Chapter 206: Heart to heart

"Tell me everything," he rasped between desperate, feverish kisses. His hands burned like liquid fire against my skin, betraying the truth—despite his demand, the last thing he wanted right now was a long-winded explanation of how I had managed to get inside.

"Later," I whimpered against his lips, shedding my hoodie to a ragged half-groan from deep within his chest. I refused to waste a single breath on words when time itself was more precious than gold.

We clung to each other like two starved beasts, pouring every starved feeling into the kiss. Breath and agony shared in the deafening darkness of his cell, where the only light came from a narrow slit high beneath the ceiling.

I love you.

Clothes hit the freezing stone floor. The cold bit into my bare feet for only a heartbeat before Magnus lifted me—strong, careful—and laid me on his narrow cot. The frame creaked louder than my heart had during every night of separation.

His weight settled over me. His mouth found my already swollen lips. My hands mapped the hard planes of his shoulders and felt pure steel beneath the skin. My man. Untamed wild strength. Lethal aggression reserved for enemies, and the most careful tenderness when his palms skimmed the curve of my stomach.

He scorched my neck with his breath and dragged his tongue wetly across the mating mark. Pleasure coiled tight and low in my belly, so sharp I thought I might shatter from his nearness alone. The scent of tobacco and vanilla flooded my lungs.

There were no words left in my chest for what I felt. They simply did not exist—just as I did not exist without him. Without his scent. Without his hands on my skin. Without his taste on my lips.

I love you.

"I keep thinking this is a dream," I whispered, gripping his shoulders harder, terrified he would dissolve into smoke between my fingers.

"I’m real." His mouth traveled lower. The alpha’s tongue flicked over one tight nipple, then drew it deep into the heat of his mouth and sucked. A broken moan vibrated through me. His hands cupped my breasts while he lavished attention on each peak in turn. I had never imagined such sounds could tear from his throat—raw, fractured, soaked in unrestrained hunger. No. Not hunger. Thirst.

While my body melted under his mouth, a darker need unfurled inside me: the craving to learn what else that powerful body could do. What sounds I could drag from him if I were the one who touched. The hunger to take everything clawed at me, and the images in my head refused to quiet. It would be sweet.

I love you.

I wrapped my legs around his torso, unable to wait any longer, and felt exactly how hard he was. The thick length of him pressed against me, yet Magnus only teased, denying what we both needed. He kissed my aching nipples and caught my wrists, intertwining our fingers before pinning my hands above my head. My eyes had adjusted; I could see him better in the dark—the liquid-silver gleam of his gaze sliding hungrily over every inch of my bare skin, already claiming me while his body still held back.

"Magnus..."

"I could hurt her... the baby," he rasped, staring at the soft roundness of my stomach. "I want you so badly I’m losing my mind. You’re already tearing my control to pieces."

"You won’t hurt her. Alan said it’s safe." I pulled my hands free and traced the unfamiliar roughness of stubble along his jaw. Magnus was always clean-shaven; the roughness only made him more dangerous, more intoxicating.

The alpha dragged in a shuddering breath. His palms glided down my waist, thumbs brushing the sensitive hollows of my hipbones with exquisite care. Every touch radiated the same fierce protectiveness, as if sunlight itself had found its way into the blackness of the cell.

Love truly could light a path through any darkness. Heart to heart.

"Even so," he whispered. In one smooth motion, he rolled us, and suddenly I was astride him. His chest was hot and faintly damp beneath my palms. Need drove me lower; I dragged my tongue from the center of his chest up to the strong column of his throat.

A rough curse tore past his clenched teeth. Beneath my tongue, the thick vein pulsed, and right beside it lay the gland. My gums ached. The copper taste of blood bloomed on my lips. Without even realizing it, Magnus was yielding, letting me take the lead, freeing the wilder half of my nature and daring it to rise.

I arched my back and rolled my hips against the hard length of him, feeling the iron grip of his hands on my thighs.

"Little devil," Magnus growled. One hand fisted in the hair at my nape and pulled hard enough to bring our mouths a breath apart. "Where the hell did you learn that? I’m already jealous."

"I just know what my man wants," I purred. Instead of kissing him I scraped my fangs lightly over his lower lip, tasting the bright heat of metal on my tongue.

I had known tonight would be rough. We had been apart too long, starving in a way that went deeper than bodies. Our souls still reached across every distance, bound so tightly nothing could sever them. Every trial only fused us closer. Every minute apart only pulled us harder back toward the other half of our soul.

I love you.

I wrapped my fingers around the base of him, guided myself down, and finally took the fullness I had ached for every lonely night. A moan tore from my throat against his neck; I felt the answering vibration rumble through his chest.

Pleasure was a double-edged blade pressed against my heart. The hand in my hair tightened. Bruises would bloom on my hips, but the small hurts only sharpened the hunger, driving me to lift and drop again in a sharp, teasing rhythm.

What little patience we had left shattered. I braced my palms on his chest, arched, and threw my head back, nearly crying out at the way he filled my overheated body. My hips worked harder.

Magnus hated the distance. His hands stayed locked on my thighs, but my mouth was too far for him to claim. With a sudden surge, he sat up, mouth finding my neck, my shoulders, my chin—everything he could reach while we moved together.

Breath came ragged. Thrusts turned rough and uneven. We were racing the edge.