Lunara shiveredas the floor changed beneath her bare feet—from smooth, timber floorboards to the cool, stone tiles of the washroom. Anticipation quickened her breath, threatening to force a stifled laugh from her.
When they finally paused, Brand’s lips were at her ear. “Ready?”
He’d insisted on the element of surprise. Of bringing her up to his—their—chamber for the first time and giving her a full view of her mating marks.
She’d tried to catch glimpses here and there, tucking her chin to see them, but to no avail.
Her cheeks ached from the grin that hadn’t left her face in what felt like hours.“Yes.”
His hands dropped away—air rushing in to brush her cheeks and eyelids against the warmth he’d left there—but she kept her eyes closed, drawing it out.
“Good idea.” He swept her hair aside, tongue landing against her nape, teeth sinking into the spot where neck met shoulder. “You are entirely too clothed.”
Calloused fingers trailed along the neckline of her dress, tugging it down. She popped free of the bodice, her nipples hardening in an instant, goosebumps following the trail of fabric as it left her body entirely.
One of his hands retraced the path, so slowly, drawing a line up between her breasts. “Lookat you,” he rasped.
Blinking, she finally beheld herself, awe bolting through her.
An upturned, crescent moon was nestled against her sternum, its bottom curve radiating out and down with sunbeam spikes that just kissed the swell of her cleavage—except for the center point, which dove between them, almost all the way to her navel.
His chest to her back, Brand sank one hand into her hair, his lips devouring hers as he walked them closer to the gilded mirror above the basin. He groaned into her mouth when she reached behind to grasp onto one of his horns, his breaths sawing in and out of him by the time they crashed against the long counter.
He broke away, jaw clenching. “Look,” he urged, head tilting towards the mirror as he pinched her chin. “Look at yourself, now marked eternally. Look, and see how Solyrian and the Sisters have blessed us.” His thumb caught on her lower lip, digging in.
Another gasp. She hadn’t even thought to look at her face.
She pressed shaking fingers to the mark there, the pointed ray a match for the one down her torso. Brand grabbed her other hand and brought it to his own mouth, and her eyes went wide.
No, not a match for her own, but a match forhis.
“They will sing songs in your name,” he whispered, gaze on her stunned reflection. “Ballads, for the little moon bathed in sunlight. Our prayer was answered.”
“How? I didn’t realize it was literal.” Her head shook with disbelief. With wonder.
Brand leaned back only far enough to pull the tunic from his body, the fabric ripping as it caught on his horns. “Nor did I, but you won’t hear me utter a single word of complaint.” He shucked his dark trousers with a sigh. “Though the color is curious. I think I love it.”
Indeed, her markings were not the burnt red of Brand’s settled ones as she would have expected, but rather a deep charcoal that simmered with a concentrated version of the iridescence that had ever lain beneath the surface of her skin. Stark against her paleness, they seemed almost alive, glowing faintly along the edges and throbbing as if they had their own pulse.
So different.Other.
A tendril of that earlier self-doubt trickled in, thewhat ifssnaking their way around her throat.
Brand stilled, obviously feeling it too. “What is it?”
“Can you really forgive me so easily?” she whispered, needing to hear him say it. “Just like that?”
His eyes locked on hers in the mirror, devotion shining there. “Little moon, nothing has ever been so easy. Now…” He cupped her heavy breasts, plucking at the pebbled peaks. “Have you ever watchedyourselfas someone made love to you?” His voice was like gravel, the sound scraping deliciously over her and pooling low in her belly.
Lunara wanted to weep as her worry melted away. Shitting stars, she’d missed him.
“Does watching our likenesses count?”
Brand bit his lip, pinching that parallel mark between straight teeth. “Not quite.”
“Then never,” she said.
She couldn’t manage any more than that. Not with the way his hands had begun roaming, sinking into her hips for leverage as he ground his hard length against her.
