If you like music while you read, try "You Are Mine" by Spencer Combs (feat. Holley Maher) or "All For You" by The Light The Heat. These two songs are Reth & Elia's songs from Volume 1 and Volume 4 of King of Beasts. I listened to both of them while I was writing this chapter.

*****

RETH

The furs were tiny feathers, tickling his skin and raising goosebumps on his arms. His mate's warmth under him was the softest pillow, the most welcoming embrace. Her breathless voice in his ear was fuel to the lava-hot fire that burned in his chest.

He'd taken his time, kissing her from her toes to her temples, letting their skins rest together, tangling limbs, and fisting his hands in her hair just to feel it tight between the webs of his fingers. They hadn't spoken a word, just fallen into each other's arms, stroking slowly, as if they had all the time in the world.

And in a way, Reth realized, they did. Because his body would give in to reality far before his heart ever did.

He lay over her, covering her, most of his weight on her. But when he'd tried to brace to give her space to breath, she'd whimpered and pulled him back down. So, cradled between her thighs and mouth against her neck, he let himself press her into the soft furs. And he let himself feel.

Her skin was soft, cold from the water, but warming under his touch. Her hair was damp, but she'd put an arm under it and pulled it up, over her head, so it swirled around her like a shining, damp halo. Her breath fluttered on his cheek, then his neck, then his shoulder. Goosebumps chased her lips wherever she lay them on his skin and he groaned softly with the sheer joy of it.

It was as if her touch sparked in his skin, and despite the aching fear and grief clawing at his insides, his flesh was alive—thrilled and roaring for more of her.

More.

He trembled with the effort to keep his movements slow and deliberate—his kiss, his stroke, the rock of his hips.. however he moved, she followed, met him there as if she'd known before he did where they would touch. He kept the kiss slow, but deep. His lips soft, searching. She breathed his name into his mouth, then took his face in her hands and tilted her head to bring the kiss even deeper as she writhed against him—slowly.

Reth groaned again as his entire body tingled, effervescent with joy and love and desire. He didn't have words for the emotions that roiled in his chest, a tornado of feeling that threatened to sweep them both away.

He fought the urge to grasp and pull and plow, keeping his touch soft and slow, savoring every brush, every taste. But their bodies had found each other and he couldn't wait any longer.

Elia was beginning to tremble, even her lips shaking when she dropped her head back with a small cry as groaned and entered her in a single, divine thrust that he felt to the soles of his feet.

She arched under him, baring her throat, her fingers clawed into his back and pulling him deeper, closer.

And then they began to move together in the perfect harmony that came with twenty years of love, with having weathered the storms and climbed the heights. With a love that was tempered by the refiner's fire until it blazed white and pure.

He felt her name in his throat, but couldn't form lips and tongue around it, trusted her to hear it in his tormented cry as their bodies began to roll, seeking more.

For long minutes he was lost in her—they had become one. Their skins only the language they spoke. Their strokes nothing more than the visible story of their invisible bond. And that quavering, trembling light that burned in his chest, the bond, throbbing and pulsing, reaching for her—and hers for him.

Reth gasped and called to his mate over, and over as the world, the past, the future, and everything it contained.. disappeared. He was left with only the warmth of her, the beauty of her cries, the rush of her embrace, the sheer pleasure of their joining—the desperate yearning of it. Twisted together, they rocked and sought, bodies rippling together, cries swallowed and given back.

p Her face was buried in his neck, her lips on his skin. He'd wrapped his arms all the way around her, pulling her into him as he thrust. Her hips sought him, even as her heels drew him in.

"Elia.. Love—"

"Reth!"

He thrust into her again, bending his body, unwilling to lose contact with her, but desperate now and she cried encouragement, clinging to him begging as her skin pebbled, goosebumps washing down the length of her. He caught some under his tongue on her shoulder and sucked, one hand plunging into her hair, his fingers clawing up her scalp.

Elia's breath stopped and she arched, holding even his massive weight off the furs, clinging, clenching around him, crying out his name, and clawing his back. He pulled out and in again and she still hadn't breathed, instead, holding him tightly and the incredible sensation of being so close broke his heart open like a ripe fruit.

Roaring her name into her neck, his body tumbled over the edge of that cliff.

Elia sucked in suddenly, her body twitching and clenching and it was as if he hit the peak again—or perhaps had never left it. Reth knew only that he was falling, falling, falling, everything within him rushing for her, pulling her closer, needing her with an aching desperation he'd never known before. Not even in their greatest danger.

His body shuddered and broke and he spasmed around her, over her, within her. But she only clung, sobbing quietly into his shoulder, her kisses open and soft on his neck, pulling herself into him more and more tightly.historical

And so they lay there, joined as one, panting. Utterly unwilling to move from that moment.

And when she whispered his name, then began to cry in earnest, Reth didn't tell her not to cry. He only wrapped her in his arms more tightly, taking every shake and shudder and making it his own.