The Warrior King (Inferno Rising) by Owen, Abigail (online e book reading txt) 📗

lifted her by the hips, agonizingly slowly, only to pause again, breathing hard, before he guided her forcefully down his shaft, only to hold there, filling her, and Meira whimpered.

“Light on fire, Meira,” he growled. “Now.”

Her flames were already there, waiting at the surface, ready to be unleashed. Red and gold spread over her skin, only adding to the heat. Her fire traveled over Samael only to be consumed by his own power, turning black.

Her lover threw his head back and roared his claim to the gods and all who could hear, then pistoned his hips, moving her hips with his hands, fucking her hard and fast. Meira’s body spiraled in an overload of sensation, slamming through nerve endings in time to his thrusts, and she gloried in the sight of him claiming her for his own, even as she did the same, clenching around his cock with each slide in her body, arms wrapped around his neck as she held on for the ride.

“Yes,” he hissed.

Then he lifted her and flipped them so that she landed on her back. He fell with her, dropped forward to his elbows, his weight pinning her to the mattress, his chest grazing her nipples with every move of his hips. His eyes level with hers, smiling and yet almost terrifying, consumed by black flames.

“Now to make you mine,” he declared.

“Please,” she begged.

A sound that reminded her of an old-fashioned forge, fire being stoked inside him, rumbled all around her.

“Ready?” he asked.

“I’m yours.”

With a groan, Samael sank into the kiss, even as his body pounded into hers. Then heat passed from him into her as he blew a stream of fire down her throat, filling and engulfing her from the inside out. That heat joined the inferno already raging inside her, traveling along nerve endings to the juncture of her thighs.

Samael pulled back and watched her carefully, though he didn’t stop moving. He threaded his hands in her hair, but Meira wasn’t worried. This was right. She’d chosen this man not just with her mind, but with her whole heart.

The fire didn’t burn to kill; it burned to transform. To bond. To meld them together until they were one.

She smiled, and his muscles bunched under her hands, a breath of relief punching from him, followed by a long, purring growl.

He sped up, fucking her harder, faster, building the sensations, layering them inside her.

“Meira. Now.”

His command shoved her right over the cliff into oblivion as sensation exploded outward from her core. Samael swelled inside her as he thundered a shout. A new heat joined the rest, from inside her, tumbling her into a second orgasm, the waves of it smashing her on the only solid thing in her world—the man inside her and over her and around her.

Her mate.

Gradually, they slowed, the waves of sensation turning softer, gentler, lapping at her. Meira was vaguely aware of Samael turning to his side and pulling her into his arms. His finger traced her face and wound through a lock of hair.

He didn’t stop touching her as her body, replete and sated, drifted away for the gods knew how long, before returning to him. A soft brush over the nape of her neck and her eyes fluttered open. She found him watching her with a smile both tender and possessive that stirred an answering knowledge inside her.

He was hers. Forever. No matter what came next.

She sucked in and lifted her hand to his face. “You’re content,” she whispered. “I haven’t felt that from you before.”

His eyebrows shot straight up. “Felt?”

Meira bit her lip. Oh, shoot. She should have told him. “I…might be a bit of an empath.”

Samael gazed back at her, his reaction a rash of emotions that he shuffled through faster than she could keep up. “Did you know we were mates?”

She shook her head. “Only that you wanted me, and that you hurt to be around me.”

“I bet that was damn confusing.”

“I should’ve known, though.”

“Why?”

“Because I wanted you, too. I just couldn’t let myself.”

“An impossible situation,” he muttered.

She said nothing. Mostly because he was right.

“So, you feel everything or—”

Meira shook her head. “It comes and goes. Some people more than others. With you, it tends to be what you feel strongest, but sometimes, if it’s too strong, you shut it down, like bricking it behind an invisible wall.”

“And I’m content right now.” Not a question.

Meira grinned at him. “A little irritated, too, probably with me for not telling you until now. But yes. Content. Like I am.”

Samael blew out a sharp breath that might’ve been a laugh. “Yes.”

“Is it there yet?”

“What?” He didn’t follow her change of topic.

“The brand?” Once the mating bond solidified, they’d be tied together for life. If one died, the other would follow to the grave. However, the process was unpredictable. It could happen immediately or take months, even years.

Some made the argument that love had to be present, but her own parents had loved each other. The depth of her mother’s grief over half a millennium was proof enough, and yet, their bond had not yet formed before Pytheios had taken her mate’s life.

That was the only reason Serefina had survived and Meira and her sisters had been born into the world at all.

“No,” Samael said quietly.

Meira sighed. “Disappointed?” If she was honest, her heart had dropped a tiny bit with his answer.

Samael shook his head slowly as he traced an absentminded pattern of whorls over her shoulder, then lower, to the sensitive side of her breast, lower still to the dip of her waist and down her thigh, bent up and over his legs. “We’re through the worst of it. Neither of us died in the fire.”

That wandering finger came back up her thigh and over the curve of her backside.

Meira swallowed as he left a sparkling trail of heat in his wake. “I’m curious to see what design shows.”

Human women showed their mate’s family crest, but phoenixes blended the crest her mother carried with that of her mate to