Chapter 260: Decades of Hunger (r-18)

The kiss didn't end. Itdevoured. What began as brutal collision—her mouth smashing into his with enough force to bruise bone—slowly twisted into somethingblacker, wetter, more obscene. Something that swallowed breath, reason, and every last shred of restraint.

Dravenna kissed him like she wanted tounmakehim through his mouth. Like four years of pent-up, clawing celibacy had finally been given warm meat torip into. Her tongueplungeddeep—brutal, claiming, stroking his with thick, sloppy, pornographicdragsthat reeked of starvation and dominance.

Shesuckedhis bottom lip until the skin split andhotcopper bloomed, bit down vicious enough to tear a bead of blood, then dragged her tongue over the wound in one long, filthy, savoring lickthat made his growl vibrate against her teeth.

Phei tried to take it back. Tried to fist her jaw, angle her, fuck her mouth on his terms.

Shesnappedhis wrists up—delicate fingers clamping like steel traps—andsmashedthem into the bookshelf above his head. Volumes shuddered. A heavy tomecrashedto the floor. Neither of them gave a damn.

Message received. Heyielded—not out of defeat, never defeat—but because letting this dragongorgeon him was the most intoxicating violence he'd ever chosen.

Her hunger was a living thing—panting, rabid, barely leashed.

He felt it in how her bodysealeditself to his: lethal, liquid curvesmeltingover him like silver poured straight onto burning iron. Her breastsmashedflat against his chest—hard, aching firm peaksstabbing through silk like dagger points, scraping him raw with every shuddering inhale she stole from his lungs.

Her hips rolled in slow, obscene circles, dragging her probablydripping, swollen cuntalong the brutal length of his cock—soakingthrough layers of fabric, claiminghim with slick, territorial heat that left him throbbing and leaking in return.

She tore her mouth away—just far enough to rasp air—lipsbattered crimson, slick with spit and the bright smear of his blood, eyesslitted feral jade, pupils engorged until only molten rings of green fire remained.

"You,"she croaked, voice was like ashattered glass and horny, quaking with bone-deep craving. "Whatareyou?"

Phei had no fucking answer.

She didn't want one either.

Shelungedagain—teeth on his jaw, scraping skin raw, tongue painting the column of his throat before shesuckedviciously, pulling dark, throbbingblooms of bruise to the surface.

Her clawsshreddedhis shirt—buttonsexplodinglike small-caliber rounds, clothtearingopen—baring flesh she immediatelyravaged. Mouth, teeth, tongueeverywhere—biting, sucking, painting his collarbones and chest withwet, possessive welts.

Phei's head slammed back against the shelf—booksgroaning, another statueshatteringon the floor—a low, brokengrowlripping out of him as his hips snapped forward, grinding hisleaking, straining cockinto the soft heat of her belly like he couldfuckthrough both their clothes.

Heclungto the shelf behind him. Held on like a man about to beconsumed alive.

She pulled back. Just enough. Just enough todevourhim with her gaze—those glowing, slittedjade eyes raking over his face like she was memorizing the exact shape of her next meal.

"Your shirt,"she said. Command, not question.

Fabricparted. Sheshovedit off his shoulders.

Andfroze.

The word never left her mouth, but it screamed across her face: Oh.

Her eyes blew wide. Breath snagged hard. Hands hovered—trembling—over the carved, lethal expanse of his chest like touching him might shatter the dream, like proving he was real would break her.

Phei's body was aweapon. And she had just realized she was holding the blade to her own throat.

The molting had forged him. Fucking forged him. One single night of brutal, bone-shattering, soul-tearingagony—screaming until his throat ruptured and bled, body seizing, convulsing, breaking as the card ripped him molecule by molecule and rebuilt him into something that had no goddamn right to exist on a seventeen-year-old frame.

The kind of physique that made master sculptors curse their own useless hands in envy and turned grown women into forgetful, trembling wrecks—forgetting their names, their vows, their gods, reduced to nothing but the primal, clawing need to touch, to taste, to shatter themselves against him.

Beautiful. Broken. Godlike. Blasphemous. A living contradiction sewn from scraps of paradise and the deepest pits of hell and I want it!

Dravenna stared at him like he was the final revelation she wasn't sure her sanity would survive.

"How," she breathed—voice cracked open, shaking apart—"are you even fuckingreal?"

Her fingers finallytouched. Trembling. Reverent. Terrified. The first brush wasghost-light—fingertipsskimming thefever-hotswell of his pecs, tracing the vicious edge where muscle met bone like she feared he'd dissolve if she dared press harder.

She exhaled—shattered, shuddering—like even that fragile contact had stolen every molecule of air from her lungs.

Phei's breathsnagged—hard, loud, audible—a raw hitch in his chest.

Her touch wasfire. Not clean-burning. Slow-searing, soul-deep, vicious. Every nerve the molting card hadweaponizedfor slaughter had beenretunedfor pleasure just as brutally—and now he waspayingthe price in full.

Orreapingthe reward.

Hard to tell when every feather-light stroke felt likelightning-tongueslicking across raw, exposed nerves.

"Years," Dravenna murmured—more to the gods than to him, voice low, thick, reverent—"years ofstarving, aching, clawinghunger... and then you walk into my office looking likethis."

Her palmsslammedflat against his chest. Pressed. Hard. Felt the wild, violentwar-drumof his heart trying topunch throughribs and skin and bury itself in her hands. From the new ability alone, heknew—he couldtastetheblack, coiled ragestill simmering inside her, waiting, ravenous, to beunleashed.

"It's not fair," she whispered—voicesplinteringlike glass under pressure.

Then shekissedhis collarbone. Soft. Almost holy. A trembling brush of lips against burning skin.

Thenlower.

Her mouth dragged—open, wet, ravenous—down the newly bared chest.

No finesse. No mercy.

Lips sealed and sucked, pulling vicious purple blooms across the thick slabs of his pecs. Teeth scraped, then sank—sharp enough to draw tiny beads of blood that she lapped up immediately, tonguecoilinglike something alive and starving.

Then came the tongue itself—longer than it had any right to be, impossibly flexible.

Itslithered. Slow. Deliberate. Hot, cooling, it tingled and burned at once—numbing the surface while setting every deeper layer onfire, curling around anippleto pinch and twist then dragged a lazy, obscene line straight down the center of his sternum, leaving a glistening trail that felt like liquid starlight mixed with frostbite.

She licked slow, sloppystripesdown the brutal trenches of his abs—tongue flattening wide to cover as much skin as possible, then narrowing to spear between the ridges, dipping into every carved valley like she was mining something precious.

Sheslitheredlower, tracing the sharp V of his hips, teasing the waistband of his pants with wet, deliberate flicks that made his cockjerkhard enough to bruise itself against the zipper.

Each kiss lingered—devoured—savoring like she was branding every inch of him into her soul with her mouth, in case the universe tried to steal him again.

Phei's head crashed back against the bookshelf. Fuck.

Books rattled. A low, broken groan tore from his throat despite his clenched teeth.

This wasn't kissing.

This wasworship.

This wasdesecration.

She was consuming him inch by trembling inch—pouring years of pent-up, feral, clawing hunger onto skin that had never known anything close. The tongue kept moving—relentless, exploratory, possessive—curling around the edge of a rib, flicking the underside, then sliding back up to lap at the hollow of his throat like she could taste his pulse.

Every pass left him slick, marked, claimed.

All he could do was stand there, muscles quaking, cockthrobbingso viciously against his pants it hurt, fighting the broken, animal sounds clawing up his throat—growls, whimpers, curses—while that impossible tongue paintedownershipacross his body in strokes no mortal could ever match.

Her lips found one center.

Shekissedit. Gently.

Then shebit—hard, sudden—teeth sinking into the fragile edge, ripping a raw, guttural groan from deep in his chest as pain and pleasure collided like thunder.

Shelickedthe bite. Soothedit. Thensucked—vicious, relentless—

Her tonguetrackedlower again—following the coarse, dark trail of hair arrowing down his abs, dippinginto the shadowed V-lines that plunged toward his waistband likegeography made for sin.

She nipped the tender skin there, sucked a deep, throbbing bruise into the hollow above his hip, moaned—low, broken, desperate—against him like she'd just tasted divinity and it was better than heaven.

Phei's handsfistedat his sides—knucklesbone-white, fighting every screaming instinct tograbher, slamher down, ruinher the way she wasunmakinghim.

She looked up. Slittedjade eyes glowing, feral. Lips swollen, glistening, smeared with spit and the faint copper of him.

She had thisunholyneed in her eyes.

"You taste likesin," she whispered—voice—"and I'm alreadyburningfor more."

Then she kissed him again—lower.

And Phei knew he wasalready burning.