“What are you—oh god?—”
His tongue is on me again, licking up the mess we made. It’s obscene and possessive and so fucking hot that I feel myself getting aroused again despite having just come.
“Can’t waste this,” he murmurs against me. “Been too long since I’ve tasted us together.”
His fingers join his tongue, pushing his come back inside me, and I’m writhing against his mouth, oversensitive but unable to stop myself from chasing another orgasm.
“Bones, I can’t—it’s too much?—”
“You can.” His voice is firm. “One more, swan. Give me one more.”
He focuses on my clit with his tongue while his fingers work me in both holes, and impossibly, I feel the tension building again. My hands fist in his hair, holding him against me as I grind into his face.
“That’s it. Use me. Take what you need.”
I come again, my whole body shuddering with the force of it. When I finally still, he presses one last kiss to my inner thigh before crawling up my body.
“You OK?” he asks, brushing hair from my sweaty face.
“Pretty fucking amazing, actually.”
He grins, looking pleased with himself. “Good.”
“Smug bastard.”
“Filthy princess.”
We still have so much to figure out. But I’m too sated, too exhausted, too content to do anything except pull him down for a lazy kiss that tastes like both of us.
“I love you, swan,” he says against my lips. “Should have said it then. Maybe even years ago.”
The words slam into my chest.
I’ve never said it before. Not to anyone. Not like this—raw and real and terrifying in its permanence.
In ballet, love was transactional. Directors loved you if you were perfect. Partners loved you if you made them look good. The audience loved you if you gave them what they expected.
But Bones loves me because I’m me. The pain in his ass who just fake-fell down his stairs. Who tried to cut a tracker out of my own back. Who’s messy and wild and doesn’t have their shit together.
He loves me for all the parts I spent years trying to tame.
“I love you too.” The words crack on the way out. “God, Bones, I love you too.”
His arms tighten around me like he’ll never let go.
And I know in my marrow I don’t want him to.
He pulls me against his side, and I drape myself across him. His heart is still racing under my cheek. I lift my head, finally getting a proper look at the tattoo I only glimpsed earlier. The word swan is still there in small script over his heart, but now it’s surrounded by black feathers. Not a full swan—just feathers, maybe a dozen of them, scattered across his chest. Some are falling, drifting down toward his ribs. Others are floating upward, toward his collarbone, like they’re being caught by an updraft.
I trace one with my fingertip. “When did you get this?”
“March.” His voice is quiet. “Three months after you left.”
Three months. Right around the time I would have been doing my most reckless shit in New York, trying to get his attention.
“Why feathers?”
“Because you were gone.” His hand covers mine, pressing my palm flat against his chest. “You flew away and all I had left were pieces of you. Memories. The ghost of you.” He pauses. “But some of them are rising. See? I couldn’t decide if you were falling away from me or if you’d eventually come back. So I got both.”
