Free Sample
Preview from chapter one
He was terrified his size would break me.
I'm Lily Chen. Thirty. Botanist. I was checking orchid placements on a steep, root-choked slope when the ground opened and dropped me into moss and vines that glowed faintly at the tips. Light field shorts and a tied shirt were already torn from the fall. Long hair tangled with leaves. Soft waist. The kind of build his hands could wrap completely.
Thorn is eight feet of careful muscle even half-shifted. A double row of crimson plates runs down his spine, the edges sharp. In full shift those plates become living shields and his spiked tail can shatter stone. Right now he cradles me in the moss bed of his cave like one wrong move might crack me in half.
"Too big," he rumbled the first night. His voice was low enough to vibrate through the stone and straight into my back. "I'll hurt you."
Night One
He held a slice of sweet fruit just out of easy reach. The piece looked small in his hand. I had to lean into the heat of his chest to take it. Juice ran down his wrist when I bit. He froze. His plates darkened along the edges and the arm around me went rigid, but he still didn’t lower the fruit or touch me lower. He just watched the juice slide over his skin and stayed still until I swallowed.
Then he carried me to the warm spring hidden behind the cave and washed me with slow, massive hands.
Soap-slick palms glided over my breasts, thumbs circling my nipples until they tightened and ached, then down the line of my ribs and across my stomach. He stopped at my waist every time. His plates flushed darker whenever I arched into the touch, but he still didn't go lower. The restraint was visible in the way his fingers flexed and then pulled back, claws carefully sheathed.
He slept curved around me that night, one enormous arm banded across my middle. The thick, plated ridge of his cock was trapped against my ass through his leathers. He never moved. I felt the fine, constant tremor running through the arm that held me every time I shifted even slightly. His control was costing him. I fell asleep wet, empty, and pressed tight to the heat of his chest, the hard line of him a constant reminder of what he was holding back.