“Oh aye,” he agreed, then slowly unzipped his jeans and pushed them down and away from himself. His erection was an astounding thing of beauty. Bold and thick, flushed and taut. She couldn’t help but to reach out and touch him, and the moment she did she felt him shudder hard. He said something unintelligible under his breath and even though she didn’t know what it was she understood the sentiment behind it.

Slowly she wrapped her hand around him, just lightly at first, drifting her touch up and down the length of him, learning every single taut vein and bump. Then she went to stroke the head of it and was instantly rewarded with a bead of fluid against her fingertips. She rubbed the fluid back into him and he cursed.

“Nay. You’ll make me come just as we are, that’s how eager I am for you,” he said after snatching her touch away from himself. He reached for her panties and in one swift jerk of movement he’d shucked them off her. And now she felt truly vulnerable. Truly exposed. She wasn’t made perfectly, had no supermodel figure. She had some good curves in some places and some bad ones in others. But looking into his eyes she could swear he didn’t see a single one of them, and that made her doubts about herself instantly evaporate. His hands were on her body then, running up her entire length from kneecaps to shoulders and touching everything in between. It brought her skin to life and her nipples tightened, jutting up toward him and eagerly begging for his attention. And he gave it gladly. First with the touch of his fingers. A brush. A stroke. A pull. A pinch. Then he wrapped a hand around her ribs and jerked her torso up about six inches and brought her directly to his mouth. Teeth. Lips. Tongue. All of it in parts and then together. The feel of it making her go wild with need. How was he able to do this so easily? How was it as smooth as water over glass with him when before, with others, it had always seemed like so much effort?

He shifted from one nipple to the other, cuddling and cradling each breast in their turn. She arched her back, pressed back her shoulders. He tasted her until she was raw with need and her fingers were nearly tearing the hair out of his head.

“Ahnvil, please …” she moaned softly.

“No’ yet, love. No’ yet.”

And then his touch drifted down over her belly, causing it to contract under the attention. He found the soft mink curls guarding the treasure he was truly seeking and scraped through them with the tips of his fingernails. He imagined himself doing the same with the claws he grew when he changed and it was all he could do to keep himself from doing so right then. He didn’t want to frighten her. Not when he was so close to having her. And anyway he didn’t feel things as finely when he was turned to stone. It was one of the reasons he could take hit after hit after hit and just keep coming.

But now he didn’t want to be so rough and so tough. He was afraid of being that. Afraid of hurting her. God, she was so small! But fiend that he was he couldn’t make himself walk away. He was going to do everything in his power to make her sing. Everything he could to see to it she felt nothing but the sweetest pleasure the world could offer. So he touched her gently, felt how wet she already was, and groaned as the flowering flesh gave way beneath his fingertips.

He immediately stroked her in short, languid circles. Her knees drew up instinctively, then one fell aside, completely opening her to him. He could see her, so pink and so pretty. He wasted no time sliding a probing finger into her. But even his fingers were big in the face of her smallness so he went gently. She made a sound and with the sweep of her hips pushed him into herself faster than he had planned on.

“You’re tormenting me,” she accused him on a soft cry.

“Nay. I just doona want tae hurt you.”

“You won’t. I know you won’t. Just … please …”

So he thrust his finger into her and felt her give way. Her hips rose again, along with the erotic scent of her. That left him with only one option. To taste her while he touched her. There was really nothing else he could do. Nothing else he wanted to do.

When his tongue unerringly touched her clit Kat gasped loudly into the room. To her it sounded as though it echoed. But none of that mattered. What mattered was the pleasure that was echoing through her. She rolled her hips, chasing his mouth, rubbing herself against the tongue that was laving against her. It took no time at all before she reached a high point of pleasure, trembling on the very brink of release, needing so badly to fly. And then she was gone. Soaring beyond him, beyond the room, beyond everything she’d ever thought she was or could be. With him there were no limitations.

There was absolutely nothing weird to be found anywhere.

“Ah, Kat, you’re the prettiest picture a man ever saw,” he said as he carried her back down to earth with languid little strokes of the fingers inside of her. Two fingers, she realized. When had that happened? Did it matter?

No. Absolutely not.

Then he pulled them free of her, the wetness of it so obvious to them both. He took those two fingers and touched them to the head of his shaft, rubbing her wetness into himself there. It was the most erotic thing she’d ever seen in her life. And there was nothing she wanted more than to feel him inside of her, she thought as he moved over her, his cock heavy in his hand as he aimed himself carefully against her.

The instant he came into contact with her they both gasped aloud. He bent for her mouth, kissing her fiercely, all the while bathing himself in her wetness. He groaned as he thrust against but not inside her. Running himself over her again and again until he was sure she and he were both as wet as they could be. It was the hardest thing he’d ever done in his life. Even escaping from captivity had never been as hard as trying not to come against her before either of them was ready. He felt green and eager, as though she were his very first, and in a way he supposed she was. She was the first mortal woman he had allowed himself to be with since his forging. Ihron had been less discerning, but he had not been made as big as Ahnvil was. For him … he’d always been afraid his ferocity would hurt them.

But here ferocity was and yet it played in perfect tandem with gentility. And it was with leashing one and letting loose the other that he began to slide inside of her. Inch by excruciatingly lovely inch.

“Yes!” she cried, once again lifting those mobile hips of hers up into him. It brought him ever deeper inside of her. And deeper still with another undulation. And that was how it went, with her working herself along the length of him. It was torturous and sweet. Lush and violently needful. He wanted more and more until he was flayed apart from the pleasure of it.