"You're extraordinary," he says. Plain. Certain. Like he is telling me the time.
I don't know what to do with that and I'm crying and I don't have a ceiling to stare at because he's between me and it, so I look at the fire instead.
He moves. Gets between my thighs and pushes them wider with his shoulders and I think:yes, finally—and then he lowers his head and puts his mouth on me.
I go completely still.
Alphas don't do this. That is not a thought I have been holding consciously but it surfaces now with total clarity, because I have thirty-seven days of field intelligence on Mist Court and none of it prepared me for an alpha between my thighs looking at my pussy like it is something he is going to be thorough about.
His tongue parts me.
"Wait." My hands go to his hair, the wrong direction, trying to pull him back rather than forward. "You don't have to—alphas don't?—"
He ignores me completely. Both hands flatten on my inner thighs and push them wider and hold them open and he runs his tongue through me slowly—the full length, from the base upward—and the cold of his tongue against the heat of me is a shock that goes straight to my spine. He does it again. Then again, learning the shape of me, and the sounds I make are genuinely shocked, not just the shock of pleasure but the specific overwhelm of someone who had no framework for what is currently happening to her.
"This isn't—" My hands tighten in his hair. "That's not something you have to?—"
He finds my clit.
His tongue circles it once, slow and cold, and the sound I make bounces off the ceiling. He does it again, pressing slightly harder, and my hips try to jerk upward and his hands hold them flat. He settles in—his tongue working in slow deliberate circles, learning what makes my thighs shake and returning to it—and he makes a sound against me.
Low. Satisfied. The sound of a male completely absorbed in what he is doing, and the vibration of that sound goes directly through the point his tongue is working and I lose the sentence I was making.
He isenthusiastic. That is the word that arrives and it is the most destabilising thing that has ever happened to me—not reluctant, not perfunctory, but specifically, deliberately enthusiastic, like he has been waiting to do this, like he intends to do it well and at length. I have no professional distance against it. I had no category for it. I could not have built a defence against something I never thought to defend against, and he is licking my clit in slow thorough circles with thepatience of six centuries and the cold of his mouth against the heat of me is making everything twice what it should be.
My hips rock up against his hands before I decide to rock them. Pressing toward his mouth, trying to get more friction, and he holds me flat and gives me exactly as much as he decides and no more. The shame of it is specific and particular—the shame of an intelligence operative who prided herself on control grinding against an enemy lord's hands because his tongue is on her clit—and it does nothing to stop me grinding.
He licks down through me, the flat of his tongue running slow and thorough over everything, tasting, and then back up to circle my clit again and suck. His lips close around it and he sucks—gently first, then with more pressure, finding the exact amount that makes my thighs tremble against his shoulders—and the sensation is so specific and obliterating that I yank his hair and he hums against me and the vibration of the hum goes everywhere at once.
"Please." Not asking him to stop. The word arrives without a sentence. More. Everything. "Please?—"
He licks down to my entrance and presses his tongue inside.
Just the tip, just briefly, and the cold of it inside me makes my walls clench against nothing and he feels that—I know he feels it by the sound he makes, low and interested—and then he works his way back up and sucks my clit and I am grabbing the headboard with one hand because I need something to hold onto that isn't him.
Two fingers press inside me. Cold and precise, curling immediately to find the place that makes my legs want to close, while his mouth stays on my clit and the dual sensation of his tongue circling and his fingers working inside me is something I cannot think around. I am pulling his hair hard enough to hurt and he does not stop. I am shaking and rocking my hips against his hands and making a continuous stream of sounds—whimpers andpleaseand his name, none of which I am deciding on—and the shame of the sounds is real, the shame of being this loud in someone else's house, of having no control over any of it, and it doesn't matter, it doesn't stop me.
His tongue works my clit with the same focused patience he gives everything and his fingers curl inside me and it is the combination that does it—his cold tongue and the cold of his fingers and the relentless deliberate attention, the sense that he is not in any hurry and will be here all night if that is what it takes.
"I'm going to—" The orgasm cresting, my body wound so tight it aches. "Please, please?—"
He sucks harder and crooks his fingers and I come apart.
My whole body arches off the bed, his hands the only anchor, and the sound I make has no shape—just the sound of thirty-seven days of wanting and the obliterating shock of an alpha's mouth taking me apart in a way I had no category for. I shudder through it with both hands fisted in his hair and his tongue working through every wave, and I cannot stop the sounds, cannot stop my hips grinding against his face, cannot stop the tears that arrive from somewhere without being invited.
He doesn't stop.
The oversensitivity hits vicious and immediate and I try to push his head away. His hands pin my hips flat and he keeps going—tongue circling my swollen clit, fingers still moving inside me—and the sensation is past pleasure, past too much, into something that makes me sob and writhe and scrabble at his hair and beg him with actual words.
"I can't—please, I can't, it's too much?—"
He lifts his head.
Looks at me along the length of my body. Chin wet with me. He does not wipe it.
"Again," he says, and lowers his head.
He licks through me first this time—slow, almost gentle, the flat of his tongue easing through the oversensitivity before his lips find my clit again. Small circles, building gradually, his fingers curling inside me at the same rhythm. I am saying his name over and over, the only word I have left, and my hips are rolling against his hands now because I have stopped trying to fight it. My body is rocking into his mouth. My thighs are shaking against his shoulders. The shame of it is enormous and present and does absolutely nothing.