“At least nine more things, remember?” he said, eyes crinkling into a smile. “But you can take as much time as you want.”
“That was only one thing?” I blurted out, surprised. It had felt like quite a lot of things.
Taran laughed harder, then pulled me down to a hard kiss. It was wet and thorough, and the thought of what that mouth had just been doing on me made me squirm in a shivery, dazed way. With Taran’s tongue in my mouth, I was daring enough to drop my hand back to his waistband and undo the knot of his trouser laces. I couldn’t have done it while he was looking at me, and I was glad for his hand cupping my jaw and the way I could feel it tighten when I finally gripped him.
His breath caught, and I savored the jerk of his body when I rolled my palm along the feel of silk over metal.
“Like this?” I asked against his mouth, opening my eyes just enough to take in his heavy-lidded nod.
“Exactly like that,” he said, breath clipped.
I’d imagined this, though I wasn’t brave enough to admit it. How he’d look. How his face would change—jaw taut, lips parted, eyes nearly closed. I had only the barest hints of what he’d be like under the grip of desire. On a few mornings when he’d come to wrap his bigger body around mine with all our blankets over us both—I’m cold, Taran—I’d pondered what he’d do if I’d pressed a finger to my lips and slipped a hand between us like I was doing now. Would he have let me love him? Could we have been quiet enough? Could I have learned then how his breathing changed when I tightened my hand and slid it toward me?
His hips moved unconsciously as I stroked him, reaching for a rhythm I longed to learn. I greedily absorbed every detail, the exact angle of his thick eyelashes over his cheeks, the color of the flush that stained his neck.
“What else?” I whispered, my voice sounding dry to my own ears. I hadn’t realized how muchwantI could feel from this position on my knees, my hand around him, but I knew there was more.I wanted more. I’d told him I wanted everything, but I sensed he was waiting for something. “Should I—” I moved to suggest curling over him, putting my mouth on him like he had on me, but he stopped me with one hand on my shoulder, the other covering mine where it was still wrapped around his length.
“Not if you don’t want this to be over in the next thirty seconds,” he said, voice tight.
“What, then?”
With slitted eyes, Taran pulled me down next to him. His hand swept in a long stroke down my body, curling under my backside to hitch my hip against his and pull my thigh over his leg. I unthinkingly let go of him when his fingertips ghosted over my core, and he took my hand with his own to bring it back.
“Please don’t stop,” he said, nipping my lower lip in rebuke. “I think I might actually die if you stop, and you’d feel guilty about that later.”
He was hesitating for some reason, and I wasn’t distracted even when his fingers began to rub slick patterns between my thighs.
“You saideverything,” I reminded him. “Did you change your mind?”
“Darling, I can’t change my mind, I’m Stoneborn. And you are very naked and tempting and I’m trying hard to keep my head about this when all I want to do is fall on you like a ravenous beast.” His breath came faster when my hand moved more quickly, a reaction my scientific mind treasured and wanted to explore more completely.
“I don’t mind if you lose control,” I said, daintily biting into the large muscle of his shoulder. I thought I’d like that, actually, seeing Taran with no masks or pretense. Knowing that I had done that to him.
“You have no idea whether you would mind,” he said, body jerking when I bit down harder, and he pulled my legs apart enoughto press one finger inside me, a frictionless glide that nearly had me forgetting my important goals again. I twisted against the exquisite curl of his hand in my body, trying not to lose myself in it. I could have more, and I wanted more. “Consider that it is very, very important to me that you like this, so that you want to do this again in a few hours, and again in the morning, and also every day for the rest of eternity.”
“Why are you worried?” I asked, firmly pushing aside the question of whether I’d get him for eternity or even one more night out of my mind.
Taran cast a skeptical glance down his body, where I did not quite have my hand closed all the way around him. “This might hurt a little.”
I had to stifle my giggle, because I didn’t want him to take it the wrong way, but that concern had been the furthest from my mind. With everything that he’d seen me survive, he was worried that I couldn’t muster the same courage any other woman would before her wedding night?
“I don’t think it will,” I told him honestly, because the only pain I’d felt so far was the ache of desire, and that was only growing for every moment that he didn’t touch me like I wanted him to. “But if it does, I expect you to be very brave about it.”
That made him laugh, and a smile that was nearly painful for its tenderness spread across his face. His green eyes were bright and loving as he finally rolled to kick off his trousers and cover my body with his own.
“We’ll both be brave, then,” he whispered into my ear before ducking his head to suck on the tender skin of my neck. His knees parted my thighs, and he shifted his weight to one forearm so that he could pull one of my legs over his hip. He lined himself up with me and held the position with taut muscles and his lip caughtbetween his teeth until I wrapped my arms around his shoulders and lifted my hips to welcome him.
When we came together, I’d always imagined that there would be some moment of clear division. Before and after. Like the note of a lyre’s plucked string where there’d been silence before. And not just a physical sensation, but an emotional one too—I thought I’d be forever changed, after all, off Wesha’s path for good. But as Taran exhaled and slid forward, fraction by fraction, until our hips were flush against each other, I realized it wasn’t the first note of a song, but the refrain in a melody we’d already been singing.
I’d wanted this for years. I’d started singing this song the first day Taran’s fingers brushed mine. My heart had sung it the day I realized I was in love with him, the day he asked me to marry him, every evening I played his favorite ballad, every time he made an excuse to comb my hair, every hidden kiss, every longing look.
This hadn’t changed me; I already was this person who clutched her lover’s arms and urged him to make the bright sensation even sharper. There wasn’t such a distance between having something and wanting it, after all.
“Alright?” Taran asked, kissing my eyelids, my cheeks, the tip of my nose. I could tell that he was trembling from the effort of holding himself back, a fine sheen of sweat standing out on his cheekbones and shoulders, but he didn’t move.
“Perfect,” I breathed. It was perfect even if it was overwhelming, even the stretch of my body was caught just on the sweet edge between pain and pleasure. I would stay in this moment forever, if I could, because there were infinite little details I wanted to capture and hold. I experimentally lifted my hips against Taran’s to explore the sensation that budded in my core with every movement, and he hissed, dropping his forehead to mine as he struggled to hold still.
I moved again, finding my bearings, grounding myself in the raspy noise of Taran’s breathing. He dipped his head to kiss me as though trying to distract me, but I sucked his lower lip into my mouth and gave a peremptory roll of my hips, moving past the faint ache toward glints of pleasure I could sense in the distance.
