“You’re staring,” she murmured.
“Paying respects,” he said. “And memorizing.”
Color warmed her cheeks. “Come here, lion.”
He came gladly. Kissing deep, hands mapping familiar territory like a pilgrim returned to a holy place. She dragged his sweater off and spread her palm over his chest, fingers tracing an old claw mark. He caught her wrist and placed her hand on his heart.
“This is yours,” he said.
“Sounds like mine,” she said, because of course she made a joke when her eyes went soft. He loved her for that too.
They made easy work of the rest—buttons, zips, the nervous laugh when his belt caught, the low curse when he kissed her ribs to distract. Heat built between them, the kind that made patience feel noble and unbearable at once.
He lifted her off the bar and carried her the handful of steps to the hearth rug, because some things deserved a proper altar and firelight was one of them. Snow pressed pale against the glass. Pine crackled. She lay back on the rug with her black hair, bare skin, a lioness at ease because she chose to be.
“Look at me,” she said.
He did. Every time he blinked he’d see this again. He put his hands on her thighs and pressed them open, not forcing, asking. She opened for him, steady and sure, like trust.
He bent, kissed the inside of her knee, the pulse at her thigh, the place low on her belly that always made her breath catch. She dragged her nails along his scalp and swore, and the sound put him on his knees in more ways than one.
She tasted exactly as he had remembered. She was already slick with sweetness and he let his tongue linger and flick up every bit of her.
“Fuuuccckkkk,” Maeve moaned as he felt her quiver beneath his suctioned lips right at her clit. Then she hit.
Her hips rolled against his mouth as she forced his tongue deeper in side of her. She came so hard and violently that Dante bit his lip, but he could care less.
Her body rolls lightened as her convulsing hips throbbed with her release less and less.
She pulled him up with a fist in his hair when she was shaking, eyes molten. He braced above her, breath ragged, forehead against hers.
“Condom,” she said, practical even when she was wrecked.
“Already got it,” he said, fumbling it on with a muttered prayer and a grin he couldn’t help when she rolled her eyes at him. “Don’t laugh. I’m a gentleman.”
“You’re a menace,” she said, tugging him down. “Now shut up.”
He lined himself up and eased in slow, watching her face for anything but yes.
Maeve was a slick, tight opening that welcomed every inch of him in.
She moaned as he slid deeper and deeper. When his shaft was completely covered, he pulsed hard a slow against her, keeping it shallow. Making her want more.
She arched, mouth breaking open, hand flying to his shoulder. He swore into her throat and had to stop halfway, breathe, let her body take him, let this be careful for three beats before it turned feral. She brought her heel to his lower back and dug in.
“More,” she said, voice low and sure. “All of it.”
That’s when he thrusted hard and fast, driving deeply into her as her moans turned into pleas.
It was the kind of rhythm that belonged to two alphas who finally stopped pretending they didn’t want to win the same game. Power met power, not to conquer, to match. Her hands found his back, then the back of his neck, then his jaw, pulling him down so there was no space left to hide in. He drove deeper and she rose to meet him, and something old and golden woke in the air around them. Either the Veil’s attention, or simply the rightness of being exactly where fate and choice overlapped.
“Tell me again,” he said, voice breaking as she tightened around him. “Say it, Maeve.”
“I choose you,” she said, fierce and tender all at once. “I love you.”
“I love you,” he answered, and the words tasted like victory and surrender in the same breath.
He shifted his weight and the angle changed; she gasped his name. Snow brushed the glass and slid away. Fire painted their skin. He felt the pull start low in his spine, felt her shiver around him, felt the inexorable climb toward the edge they’d been circling since the first time she’d told him to get out and he’d stayed.
