“I’m not changing my mind.”I wrap my legs around his hips, pulling him closer.“I want this.I wantyou.”
He enters me slowly, achingly slowly, giving me time to adjust to the stretch and the cold of him.It should be uncomfortable,isuncomfortable for a moment, but then my body yields, accepting him, and the sensation shifts to something else entirely.
Fullness.Completion.Right.
“Fuck,” he breathes against my neck.“You feel—I can’t—”
“Move,” I urge, nails digging into his shoulders.“Please move.”
He does, pulling almost all the way out before sliding back in, setting a rhythm that’s somehow both gentle and urgent.Each thrust drives the breath from my lungs, each withdrawal leaves me aching for his return.We find our tempo together, bodies learning each other’s language, and soon we’re moving as one, his hips rolling forward as mine tilt up to meet him, a dance older than words.
His hand slides back to the mark, fingers pressing against it as he drives deeper, and the dual sensation of pressure inside and outside, cold and burning, pain and pleasure, makes stars explode behind my eyelids.
“There,” I gasp.“Yes, right there, don’t stop—”
“Never,” he growls, and the promise in his voice undoes me.
Pleasure builds in waves, each one higher than the last, until I’m drowning in sensation.His mouth finds mine again, swallowing my moans, and I taste winter and darkness andhim.The bond flares between us, emotions bleeding back and forth in a feedback loop that amplifies everything.
I feel his pleasure as he feels mine.Feel his desperate love and bone-deep fear of losing me.Feel the moment he surrenders completely to what we are, what we’re becoming.
“I love you,” he says against my lips, the words torn from him.“God help me, I love you.”
“I love you too,” I gasp back, and the confession shatters something between us.
He moves faster, harder, each thrust hitting deeper, and I meet him stroke for stroke, chasing the pleasure that’s building to impossible heights.His thumb finds my clit again, circling with perfect pressure, and that’s all it takes.
Pleasure crests and breaks over me in a wave that steals sound, steals thought, steals everything but the feel of him inside me and around me andwithme.My fingers dig into his shoulders, clinging to him, to the moment, to the tiny pocket of time where I am nothing but sensation and choice.
Through the bond, I feel him follow me over the edge, his own release crashing through us both.He buries his face in my neck, my name on his lips, and for one perfect moment we are completely, utterly together.
The mark explodes in light behind my eyes.
For an instant, I’m nowhere and everywhere, above the ice, below it, in the dark water and on the surface, feeling something vast and furious slam against an invisible barrier.I see the Khorvath in its prison, feel its rage, feel the seal holding but weakening, feel the warden power in my blood surging in response.
Then it shatters.
Not the barrier.Not me.
The connection to the creature.The clawing, invasive presence that’s been living in my mark since the moment it touched me.
The mark settles back into my skin, still warm, still glowing faintly, but no longer an open wound.No longer a doorway.The Khorvath’s voice is gone from my head, replaced by something else, something stronger, cleaner,mine.
Vex’s forehead comes to rest against mine, his breath ragged despite not needing to breathe.His hand stays over my shoulder, palm splayed as if holding the world together through that one point of contact.Through the bond, I feel his wonder.His relief.His lingering fear.
“You okay?”he whispers, echoing the question from last night outside my door.
It lands differently now.Means something more.
“Yeah,” I breathe, my voice rough and satisfied.“I think...I think I am.”I stroke his hair back from his face, studying him in the dim light.“The mark.It’s different.Can you feel it?”
He lifts his head, eyes searching mine.Then his hand moves, fingers gentle as they trace the pattern on my shoulder.“The cold is gone.The Khorvath’s presence, it’s not feeding through it anymore.”
“What does that mean?”
“I don’t know.”He shifts, rolling onto his side and pulling me with him so we’re facing each other.“But whatever just happened, whatever the bond did when we...”He trails off, a faint flush coloring his pale cheeks.
“When we had sex?”I finish, smiling slightly.
