His journey south was a slow, deliberate pilgrimage. He kissed the gentle swell of her stomach, the delicate dip of her navel, his tongue painting a wet path through the valley between her hips. He settled between her thighs, the scent of her arousal—sweet, musky, utterly intoxicating—filling his senses. He memorized the sight of her, open and glistening for him,her warm brown eyes heavy-lidded with a blend of trust and desperate hunger.
The first taste of her was a revelation. She was honey and heat, a flavor so uniquely her it made his tiger roar in primal satisfaction. His restraint, already frayed, began to unravel thread by thread as he explored her with his tongue. He learned the shape of her folds, the sensitive bud of her clit, the way she trembled when he flicked it just so. Her hands clenched in his hair, the sharp pull a counterpoint to the lush softness under his mouth. Pain and pleasure intertwined, stoking the wild fire of the mate bond that thrummed between them like a live wire.
Her reactions were his undoing. The way her breath shattered into gasps. The broken, pleading moans that meantmore, don’t stop. The fierce grip of her hands claiming him as surely as he was claiming her. This was not a conquest. It was a communion. For the first time in his life, connection was not a strategic alliance or a fleeting physical release. It was body and soul, a giving and receiving that filled a hollow space in his chest he had refused to acknowledge.
When her climax took her, it was a glorious, violent surrender. A cry tore from her throat, raw and musical. Her body bowed and her thighs tensed around his head, and the rhythmic clenching of her inner muscles against his tongue was a victory more profound than any won on a battlefield. He drank her in, savoring every tremor and every choked gasp of his name.
But he gave her no time to float back to earth. The bond demanded more. He surged up her body, his own need a throbbing, insistent pressure. He caged her beneath him, his gaze locking onto hers. His voice was strained with a control he was rapidly losing. “Are you ready for me, Faith?”
She didn’t answer with words. Her eyes held his, dark and sure, as her hand wrapped around his hard cock. Her touchwas electric. She guided him to her slick entrance, a silent, undeniable confirmation.
He pressed forward, inch by devastating inch. He watched her face, every flicker of sensation—the initial stretch, the moment of overwhelming fullness. Her lips parted on a loud, sharp gasp.
“You’re… a lot,” she breathed, her nails digging into his shoulders.
“You feel perfectly made for me,” he groaned, the truth of it resonating in his very bones.
As he sheathed himself fully within her, the mate bond exploded. It was no longer a hum but a brilliant, pulsing current of energy that connected their cores. His tiger nearly burst from his skin in triumphant satisfaction.
This. This is what was missing. This is why the past twenty years were a hollow performance.
She fit him. Not just the physical join of their bodies, which was a sublime, tight heat, but energetically. The relentless drive of his nature found its counterpoint in her creative, resilient spirit.
“Move,” she commanded, her voice husky with desire.
He obeyed willingly, a future king yielding to his future queen. Under the twin moons, in the ancient clearing that felt divinely ordained, he began to move. His thrusts were controlled intensity—deep, powerful, but carefully measured. He needed her to feel held by his strength, not overwhelmed by it. Each roll of his hips was a promise, each slide a claim.
He had never felt so terrifyingly, vibrantly alive. This was not duty. This was not a political necessity. This was raw, mutual hunger tempered by a fledgling, profound trust. The scent of their joining, the sound of her pleasure, the sight of her hair fanned out on the moss like a dark crown—it was everything.
Her second peak built faster, crashing over her with a force that made her scream. Her internal muscles clenched around him in rhythmic pulses, a sweet, milking pressure that shattered the last of his legendary control. As her ecstasy claimed her, his own was breaking free.
A wave of pure possession tore through him. His claws elongated from his fingertips, sharp and lethal, the instinct to mark her, to bind her to him for eternity, was a physical ache in his hands. One deliberate scratch at the height of passion, and the mate bond would seal. The politics would settle. His future would be secure.
His tiger roared for it.
But her eyes, though glazed with pleasure, were trusting. She had not consented to forever. She had consented tonow.
With a growl that was equal parts agony and devotion, he forced the claws to recede. The act of restraint was the hardest battle he’d ever fought. He buried his face in the curve of her neck as his own release ripped through him. He pulsed deep inside her, spending himself with a series of rough, helpless shudders. He claimed her in the most fundamental way his body could, filling her with his seed, but the mate bond, though blazing brightly, remained incomplete.
He collapsed atop her, then quickly rolled, gathering her against his side. Tremors still coursed through his muscles. She was stroking his back, her touch soothing the wild beast within. He held her tightly, their hearts hammering a frantic, synchronizing rhythm against each other’s skin.
Six days.
The thought was a quiet drumbeat beneath the roar of fading ecstasy. He had six days to prove to her that his world was not a cage, but a kingdom she could help him build. Six days to offer a crown and win not just her body, but her fearless, beautifulheart. The challenge ignited a fire in him that burned even hotter than desire.
He would prove himself worthy.
ELEVEN
FAITH
Steam rose from the marble shower the next morning, transforming Faith’s bathroom into a sanctuary of heat and mist. The water cascaded over her shoulders in a relentless, soothing rhythm, washing away the lingering scent of moss and night air that clung to her skin. She braced one palm against the cool tile, letting the heat penetrate muscles that felt newly awakened and newly claimed.
Every inch of her body hummed with awareness. A pleasant soreness bloomed between her thighs, a tender reminder of Kovrak’s impressive size and the way he’d filled her so completely. Her skin still tingled where his hands had mapped her, and where his mouth had worshipped. She’d never imagined that passion with a white tiger prince would feel so... intentional.
The memory unfolded behind her closed eyelids like a dream she couldn’t quite believe was real. The ancient clearing. Twin moons casting silver light across his powerful frame. The way he’d looked at her—not with the hunger she’d expected from an apex predator, but with something deeper. Something that made her feel precious rather than conquered.
“God,” she whispered to the steam-filled air.