“The rules are done for today.”

He pulled her legs up. Both of them. Her knees against his ribs, his hands gripping the backs of her thighs, opening her with the shameless authority of a man who had zero interest in preamble and whose zero interest was shared by the woman underneath him whose hips were already lifting.

She let him. The letting was the thing that still surprised her about herself. She opened for him because her body trusted him before her brain had finished deciding to, and the trust was the most intimate thing she gave him.

He pushed inside her. Slow. Controlled. The control cost him something visible in his jaw, a clenching so severe the muscle jumped, because she was tight and wet and warm and every inch of progress was an inch of sensation so intense his vision went dark at the edges.

She whimpered. The stretch was always the stretch, the specific burn of her body accommodating his size, the involuntary resistance that melted as he held still and let her adjust and the adjusting took five seconds and the five seconds were the longest five seconds of his life.

“Your pussy is so tight for me,” he whispered. “Good girl. Take me all the way.”

Her inner walls fluttered around him involuntarily, her body’s way of testing the fit, contracting and releasing in small, rhythmic pulses that she couldn’t control and that drew a groan from his chest so deep she felt it vibrate through her ribs.

The words landed in her chest before they landed in her body. Good girl. Two words that shouldn’t have meant what they meant, but Dex said them like a prayer, like she was giving him something precious by letting him in, and the giving made her eyes sting in a way that had nothing to do with the stretch.

She breathed. He moved.

The first thrust was deep enough to make her arch off the mattress. Her hands found his shoulders, gripping, fingers digging into muscle, holding on because holding on was all she could do.

She could feel him through the matebond. Not just the physical. The underneath. The part of Dex that he buried below the cocky grin and the sarcasm and the Crown Prince armor. The part that was terrified of losing her. The part that touched her like she might disappear. That part was loud right now, louder than his hands, louder than his body, and she held onto it the way she held onto his shoulders.

He set a pace that was deliberate and punishing and built specifically to produce the sounds that were now echoing off the stone walls of their chambers with a volume that would have concerned her if she had any capacity for concern remaining. She did not have that capacity. The capacity had been dismantled.

Her body was oversensitive from the bath, from the orgasm, from seven shifts, from the matebond pumping his arousal into her bloodstream at full volume. Every thrust registered at twice the intensity it should have, each one pushing a sound from her throat that she had never made before and whose making she had zero control over.

“That’s it,” Dex growled. “Every sound. Give me all of them.”

His hand fisted in her hair.

The pull sent a bolt of heat from her scalp straight down her spine. Her body clenched around him in response, tight, sudden, involuntary, and the clenching made his hips stutter and his grip in her hair tighten and the tightening sent another bolt and the bolts were cycling now, each one feeding the next.

He pulled her head back. Her throat stretched. Her mouth opened.

He watched her face while he fucked her, cataloguing every expression, every flutter of her lashes, every parting of her lips, every moment her eyes flashed gold because Aurelia was surfacing under the pressure and the surfacing was involuntary and the involuntary was the part he loved most because the involuntary was honest and the honest was his.

He watched her like she was the only thing in the room. Being looked at like that by Dexmon Drakenfell was the most overwhelming thing she had ever experienced, and she was currently experiencing quite a lot.

She was building again. She could feel it through the matebond, his pleasure and hers tangled together, amplifying each other in a loop that had no ceiling and whose absence of ceiling was terrifying.

“Dex, I’m going to.”

“I know.” He drove deeper. “I can feel it. You’re going to cum on my cock and I’m going to feel every second of it through the matebond and you’re going to feel me feeling it and we’re both going to lose our goddamn minds.”

The accuracy of that statement was confirmed three seconds later.

She shattered. The orgasm was a different species than the first one. Deeper. Structural. The kind that started in her spine and radiated outward through every nerve in her body and clenched around him with a rhythmic force that pulled a sound from his chest that was more wolf than man.

The contractions were violent. Deep, rolling waves that started at her core and radiated outward through her thighs, her stomach, her chest, each one gripping him so tightly she could feel every ridge of him, every pulse, every degree of heat, and the detail was overwhelming and the overwhelming was not stopping.

His mouth went to her mark.

The bite was coming. She knew it. She always knew it. And the knowing never diminished the impact, because the bite was Dex claiming her at the deepest level his body could reach, and every time his fangs found that mark, every cell in her body answered with the same word: yours. The word was involuntary. The word was permanent. The word was the truest thing about her.

His fangs extended. The venom entered her bloodstream like liquid fire, racing from her neck downward, amplifying the orgasm that was already too much into something that defied vocabulary.

He came inside her while his fangs were still in her neck. The sensation of his release poured through the matebond and crashed into her orgasm and the two forces collided and the collision produced something that removed both of them from linear time for approximately eight seconds.

For eight seconds, she was nowhere and everywhere.

He was heavy on top of her. His full weight. He never gave her his full weight unless he was wrecked, and the wrecked was the version of Dex that nobody else saw. The version that stopped performing. The version that just lay on her chest and breathed and let her run her fingers through his hair. She loved every version of him. This one was her favorite.

When linear time returned, his fangs retracted. His forehead dropped to her collarbone. His breathing was ragged.

“Shit,” he breathed.