Turn 16 of 21

Advance

The rhythm has changed. MC feels it before she understands it — a shift in the cadence of Valko's hips, each thrust deeper than the last, slower, more deliberate, as though his body is preparing for something that requires space and patience and the full length of him seated inside her. His growl has dropped in pitch again, settling into a register that she no longer hears but feels, a vibration that travels through the mat and up through her spine and pools at the base of her skull. His hands have moved to her hips, gripping with a pressure that will leave marks, and he is holding her still — not roughly, not carelessly, but with the focused intensity of someone who needs her to not move while something happens inside his body that he cannot stop. "It's —" Valko starts, and his voice gives out. He presses his forehead to her chest, between her collarbones, and she can feel his jaw working against her skin, the muscles in his face contracting around teeth that are too large for a human mouth. His breathing has changed — no longer the deep, slow rhythm of his transformed lungs but something faster, ragged, punched out of him in bursts that coincide with each roll of his hips. The pigment lines across his torso are blazing now, not pulsing but sustained, a dark luminescence that turns the skin between them into a landscape of shadow and heat. She can feel the change happening at the point where their bodies are joined — a pressure that wasn't there before, a swelling at the base of him that builds with each thrust, growing, pressing outward against her from the inside. MC's hands tighten in his hair. The sensation is building inside her too — not just the pressure but a corresponding wave of heat and fullness that climbs with each moment, each deep slow push, and her legs tighten around his hips and her back arches off the mat and she can feel herself opening around him in ways she didn't know she could. The gym is a furnace around them, the air thick and shimmering, the mirrors showing nothing but heat distortion and the single fused shape of their bodies on the mat. Everything has contracted to the space between their bodies, the point of connection, the growing pressure that Valko is fighting and surrendering to in equal measure. "I told you," he says against her skin, and the words are broken apart by the rhythm of his hips, each syllable delivered on a thrust that pushes deeper than the last. "I told you there was a point — where I can't —" His voice fractures. His arms are trembling, the transformed muscles shaking with the effort of holding his weight above her, and the sound that comes out of him is raw and terrified and desperate. "I need you to stay. I need you to — not move — when it —" He doesn't finish. The pressure at the base of him has built to a point where she can feel it clearly, a swelling that stretches her around him with each thrust, each retreat, each return, and the sensation is overwhelming — too much and not enough and something her body recognizes on an instinctual level that bypasses thought entirely. Valko's mouth finds her neck, his canines pressing against her pulse point, and the growl that fills his chest is constant now, a sustained note of need and fear and surrender that vibrates through every cell of her body. He is close. They both are. And the thing that is building inside him, the thing he warned her about, the point where his body won't let him stop, is here.