He does.
Gentle at first, then surer—every thrust a question I answer with a gasp, hands braced against his shoulders, with instincts no darkblood syllabus ever taught me. He bends to mouth along my collarbone, tongue tracing the old lash scar I hate but he keeps kissing like it’s sacred text. Until the scar feels like part of me instead of a wound carved by childhood terror.
My back arches; friction turns to sparks turns to a heat that gathers low, tighter than any knot I’ve ever tied. He angles deeper, guided by the way my hands clench in his hair, by the broken sound I make when he grazes just—there.
“Esme,” he says against my pulse.
I answer with his name, and the sound of it is an incantation, binding, breaking.
Pleasure crests like rising tide—inescapable. When it finally overtakes me, it’s with his name on my tongue and his pulse roaring in my ears; the cave lights flicker as my magic answers, fringes of shadow licking along the walls like jealous lovers.
Dayn drags my hands from his hair and laces our fingers against the rock at my back, anchoring me—no, binding me.
His forehead presses to mine. “Tell me where it feels best.”
I can’t. There’s only everywhere. I kiss him instead, swallowing the next thrust, and the one after, until the rhythm takes over—slow at first, then urgent, the pace climbing like wings beating air. Each kiss against my throat is a question I never learned to answer:will you stay, will you burn, will you be mine even here?
I gasp his name instead—Dayn, Dayn—like both a confession and a curse.
Each drive seats him fully, stretching me in sweet, relentlessincrements. My body meets him desperately, hungrily, greedily, hips canting, thighs tightening, until my thoughts splinter into just more.
I lick away the steam beading on his lashes as the water rocks us, deeper and gentler than any battle could, and our reflections blur inside its mirrored surface: witch and dragon, flickers of gold and shadow. I close my eyes so I won’t see the proof, but the heat of him keeps me present, raw, alive. Each tightening hold is a vow I don’t have to speak; each soft curse he presses into my skin is the truth neither of us has dared to say aloud.
He follows me down, teeth grazing my throat, marking skin that will vanish when the construct ends.
I want to keep the bruise anyway.
Want to keep him anyway.
When the final crest comes, it consumes me, sudden and blinding—but his arms become like fire and stone around me, scorching and unyielding yet anchoring me in the blaze. His curse against my throat is rough, feral, and the tremor that answers inside him is volcanic—dragon and man locked in the same burning body, spilling heat so deep I feel branded in places we’d never acknowledge in daylight.
I press my cheek to his collarbone while the aftershock rolls through us, a tide that steals every breath from me but that I am no longer afraid of. The ring burns like a heartbeat on my finger; I try to memorize that too: what it feels like when choice and surrender share the same heat.
The cave walls pulse for breathless seconds, our shadows spilled across them. My lungs feel too wide, too bright, while he trembles one last time, then stills, forehead pressed to mine.
Slowly he lifts his head. His eyes are softer than I’ve ever seen them, soft in a way that terrifies me more than fury. He presses a kiss between my eyebrows, a benediction or anapology—I can’t tell. My fingers find his wrist. The rings are twin brands against bone, both of them scalding.
I'm still wrapped around him, our heartbeats syncing into one wild rhythm, our breath mingling in the narrow space between us. The turquoise glow catches on the single bead of sweat trailing down his throat, and I find myself following its path with my fingertip. He shivers at my touch. Neither of us moves to separate—as though the slightest shift might dissolve this fragile moment where I can no longer tell which pulse is his and which is mine.
His mouth finds mine again, lazy this time, as if the urgency has already burned itself out and now slower embers remain. Each kiss is languid, coaxing rather than conquering—he tastes the hollow beneath my lower lip, the salt at the corner of my mouth, the small shiver I didn’t know was hiding there. I feel each touch like a new color being painted under my skin: indigo want, bright copper surprise, an aching gold I don’t have a name for.
My thighs tighten reflexively around his waist; the shift seats him deeper, dragging a low sound from him that drags an answering one from me. I hadn’t believed bodies could hum like this—notes drawn out on dragon-wind and witch-shadow until the cave seems to resonate on the same frequency. He palms the curve of my lower back and simply holds me impaled there, grounding me to earth by way of him.
“You feel me?” he asks against my mouth, the words no louder than steam.
I nod, incapable of anything grander. Every breath I take makes me feel him swell inside me, answering in perfect, echoing rhythm. It’s too much and not enough. He flexes deliberately, the smallest rock of hips that sends lightning sparking up my spine; pleasure coils again, lazy but undeniable, coaxed back into life by the raw intimacy of him holding still.
I cup the side of his face, thumb tracing the damp strand of hair at his temple, feeling the tremble he hides behind feral calm. My body is tuned to that subtle quiver now, knowing him the way a flame knows air: every shift in pressure, every held breath, every deliberate flex as restraint burns between us.
“Don’t move,” I whisper, voice shaking. “Not yet.”
He obeys—miraculous—only the slight flex of his hand at my back acknowledging the order. I can feel the dragon pacing beneath his skin, hungry flame leashed by nothing more than consent I granted seconds ago. It sets off another slow spiral inside me: the knowledge that the storm waits only because he chooses to wait.
His forehead stays against mine, damp curls brushing my skin, but neither of us breathes right. My lungs hitch—small, greedy gulps—and his exhale answers, slow and steady, as though he’s breathing for both of us. Every beat of my heart rolls straight into his as he brushes another kiss across the corner of my mouth. Not claiming. Not conquering. Just… there. A soft press, retreat, return, a rhythm that matches the lazy pulse where we’re joined.
His mouth slides to my jaw, then lower, lips tracing the frantic hammer of my pulse beneath my ear. “Feel that?” The words are barely sound, just warm air and tongue. “You’re everywhere in me, little witch. Hear it.”
I do. His heartbeat is thunder when my palm settles over the left side of his chest; my own flutters back like an echo. I close my fist in the wet hair at his nape, tugging gently until amber eyes find mine again. Something passes between us unspoken:if I move, this ends; if I stay, it changes everything.
