Chapter 53: Good Boy

She climbs over him, knees braced on either side of his hips, and he’s already hard again, flushed dark and leaking against his own stomach, and the sight of it—him, laid out, undone, looking up at her like she’s something he’s not allowed to want, sends a bolt of heat straight through her that has nothing to do with the cold mall air biting at her bare skin.

"Good boy," she says, mostly to see what happens.

What happens is his hips jerk, a full-body flinch, and a bead of fresh cum pearls at his tip without her even touching him.

Dove goes very still. Then she raises an eyebrow.

"Oh," she says, delighted. "Okay. Good to know."

"I didn’t—" Thorne’s hands come up like he’s going to cover himself, cover his face, cover the evidence, and she catches both wrists and pins them to the blankets beside his head without even trying hard.

He could break her grip in half a second. He doesn’t.

"Don’t you dare be embarrassed," she says, and means it.

She lowers herself down his body slowly, tracing a path with her mouth—his collarbone, the hard plane of his chest, pausing to drag her tongue over one flat nipple until he makes a sound like he’s been shot, then the other, squeezing lightly with her fingers until his back arches off the blankets.

"Dove—" His voice cracks on her name.

"Shh." She keeps going, lower, mapping every scar with her lips like she’s trying to memorize a language nobody ever taught him was worth learning.

He’s shaking. Actually shaking, fine tremors running through muscle that should not be able to shake, muscle built for killing things, and she loves that she’s the one doing this to him.

"The elders say the female is meant to be..." he starts, words tumbling out too fast, too desperate, like he needs to explain himself before she touches him again. "I’m supposed to be the one who—you shouldn’t have to—"

"Fuck the elders." She looks up at him from where she’s settled between his thighs, ice-blue eyes locked on his, and there’s something burning behind them that has nothing to do with the cold. "You’re mine right now. That’s it. That’s the whole rule."

He stares at her like she just rewrote the sky.

She takes him in hand first, feels him twitch against her palm, thick and hot and unbelievably hard, and when she licks a slow stripe up the underside of him his whole body seizes like he’s been struck by lightning.

"Oh— oh god—" His hips try to lift into her mouth and she presses a hand flat against his stomach, holding him down with a strength that shouldn’t be hers, that wasn’t hers three months ago, that apparently comes standard with this body when she decides to use it.

"Still," she murmurs against him, breath ghosting over wet skin, and he goes rigid trying to obey.

She takes him deeper, slow, deliberate, watching his face the entire time—the way his jaw works, the way his pupils blow wide, the way every muscle in his scarred body goes taut like he’s holding himself together with sheer will. His hands fist in the blankets instead of her hair, because she didn’t tell him he could touch, and the fact that he understood that without being told makes something low in her belly go molten.

She pulls back right as his breathing goes ragged, right as his hips start to stutter, and instead of taking him back into her mouth she just, blows. Cool air against wet, overheated skin.

Thorne makes a sound she has never heard a grown man make. A whine, high and broken, his whole body straining upward.

"D-d-d-ove, pl— ea—ase—"

"Shh." She presses a kiss to his hip instead, feather-light, watching him come apart from almost nothing. "Listen to me."

His eyes find hers, wrecked, desperate, golden and wide, and whatever he was going to say dissolves into something smaller.

"I don’t even remember why we used to fight so much," he breathes, and it sounds like a confession dragged out of him against his will.

Dove’s chest does something complicated and warm that she doesn’t have time to examine right now.

She crawls back up his body, slow, deliberate, until she’s hovering over him again, knees bracketing his hips, and she can feel the blunt, hot press of him right there, right where she wants him, and the ache low in her belly flares hungry and insistent.

"Stay still, baby," she says, voice low, rough at the edges. "Good pets don’t wiggle while they’re being tasted."

He whimpers. Actually whimpers, a sound that should be embarrassing for a man with claws and scars and a reputation that makes grown soldiers flinch, and instead it just makes her wetter, makes her clit throb where it’s pressed so close to him.

His hips twitch, trying to buck up, trying to close the distance she’s deliberately holding, and she presses down with a hand flat on his sternum, and somehow—somehow—he stills under the pressure, like her strength outweighs his, like gravity itself has decided to take her side tonight.

"Keep those little hips down," she says, breathless, "or Mommy will add another minute of edging."

Thorne makes a sound like he’s dying. His eyes squeeze shut, jaw clenched, and when he opens them again they’re glassy, pleading, utterly undone.

"Good boy," she murmurs, and lowers herself just enough that the head of him catches at her entrance, blunt and huge and almost too much already.

He whimpers again, hips straining against her hold, and she takes a slow breath, rocking her hips just enough to drag her clit over the head of him, slick and swollen and aching.

"Okay." Her voice comes out lower than she means it to. "My good boy. No moving. We’re doing this my way."

He nods, fast, desperate, biting down hard on his bottom lip, flushed dark all the way down his throat, every muscle locked tight trying not to thrust up into her.

She holds his gaze—doesn’t look away, doesn’t blink, lets him see exactly what she’s doing to him and exactly how much she’s enjoying it—and sinks down onto him, slow, inch by devastating inch.

"Fuck" The word tears out of her in a scream-moan that echoes off the dead mannequins and the shattered glass counters, because he’s huge, impossibly huge, stretching her in a way that borders on too much, a slow-burning ache that bleeds into something better the deeper she takes him.

Thorne’s hands fist in the blankets so hard she hears fabric tear. His eyes never leave her face, wide and wrecked and reverent, like he’s watching something holy happen to his own body and doesn’t dare interrupt it.