And she shattered with a sound that was half sob, half scream. Her hips jerked, breath punching out of her lungs as her orgasm ripped through her. Her body clenched around his fingers, slick and pulsing, her vision going white-hot around the edges. And still, he didn’t stop, not until she cried out again, shaking, too sensitive to take more.
Only then did he ease his hand from her, slow, like he didn’t want to let go.
Beth lay there, panting, her body still trembling with aftershocks, but somehow stretched thin.
Still starving. The absence of his hand left her aching, skin over-sensitized, nerves lit and reaching. She blinked up at him, breathless.
Then let her hands slide down his sides, lower, until her fingers wrapped around his cock.
Hot.
Heavy. Already slick at the tip.
He hissed through his teeth. His jaw flexed as he rocked into her grip, like stopping wasn’t even an option.
“Gael—” she choked out. “I want—”
“I know.” His voice was dark velvet, thin at the edges. He shifted, lined himself up between her thighs, and paused just long enough to meet her eyes.
Then he thrust in her, a slow, breathtaking slide that made her cry out, her hands scrambling against his back as he filled her, deep, hot, perfect. Her body clung to him, greedily. It had been waiting for this moment longer than she knew, didn’t it?
“I’ve imagined this in every way I shouldn’t,” he groaned. “And none ever came closer.”
She moaned when he started moving, her legs tightened around him and rocked up to meet his next thrust.
There was no holding back after that.
No restraint, no slow build, just the slap of skin, the punch of breath, the ragged sounds of two people too far gone to pretend it was anything but need. But somewhere in the middle of the chaos, between the bruising kisses and the frantic rhythm of their bodies, she realized something. Even without the magic, she still felt him.
