"I need you to hold me." The words pour out of her, broken and raw. "I need you to love me. I need to stop being strong and just let someone take care of me for once. I need you, Cadeon. I need you so much it terrifies me."
Seven chimes. Eight.
"I have you." I thrust deeper, harder. "I love you. I'm holding you. You're safe."
Nine chimes. Ten.
"Don't let go."
"Never." Eleven. "Never, Iris. You're mine. I'm yours. Forever."
Twelve.
The bond explodes.
I feel it happen at the same moment our climaxes crash through us. The old bond shatters like glass, two centuries of domination and control and careful distance burning away in an instant. And in its place, something new forms. Something golden and warm and mutual.
Partnership. Equals. Choice.
I feel her as I have never felt her before. Not just her pleasure, though that is overwhelming enough. I feel her love, her fear, her desperate hope. I feel her walls finally crumbling, feel her letting go of the control she has clung to for so long. I feel her trust, absolute and complete, as she surrenders herself to me.
And she feels me. All of me. The darkness and the light. The centuries of pain and the fragile, growing hope. The love I havefor her, so fierce it frightens me. The choice I am making, again and again, with every beat of her heart.
We are undone together.
I spill inside her with a groan that might be her name or might just be sound. She shatters around me, her body clenching, her voice rising in a cry that echoes off the walls. The bond pulses between us, bright as sunlight, warm as her magic, strong as iron.
For a long moment, we simply exist. Tangled together on the rug before the fire, still connected in every way two people can be connected. I can feel her heart racing. Can feel her tears on my shoulder. Can feel her joy and relief and bone-deep exhaustion.
"Cadeon?" Her voice is small. Wondering.
"Yes?"
"I can feel you. Really feel you. It's..." She trails off, searching for words.
"Like coming home," I finish.
"Yes." She pulls back to look at me, and her eyes are bright with tears but her smile is radiant. "Exactly like that."
I kiss her gently. Reverently. The kiss of someone who has been given a gift beyond price.
"The bond transformed," she breathes against my mouth.
"It did."
"We did it."
"You did it." I brush her hair back from her face. "You let go. You let me catch you."
"It was terrifying."
"I know."
"It was also..." She laughs, watery and bright. "It was also kind of amazing."
"Only kind of?"
"Don't fish for compliments."
