Barbarian King’s Mate by Ivy Sparks

Chapter Eighteen

Garath

I rockedDaphne in my arms, enjoying the unspeakable delight of holding her. The water made her weightless and fluid. She responded to every touch and every kiss. Was this Heaven—drifting in a sea of dreams with the woman of my heart?

Each time I broke away from her delicious mouth, her head fell on my shoulder. I stroked her hair and kissed her ears and neck down to her breasts. She reclined back in the water and floated there while I sucked her beautiful nipples. Her body radiated love and bliss and contentment. It made all the trouble of the last few days worth the effort.

I supported her head and brought her mouth back to mine. When her eyes fluttered open, she didn’t see me. She wavered somewhere beyond sight, but she was all mine, right here in my arms.

We could have stayed in the pool all day, but in that dreamy moment, another couple came around the corner and slipped into the water. I tucked Daphne’s forehead into my neck and pulled her other leg around my waist. I picked her up and carried her out of the pool.

She clung to my neck like an injured creature. She didn’t look up until I carried her into my home and took her to my room—the room where she spent her first night at Caverncall.

I laid her on the bed under the window, and her limbs folded out on the mattress. She didn’t try to hide her body from me. My hands glided over her soft skin, over her erect nipples, and over the shuddering sensitive skin of her belly and thighs and lips. She had no idea how irresistibly sensual and inviting she was.

Her drunken eyes rotated from the window to me, and her expression changed. “Is this what it feels like?”

“What do you mean?”

“The mating bond,” she breathed. “I felt it… down at the pool. I told your father I couldn’t stand to lose you and then… I felt it. I felt it in the glade too. I couldn’t bear the thought of living without you. That’s the mating bond, isn’t it?”

I couldn’t look at her. I kept my attention on my fingertips, tracing the delicate curves of her ribs, breasts, neck, and sternum. “Yes. This is it. This is what it feels like.”

“I’m your fated mate, aren’t I?” she hardly whispered. “That ritual—it was real, wasn’t it?”

“Yes. It was real.”

Saying those words stabbed me in the heart. Now she would leave. She would run away in horror that the ritual trapped her in this bond she never wanted.

“Tell me the truth,” she murmured. “What will happen to you if I go back to my homeworld?”

I didn’t want to answer, but I could no longer avoid the truth. She deserved to know, even if she chose to destroy me. “The mating bond cannot be undone without ruining both partners. If one dies or disappears for any reason, the other will be left broken and only half-sane. Just look at my father. He lost my mother and has never returned to his right mind since. He constantly obsesses over her. His spirit constantly searches for a way to be with her when it isn’t possible.”

Daphne turned back to the window. She gazed up at the light streaming into the cavern. Those words fell into a hole, and I couldn’t take them back. But at least now she knew. I didn’t have to hide it from her anymore.

“I won’t keep you here,” I told her. “I’ll help you go back to your people, just as I promised. You can leave whenever you want, even if it means I’ll never see you again. Your happiness is more important.”

She didn’t answer for a long time. The longer she remained silent, the more my heart sank. She didn’t want this. It must be totally alien to her.

“Humans don’t have mating bonds, do they?” I began. “You can do and undo your connection whenever you wish.”

Daphne turned toward me, and the dreamy cloak fell away from her. She came back to reality and became again the down-to-earth person I knew before. “It’s different for us. Bonding starts slowly and can take years. The ritual we have is called marriage, and it’s really a formality compared to this.”

“Have you experienced such a bond before?”

“No, never. My parents had a close, loving relationship. I thought I would have something like it, but then they died. I started to worry that I might marry someone, and that they would break my heart. That’s why I left Earth. I wanted to get away before I got hurt. I never thought…” She trailed off.

“If you wish, we can do things according to human custom. We could have a human bonding ceremony in addition to the Kavian one we have already had.”

She grimaced. “I don’t think that’s necessary. The mating ritual we’ve already had was more than enough. When humans get married, it usually starts much slower than this. We meet and talk over a drink without just jumping in and mating straight off like you and I did.”

“I see. That does make our predicament difficult, doesn’t it?”

Daphne raised her hand and laid it against my cheek. I didn’t see it coming, and the touch surprised me. “It must be hard for you. I’m sorry this happened to you. I wouldn’t want anything bad to happen to you because I left.”

I tried to shrug her hand away, but that velvet touch against my skin held me captive. “I always feared I would end up like Father,” I confessed. “Kavian life can get lonely when you don’t have a mate—either after a mate dies, or before you find one. I’m relieved you’re here now. As long as you’re here, I know I’m going to be okay.”

Her eyes glistened with moisture, and she rolled all the way toward me. She closed her other hand around the side of my face. “I’m relieved too. I don’t want to be anywhere but with you.”

I couldn’t keep away from her after hearing that. I lowered myself down to kiss her, but she wouldn’t let me go. She steered me deeper into her mouth as one silken hand sneaked down my chest and around my back. She pulled me down on top of her, and I knew there was only one way for this to end.

I climbed onto the bed and stretched out on top of her. My mate. My love. My one and only. How perfect she felt, melting into my arms. Her naked majesty wrapped around me and towed me into a sea of beauty and peace. Whatever happened outside this room no longer mattered. I was where I belonged.

I forgot that I too was naked until her thighs wrapped around my waist and hauled me between her legs. My pulse throbbed into my cock, and its tip grazed her slippery opening. She felt so mind-blowingly good that I almost shuddered to enter her.

I waited for her to stimulate herself with me the way she did before, but she didn’t. She swiveled her hips to position herself directly under me. She kept nudging me closer. I wanted nothing more in the world than to bury myself inside her and disappear, but that would be too easy.

I reared up to kiss her, and the explosive power of that kiss fired my blood to volcanic proportions. I tore her arms away from my neck and pressed them down on the bed.

She stared up at me in breathless astonishment, but she didn’t resist. She seethed in open desire beneath me, trying to throw her hips at me, but I was enjoying her desperate desire way too much to give in.

I held her arms above her head and nibbled down her neck to her breasts. I sneaked lower to her belly and dragged my mouth and cheeks and chin over her delicate skin. I reveled in the shivering gasps convulsing through her.

Daphne stroked her thighs against my hips. She tried to fight against my grip to kiss and bite my shoulders and chest, but I held off where she couldn’t reach me. I hovered over her, devouring every inch of her glorious body with my gaze. I controlled her every reaction, and that feeling made me all-powerful.

Her eyes floated half-closed before she dragged them open again. She teetered on the edge of madness, and her lips quivered at every breath. She throbbed with desire for me—her mate, her King. I could hang back and watch her go out of her mind and never tire of the sight.

“Please,” she whispered.

“Please?” I repeated. “Please what?”

She screwed her hips in circles and tried again to draw me in. “Please…”

I loomed directly over her face where she couldn’t look away. “I want to hear you say my name.”

Her mouth twitched, then she winced and looked away.

“Say it.”

“Garath,” she squeaked in agony.

I growled under my breath. She sounded so sweet and open and soft when she moaned like that. “What is it you want, my love?”

She undulated her body so that her moist slit brushed my hard, throbbing cock. God, she knew how to drive me wild. Her juices dripped across my veins, and I almost lost it right there.

I pulled myself back into control with great effort, but she was way past the rational stage. She never really came back after the pool. “Tell me what you want,” I growled. “Tell me. Let me hear you say it.”

She whimpered and licked her lips. Her fingers clawed at my back, trying in frantic desperation to bring me closer. Watching her and feeling her spiraling into lunacy excited me beyond anything else.

“I need you.”

“You need me… here?” I flexed my arms and lowered my cock to her cleft. I grazed its length over her beautiful pink frills. “Is this what you want?”

She whined, “I need you so bad.”

“Look at me, Daphne.”

She struggled. Her eyes darted to mine, then she looked away before she summoned her resolve and locked her gaze on mine. Those eyes blazed with wild, voluptuous desire. This woman was all mine. No one had to tell me. She showed me herself in those bottomless eyes of hers.

“Is this what you want? Tell me.”

She didn’t whine. She went quiet and still and staring. Her eyes looked through me to something somewhere out in space. “Yes.”

“This?” I eased a fraction of an inch closer. The head of my cock parted her dripping pussy.

“Garath,” she breathed.

“Say it,” I commanded.

Those cool hands closed around my cheeks and obliterated all my ability to hold back. “I love you, Garath,” she finally said.

I plunged in, and her hot channel crushed me in a death grip. She whimpered in my ears, and her arms closed around my neck. My mouth found hers, but she kept squealing and sobbing and crying into my lips.

My tongue stabbed into her mouth, and her saturated flesh stroked me in an unbroken wave of desire. The next thing I knew, I was inside her up to the hilt, while she was bucking and convulsing against me from below.

Her wetness gushed around my shaft and down my balls. Her inner muscles clenched around me in a tight fist that wrung the very marrow from my bones. I stroked deeper and slapped against her ass in an even more blessed kiss.

She hurled herself down to meet every thrust. She arched her hips to take me all the way down to the base of my cock. Her channel sucked me out of myself until I couldn’t think. I wanted to fill her with myself, but some part of me still held back. I needed to see her for that. I needed to see that she really wanted it—hungered for it.

Her fingers dug into my ass, guiding me in for every brutal thrust. She consumed my mouth in greedy licks. Every deep plunge into her chasm stimulated my full length until I couldn’t contain the intoxication.

I pulled away from her mouth and propped myself on my arms, where I could see her drenched slit around my shaft. Her body rippled and undulated with each one of my thrusts. She swooned and her eyes rolled into their sockets every time I drove into her honeyed depths.

I relished the sight of her blasting out of herself into pure pleasure. I sent her there. I gave her that. She was lost on the end of my cock. I possessed her on the inside, where it really counted. This body quivered and relaxed and tensed all over again for me and me alone. She was mine—all mine.

“Daphne,” I snarled.

Her eyes floated open, registered me, then blurred again. “… need you…”

“Daphne.” I plowed in hard again, and her eyelids sagged again.

She gulped to get her voice working. “My…”

“Look at me,” I ordered.

Her hands found my face first. She moved her eyes into focus, but I didn’t make it easy by splitting her apart with hard thrusts. She kept bursting into ecstatic screams and impaling herself on my driving thickness.

“Look at me, Daphne,” I snapped. I had to see her. I had to get her focused on me, only me, before I finished her off.

She floundered in confusion for a moment, then with one sudden jerk of her head, she ripped her eyes open and fixed her gaze on me. She materialized before me as never before, present, tenuous, and all-encompassing. “Garath.”

“Say it again.”

“I… I love you, Garath.” She let out a long, broken moan, then darted upward to kiss me. “I need you. Please, I need you.”

“You need this?” I drove in hard one more time.

“Please. I love you so much. I love you… You know I love you.”

At that moment, I knew. I had all of her—heart and soul. This unbreakable bond holding us together—it tied her to me with the same force it tied me to her. She belonged to me in every respect. Nothing could take her away from me. All this business about her going back to her people was just talk.

The certainty that she was mine alone poured through me in a torrent. It spurted from my cock and filled her with everything I was—all my hopes and dreams and fears and longing. I owned her with my essence, and she drank it to the dregs until it overflowed her supple body.

I held her close for the rest of the night, whispering my devotion to her whenever she stirred from her restful sleep. Whenever she found the energy, I claimed her, then claimed her again, until I had almost forgotten all about the Ranxi and their impending arrival.

All that mattered tonight was that I had found my mate, and with that thought, I joined her in her peaceful sleep.