“I'm still trying to make sense of it myself.” Chase fell silent for a moment, his eyebrows drawing together in thought. “Connie, do your hands feel cold?”
Connie blinked at the apparent non sequitur, then realized that she was shivering. “All of me feels cold.”
Chase swore under his breath. “I'm an idiot. You're going into shock. Hold on a second, I need to talk to someone.”
She expected him to pull out his phone, but instead he just stared off into the distance, his eyes going unfocused. After a moment, he nodded.
“Right,” he said. Before she knew what was happening, he'd scooped her up, without any apparent effort. “Hugh— he's our paramedic—says you need to lie down and warm up. Let's get you inside.”
There were so many questions to ask—how he could have a conversation with someone who wasn't even there, how she could have failed to see a dragon attacking her plane, where the hypothetical dragon could have come from in the first place—but abruptly, she was just too tired. She leaned her head against Chase's shoulder, closing her eyes.
“Here we are,” she heard him say, and then she was sinking into a deep, soft bed. She didn't resist as he pulled off her shoes and draped a thick down comforter over her. “Feeling any better?”
“Still cold,” Connie managed to get out, through her chattering teeth.
The bed dipped as he slid under the cover next to her. He curled around her, fitting his long, lean body against the curves of her back. Pressed against his warm torso, Connie's shivers finally started to ease. She burrowed her head under the covers, like a little kid hiding from monsters in the dark. Just for a moment, all she wanted to do was pretend that none of it had ever happened.
As her own shivers subsided, Connie became aware that Chase was shaking, ever so slightly.
“Hey,” she said. “Are you okay?”
“I thought I'd lost you. I was fighting off the wyvern, and then I saw the plane going down, and I didn't think I was going to get to you in time…” He tightened his grip on her, burying his face in her hair. “Oh God, Connie, I nearly lost you.”
She rolled over in his arms, their faces only inches away from each other. She could tell he was trying to control his expression, but his black eyes were raw and vulnerable. For all his strength and uncanny powers, it was clear that the mere thought of losing her struck him to the heart.
“But you didn't lose me.” Connie put her hand on the side of his face, feeling how warm he was, how alive. “I'm here. We're both here.”
Overcome by a sudden, powerful need, she leaned in and kissed him. He crushed her against his strong body, his mouth devouring hers desperately, as if he couldn't bear to ever let her go again.
She had a deep, instinctive desire to reaffirm life in the most basic of ways after her brush with death. Connie fumbled with the zip of his flight suit, jerking it open. The heat of his skin was the only thing that could drive away the ice in her soul.
She slid her palm down his muscled abs, and under the waistband of his boxers. He was hard already, so thick she could barely get her hand around him. Her pussy throbbed, desperate to be filled, as she worked him fast and urgently.
He knew exactly what she wanted. His powerful hands ripped her own flight suit off, the tough material tearing as easily as damp tissue paper. He gathered her breasts in his hands, pinching and teasing her erect nipples through the lace cups of her bra with delicious roughness. His mouth was hard on hers, demanding, taking.
She squeezed her fist around his cock, feeling the contrast of the velvet-soft skin over the iron-hard shaft. He growled low in his throat, his hips jerking involuntarily. Breaking off from the kiss for a moment, he grabbed her buttocks, lifting her up and spreading her wide.
He didn't even bother to tear off her panties. The wide head of his cock shoved the thin silk to one side, pushing deep into her wet folds with a single powerful thrust. His thick shaft impaled her to her core, stretching her with a pleasure so intense it was almost painful.
Unlike last time, he gave her no time to adjust to his overwhelming size. He thrust savagely, uncontrollably into her. Connie arched her back, clenching around his demanding cock with equal passion, overwhelmed by sensation. It was exactly what she needed, to lose herself utterly, even if only for a moment.
“Never again,” Chase snarled, his fingers digging into her hips almost hard enough to bruise. “Never losing you. Never. Mine. Mine!”
Yes! Connie's soul sang back, echoing his fierce possessiveness. Every fiber of her being yearned to tell him yes, yes!
She was his, and he was hers, and nothing would ever separate them.
Yes.
Yet there was still a bit of her that held back. After a lifetime of having to be the cautious one, there was always a cold-eyed part of her mind that dispassionately evaluated every situation.
That sensible inner voice whispered that it didn't matter how urgent his body was on hers now, how fervently he gasped promises. In a day or two, someone else would catch his eye. It would be someone else's ear he whispered into, someone else's body he strained against.
When Chase gasped “Mine!” she knew he meant it… for now.
But if she replied yes, she would mean it forever.
Connie bit down hard on Chase's shoulder, stifling the words that wanted to rise in her throat, even as ecstasy swept her away.