Biting her bottom lip, she swallowed the whimper, and as she did so, a tiny sliver of a thought wormed through her.
The man and the monster, they were one and the same. She’d tamed the man. If Cain was truly hers like he claimed he was, then she’d be able to tame the beast too.
Ignoring her nearly crippling fear, she forced her feet to move. Not away from him, but deeper into his body. Until her own molded to his so completely that not even a drop of rain could pass between them.
Horrible growling sounds spilled from his throat. But he didn’t move. Didn’t even blink. Cain simply stared at her with his unnervingly beautiful red eyes.
One of her all-time favorite fairy tales was “Beauty and the Beast.” Especially how the moment Belle tamed him was the moment she’d been fearless in the face of his fury. So Flint stood there and let Cain breathe her in.
And soon she felt his muscles tremble. Felt his fingers flex.
“Flint.” His voice was deep and guttural and terrifying to hear. “Can’t hurt my Flint.”
Moving slowly so as not to spook him into reacting, she loosed herself from his grip and then moved her hands up the side of his rain-slicked neck to his cheeks.
“I know you won’t, Cain. Because I love you.”
His eyes closed and a violent shudder ripped through him.
“That’s right, beast, I love you. And you can’t hurt me. You won’t hurt me, because you’re stronger than this.”
A whimper spilled from him. She could still smell the blood on him, feel the violence riding him hard, but now she sensed something else too...
His hands moved to her hips, and something prodded into her leg. He was hard, and her stomach bottomed out with nerves. She knew what the final step was to being fully bonded to Cain. What, even in this manic state, his beastly side was trying to do.
The same thing she’d wanted to do forever. The thing that utterly terrified and yet compelled her. This was all sorts of wrong. Just a few miles back they’d waged a battle she’d never thought they’d win. Bodies were everywhere, the stench of blood thick in the winds. The others would likely come searching for them soon. Adam would need to return to take them back home.
But even though every one of those thoughts was valid, she also knew that she’d managed to calm him a little but his beast was still fully roused and in control.
And yes, it was primeval, and on the one hand it did totally scare her to think he would be her first and last, but...
Stretching up on tiptoe, she took the lead and gently kissed him.
Living was only worth it when you actually got to live, and with Cain she’d never been more alive.
He didn’t even move. His entire body had frozen up on her. Cain didn’t even kiss her back. He might be calm on the outside, but inside he was a stick of dynamite ready to blow.
“Open your eyes,” she commanded him.
When he finally did, there was red in his gaze, a licking of flame at his pupil, but there was also blue. That beautiful deep blue that mesmerized and took her breath away.
“Say it again,” he groaned with a voice that sounded slightly more like him. “Say you love me.”
She smiled. “From the moment I laid eyes on you.” She traced the corner of his lips.
He nipped at her finger, and her blood sang with powerful, overwhelming, and all-consuming passion for him. Her big, beautiful, terrifying berserker male.
“I love you, Cain.”
With a hungry moan, he stole her lips, and from there things became a blur of movement. He lifted her off her feet, moving them swiftly toward the large base of a tree trunk, and somehow he’d maneuvered them so that he was resting his back against it.
Knowing it was game on and nothing and no one was around to stand in their way, she tore at his shirt, not moving away from his hungry kiss until she no longer had a choice because the shirt needed to be yanked over his head. But the moment he dropped it, they crashed violently back together like magnets.
His hands were frantic too. He shoved off her jacket. Then, without taking a moment to even attempt to unbutton her blouse, he ripped it open, sending buttons to shoot out into the forest floor like projectiles, lost forever in the thick carpet of grass beneath their feet.
Her hands were on his jeans and his on her bra.
The rain was still lashing at them from all sides. Like the earth itself was trying to stop them.
But it was in vain. Their hunger was ripe and frenzied, and God help anyone who tried to stop this now.
“Oh, Cain.” She groaned when finally her bra was tossed aside and his big, callused palm covered her left breast, kneading it tenderly while at the same time hard enough to increase the madness inching through her veins.
Somehow, maybe magick—she couldn’t honestly say—she’d managed to get his jeans unbuttoned, and doing what she’d wanted to do since the moment she’d met him, she slipped her hand down his boxers.
Cain shuddered when she latched onto his velvety hardness. He blinked hard, the fire in his eyes flickering in and out like a sputtering flame. “We do this,” he said in that half gritty, half-man voice, “there’s no going back, for either one of us.”
But even as he said it, he undulated his hips in her hand, his breathing growing more and more erratic with each breath.
She bit down on her lower lip. “We’ll be permanently sealed. I get it. God, I get it.”
She felt the shudders take him, and she knew he loved what she was doing. He grabbed her wrist and held her still, forcing her to meet his gaze.
When she did, she was amazed to find his eyes entirely blue.
“I can hardly think with you touching me,” he whispered, and not sure what exactly that meant, she relaxed her grip.
His jaw clenched and his Adam’s apple bobbed. “Day and night. Forever. Do you really understand that, princess?” His fingers fluttered across the tops of her cheekbones. “The way you’ll be anchored to me. Even if the love dies for you, it never will for me. I’ll be like a dog chasing a bone for the rest of my life. You try to leave me, I’ll find you. You try to move on, I won’t let you. If I shove myself inside you—”
Holy freaking crap, had he just said that? Just the thought of him shoving deep inside her made her stomach twist so deliciously painfully that she almost croaked an unintelligible yes back at him.
“My soul will literally bond to yours and yours to mine. But unlike you, the monster part of me will never be able to let go. Do you really understand the magnitude of this, Flint?”
She knew. It wasn’t like she didn’t know. She might have only learned the particulars of monster bonding tonight, but she’d been thinking about this for days. Flint knew what she was getting into.
“And you would do this? Now? You would bind yourself to me this way? How do you know, Cain? How do you know that I’m the one and that this isn’t some phase that’ll pass with—”
He framed her face with his large, warm hands, and she realized that no longer was it thundering and lightning or sheeting water down on them. There was just a light sprinkle of rain in the air, and the sweet perfume of wildflowers and rain-soaked grass wrapped them up in a scented embrace. Broad-leafed vines feathered along her naked back.
For a second she wondered if he’d tell her anything. Cain was always so private, withholding so much of himself, even from her—and he told her probably more than he had anybody.
“Because every time my heart beats, it screams your name. Because when I’m gripped by fury, you’re the only one in the world who can bring me off the ledge, and because you see what I really am and still you can tell me you love me.” He took a deep breath, and Flint could swear she no longer felt her toes. “You own me, princess, and that will never change for me. Even if you never pledge yourself to me in this way, you already own me.”
Sobbing and not quite sure why, she threw her arms around his neck. He rubbed his hand down her back.
“Flint?” Her name was full
of a question and even twinged with a hint of fear in it.
But she didn’t trust herself to speak. Maybe the wildfire of passion they now felt would fade, just like her mom had once said, but beneath that passion beat something real and profound.
They might be young, but that didn’t make it any less genuine. She started to kiss the side of his neck.
He grunted, and the rigid length of him that hadn’t gone down even a little was now pressed firmly into her thigh, teasing the heated center of her body.
“Princess?” He moaned when she added nips and nibbles to the mix. “Oh God.” He shuddered, then his hands once more were digging into her hip bones, and she rocked into him.
“I’m just—” He grunted when she shoved her hand back down his boxers. “Gonna take this as a—”
“You talk too much,” she mumbled and bit his lower lip. Hard.
With a move that could only be classified as supernatural, Cain moved at a speed that defied natural order, causing the world around her to blur together for a brief second. And then they were no longer standing, but now she was blanketed on a bed of soft moss, and he was leaning above her, smiling down at her.
Romance was all well and good. But she’d waited almost a year for this. With a shake of her head, she began to wiggle out of her pants.
His eyes grew heated as he took over, tugging the soggy jeans off until she could finally kick them to the side. His finger slipped beneath the band of her pink silk underwear, the stupid things Rhiannon had made her buy for a dance that now seemed like a lifetime ago. And now she so much wanted to thank her for it, because Cain’s eyes were wide and his jaw hanging open.
She grinned. “Just tug on the bows and they’ll come off.”
“What?” He grunted, voice gone thick, though not guttural exactly. He’d been reduced to a fool at the sight of her silly underwear.
Flint was pretty sure when this was all over, she’d be buying Rhi a bouquet of roses.
“Like this,” she said and then gently undid the knot. She was a virgin, not some sex kitten seductress. She didn’t have a clue what she was doing. All she knew was she wanted to do it with him.
Which only seemed to excite Cain more. His eyes went from blue to pure red in an instant. But his body wasn’t growing or changing.
She feathered her fingers down the side of his face. “I love your eyes.”
“Princess,” he moaned.
And in that one word, she heard his pledge. His devotion. His love.
She undid the other knot, completely revealed to him now and nervous as all get-out.
Cain jolted into action then.
He made quick work of kicking off his jeans and boxers, and she finally got her first good look at him.
Dressed, he was the epitome of sexy. But nude, holy crap, he was a god. Every inch of him was a sculpted framework of smooth, rock-solid muscle. His chest was wide, his arms big but not enormous. The shredded moth’s wing wrapped around his bicep almost seemed to glow in the light of the full moon.
Heat blossomed in her cheek when she peeked below his waist, swallowing hard as she wondered how it was possible for that thing to go inside her. It wasn’t that she hadn’t messed around with boys, but she’d never gone all the way. He wasn’t even the first naked guy she’d ever seen, but he was definitely the biggest.
Cain seemed to know that she needed a moment to take it all in. He stood there for her, silent for what had to be a solid minute before he finally crawled over her, resting his weight on his elbows.
“Are you scared?” he asked, his thumb tracing the line of her jaw.
“A little,” she admitted, clutching his waist, terrified he might try to leave her, but he didn’t. “Do you have a condom?”
His smile was reassuring. “Don’t need one.”
She frowned.
“Berserkers can’t sire children until we’ve bonded.”
“So Eli and Seth can never—”
He shook his head. “No. Since they’ve bonded to each other, they’ll never be able to have kids.”
“How sad.”
He shrugged as his fingers feathered along her left collarbone. “It’s the luck of the draw. We don’t get to choose how it happens, Flint. But I’m so glad it’s happened with you.”
She smiled, heart growing warm from his words. Needing to add a little levity to the sudden heaviness, she teased him. “So, you shoot blanks, huh? How interesting.”
Chuckling, he nipped at her nose. “If you want to get technical about it...” He rolled his eyes. “For the first time, yes.”
Getting more comfortable with his body pressing down on hers and no longer so anxious about that big thing trying to shove its way inside her—wow, could her stomach flutter any more violently than it already was—she wrapped her arms around his neck, trapping him in.
He could break her hold, of course, Cain was stronger than her. Well, considering what’d happened to her recently, that might not entirely be true anymore. And someday, when things finally settled down, maybe she’d roll with him just to figure out who could take who.
But spiritually she owned him completely. And that was a heady, powerful thought.
“So that’s why Adam wanted you to stay away from me when we first met? Not because he hated me—”
Settling himself more fully between her thighs, he began to tease between her legs, making her breathing hitch just a little.
“I don’t think Adam ever hated you, princess.” He lowered his head until his lips were just a hairsbreadth from hers. “But to bond ourselves is no small thing. He would never even do it with Mo—”
His words cut off then and he stopped moving, and Flint knew that he was once again crippled by the pain of his mother’s betrayal, of what she’d done to Abel.
“He’s safe now, Cain. We’ve got Abel back. We’ll fix whatever she’s done to him, I promise.”
But even as she said it, she worried it might not be true. Abel was unlike anything she’d ever seen before.
Eyes blazing with pain, Cain kissed her.
And this time it wasn’t fire and brimstone, but something deep. It was soul baring, but without words to do it. He peeled himself open to her, telling her with each caress of his lips, each swipe of his tongue, that he trusted her. That he believed in her the way she believed in him.
And as their kiss deepened, their hunger grew. Flint moved her hips, just a fraction of an inch, but it was enough for him to slowly slip inside, stretching her and making her wince as the burn of pain temporarily replaced the buzz of desire.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered, kissing her cheeks, her nose, the corner of her jaw. “I’m sorry, princess.”
Cain started to move out of her, but she stopped him, digging her nails into his bicep. Because when he’d moved, the burn started to slowly ripple, morphing from something painful to something amazing.
“Move again,” she whispered and then shook her head when he made to apologize again. “Doesn’t hurt now. It was just a shock.”
Flint knew she’d lost her “virgin barrier” years ago. Because of Flint’s profession and her high level of activity, her mom had warned her that her first time would probably not be as unpleasant as it was for others.
And boy was her mom right, because this time when Cain glided in, she felt the pleasure of it whip all the way through her, from the crown of her head to the soles of her feet.
Hissing, she arched her spine, clawing at him with a fierceness of need she was almost terrified by.
He settled into her, not moving again, just deep inside her, and it took her at least three breaths before the stars in her vision cleared.
“Good?” he asked, seeming more concerned for her than anything.
But she knew he wasn’t unfazed, she could see it by the sweat dotting his brow and the rigid cording of his shoulders. Cain was on a razor’s edge of losing control. Even though his eyes were a frosty blue, she knew him well enough to know that.
A slow, smoldering smile took hold of her and she nodded. “Do it again. And next time, whatever you do”—she waited until she knew she had his full attention—“don’t stop.”
The relief that suddenly transformed his face almost made her laugh until he thrust deep inside her again and again.
And it was like... she was suddenly two different people. The one lying beneath him, hearing his heated words of devotion mingle with her own. And the one standing outside herself, watching it all as if from a distance. But not like the vision she’d had with Layla or the fae presence in her dreams. It was bizarre and not something she could adequately describe.
It was as though, she—a soulless creature—had been rooted within the very earth itself, and the pulse of its life and hers had joined to make her part of the very fabric of the universe.
But then she forgot about all that quasi-philosophical mumbo jumbo when he kissed the hollow of her throat.
His scent reached out to her. Pine, and Cain, and so much more, it wrapped her up, invaded her senses. Gripped her soul. She shuddered in his arms when he shoved in deeper, hitting the very depths of her body.
“Cain,” she grunted, and then grabbing his face, she forced his lips to hers, feeling like her body was being infected by madness and need.
Their teeth collided; their sweat mingled.
“Princess. My angel,” he whispered, then slid his tongue deep into the warm recesses of her mouth.
His tongue was velvet and tasted of candy. Sighing, she met him thrust for thrust and then just as the darkness of the taking completely engulfed her, there was light.
And it came from inside him.
A silvery sheen of brilliant light poured from him into her, and she was bathed in its warmth. In its beauty.
Cain never stopped moving, and neither could she, but she wanted to admire the light. Wanted to run her fingers through it.
“Beautiful,” she whispered. “It’s so beautiful.” Her fingers wiggled through the shimmering iridescence.
Only when she pulled away did she realize that light was coming out of her too, and it was sinking into him.
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