The tent still quivered when silence finally descended.
Vera slumped against the pole, wrecked and ruined, blood drying sticky on her skin, sweat cooling in blotches that made her shiver. Rael hadn’t pulled out—he couldn’t. The knot still locked them together, thick and swollen, a living chain that pulsed deep in her with every throb of his heart.
She hated that the heat hadn’t ebbed yet. Even after he’d come, her body still clutched around him, needy, greedy, unwilling to let him go. Collar lay quiet at her throat, no longer punishing or coaxing, just humming faintly like it too had been sated.
Rael’s breath rasped against her neck. He hadn’t loosened his hold. Iron bands of his arms wrapped around her, his chest heaving against her back, his teeth grazing the bite he’d left on her sho
