Chapter 32 32

Chapter 32 32
ILYANA.

His lips crashed into mine and I didn’t know what to do with my hands.

That was the first thing. The embarrassing, humiliating first thing, that he kissed me like he’d been starving and I stood there with my arms at my sides for a full second before my brain caught up and I grabbed his shirt.

He didn’t seem to notice. Or maybe he didn’t care.

His mouth moved against mine with a certainty I didn’t have, pulling and demanding in a way that made my thoughts scatter like ash. He has kissed me before, hard, soft, but every one of it still felt different. Nothing like this. Nothing that made my knees threaten to give out beneath me and my chest feel like something inside it was cracking open.

I made a sound. Embarrassing and involuntary and he swallowed it whole.
His hands gripped my waist. He walked me backward without breaking the kiss. My back hit the wall, the impact knocking a sharp breath out of me. He pulled back just enough to look at my face, his chest rising and falling, his eyes dark, they were almost unrecognizable from the composed man I had come to know. 

“Are you okay?” He asked, his voice rough and low.

“Yes,” I breathed. “Don’t stop.” 

He didn’t.  

His mouth came back to mine, harder. The silk of my gown was thin. Too thin. I felt everything. The solid breadth of his chest, the warmth radiating off his skin, the way he didn’t step back even an inch. His hands moved, finding the tie of my robe and loosening it before pushing it off my shoulders.

The robe fell and pooled around my feet without a sound.

His fingers found the thin straps of my gown next. One. Then the other. He slipped them down and the silk slid off my body like water, gone before I could think to reach for it, before I could decide whether I would have reached for it or not. And then he broke the kiss and stepped back from me. 

The air hit my skin all at once.

I resisted the urge to cover myself. My face burned. Every inch of me burned. I had never stood like this in front of anyone and the alpha king was standing right there looking at me with those eyes and I didn’t know where to put my gaze or my hands or any part of myself. 

I felt exposed in a way that had nothing to do with the cold.

“Look at me,” he said.

I hadn’t realised I’d looked away. I dragged my eyes back to his and held them there.

Something moved through his expression. Not softness, exactly. But something that looked close enough to it that my chest ached. He looked at me like I mattered, like I was something worth everything. 

“Don’t,” he said quietly when my hands instinctively started to move, “Let me look at you.” 

I held still and let him look and he took his time about it, his gaze tracing every curve, every line, without hurry or apology. When his eyes finally came back to mine there was something in them that made my stomach drop in the best possible way.

He stepped back into me and lifted me off the floor, my legs wrapping around him naturally, and he carried me to the bed and laid me down against the cool sheets. He stood over me for one brief moment, assessing, claiming with his eyes before taking his shirt off and more heat pooled into me at the sight of his chest.

He was a god. I knew he was a god. But his chest, every brick and taut muscle looked like it was crafted by the goddess herself. 

He came down over me and his mouth found my neck, my collarbone, the soft skin below it, moving lower with a patience that made my fingers curl immediately into his hair. His hands moved down the length of my body, warm and deliberate, learning every part of me like he had made a decision to know all of it before the night was over. 

Every place his palms pressed into my skin left heat that spread outward and stayed, and Elara pressed forward inside me, frantic and restless, her energy reaching for his wolf with everything she had.

His mouth closed over my breast and I stopped breathing entirely.

The sound that left my mouth was embarrassing but I was too gone to care. His tongue swirled over it, taunting, mocking, devouring and I arched into every lick and bite of it. Another sound left my mouth as he cupped the other, slamming them both together before devouring again, his mouth moving from one to the other, claiming and devouring. 

My mind was a muddled mess. I moaned loudly, not caring, a need building deep and higher inside of me. My thighs clenching and unclenching.

“Ka…Kael….please…”

“Shhh..” he mumbled against my breast.

His hands moved lower and I felt my whole body respond before my mind even caught up. The warmth that flooded through me was immediate and deep, rising slowly from my core all the way up through my stomach and into my chest, and a broken sound left my lips that I had no ability to hold back. 

He paid attention to every shift in my expression, every sound, every small movement of my body, and he used all of it to learn exactly what made me come undone. My fingers twisted into the sheets. My back arched gently off the bed. The feeling that built was enormous and consuming, filling every corner of me, leaving no part of me untouched or unaware of exactly what his hands were doing to me.

"Stay with me," he murmured, his eyes on my face.

I could not have left if I wanted to.

He pressed deeper and the sound that left me was completely beyond my control. My hips moved on their own, chasing the feeling, and he let me, watching my face with dark steady eyes as the heat inside me climbed higher and higher with every passing second.

Then his mouth replaced his hands and everything in me went completely silent.

My world narrowed to a single point. What is this feeling and why have I never gotten it? 

His mouth was warm and patient and he moved so slowly, making it clear he was in no hurry whatsoever. The feeling built slowly, curling tighter and hotter with every second, my fingers pressing into his hair and holding on like the feeling was going to sweep me off the earth if I let go. 

Sounds kept leaving my throat that I had no control over. The tension inside me wound so tight it was almost unbearable, climbing higher than I thought my body was capable of holding, and then it snapped completely, breaking through me in long shuddering waves that left me gasping and trembling from head to foot, my back lifting off the bed, my lips parted and soundless for one long breathless moment before the sound finally came out of me, broken and overwhelmed and completely undone.

I was still shaking when he moved back up my body and looked at my face, his own breathing unsteady, his eyes soft and dark at the same time.

"Still with me?" he murmured against my jaw, his lips brushing the skin there.

I could not talk, only nodded. 

“Good,” he murmured before I felt something at my entrance and I jerked up a bit. 

“Has anyone—” he started.

“No,” I said. Too quickly. Too loudly for the quiet room. My face burned hotter.
A silence stretched between us.
He looked at me for a long moment. I couldn’t read his expression and that made the shaking worse.

“Tell me if you want me to stop,” he said.
I shook my head.
“Ilyana.” His voice was firm. Unhurried. “Tell me.”
“I won’t,” I said, and my voice came out steadier than I felt. 

“…want you to stop. I won’t want that.”

He held my gaze for another beat, searching. Then he kissed me again, deep and slow, before pushing in and every muscle in my body pulled tight all at once.

I couldn’t help it.

The tension moved through me instinctively, my fingers gripping the sheets hard, my breath cutting short.

“Breathe,” he said against my jaw, his voice grounding me. 

And I did. I took large deep breaths, steadying my core before he started to move again, slower, carefully. The pain etched away, twisting to something different. 

I pulled him closer and he thrusted deeper, a moan escaping from both of our lips at the same time. His thrusts went deeper, farther than the last, sending waves of ecstasy through me, building something inside me that I had no name for—something that started small and low and spread outward like heat from coals, filling every corner of me until thinking became impossible.

Until my wolf pressed hard against my ribs, straining, frantic with it. My mate, my mate, my mate — over and over and over until the word stopped being a word at all and became just feeling. Just need.

“Please—”
The word fell out before I could catch it. I pressed my lips together immediately. Too late.
He didn’t stop.

“Please,” I said again, my voice cracking cleanly down the middle, and I no longer cared that I had walked through that door tonight with a challenge in my eyes. No longer cared about the new Ilyana, bold and unafraid, claiming what was hers. I was still claiming it. This was just not how I had pictured it going.

“Please, please—”
“I’ve got you,” he said. Low. Absolute.
And with one final thrust, everything broke open.

The wave hit all at once — enormous, uncontainable, crashing through every nerve in my body from the inside out.

My back arched hard off the sheets. A sound tore from my throat. My fingers twisted so tight in the fabric they ached. 

My vision went white at the edges and my whole body shook with it, uncontrollable, nothing between me and the full force of it, no wall left to hide behind.

I came undone.
Completely. Every single piece of me.
By him.