She closed her eyes. She could feel his heartbeat matching hers, their ragged breathing coming in time. She’d forgotten what it felt like, being so close to someone you felt like you were one person.
Arthur kept muttering, the words mostly lost against her cheek. But not all of them: her name, of course. But alsocan’t believeandfeels so goodandmissed you.
Emma swallowed, trying to stop shaking. “Have you done this with anybody since me?”
She half expected him to scoff and tell her of course he had. The other half of her, the part that wasn’t insecure and seething, expected nothing more than the incredulous laugh that rumbled through his chest.
“Pfft, sure. All knotting, all the time.” He pulled back, his jokey smile going soft as he gazed up at her. “Come on, Emma. You think I’d let myself be like this in front of anyone else?”
Emma stared at him, stunned. She knew it, but there was a difference between knowing something and hearing someone say it.
Arthur’s soft smile twitched, his ears flattening bashfully. “Uh, anyway. What about you?”
“Getting knotted?” Emma shook her head. “Nope. Just you.”
“Oh,” Arthur said quietly. “Good.”
He swallowed. For a second, she thought he would take it back or ease the way with a joke. But he just lay there, his furry chest heaving and his swollen cock trapped inside of her.
“Good,” he repeated before burying his face back in her neck.
* * *
“Huh,” he muttered a while later.
She made a sleepy noise into his chest. “What?”
He nodded toward the giant window. “It’s snowing again.”
Emma turned. The snow was soft and silent, coating the white ground outside. Beyond the glass, Claw Haven glittered in the evening light.
Arthur ran a hand through her sweaty hair. “I wasn’t going to sleep with you, you know. When I invited you on that tour. I wanted to talk. To make things right.”
Good luck, Emma didn’t say. There was still that sting of betrayal, but it was harder to find amongst the wash of endorphins. Emma wanted to believe him. To believe the way he’d looked at her while she was riding him, the way he was still looking at her now. His eyelids drooping, still trying to force himself to stay awake. Wanting to look at her a little longer.
Emma sighed. “You did love me, right? Back then. It was real.”
Arthur’s arms tightened around her, wings flexing like they wanted to follow suit. “Of course it was real. Why would you ask that?”
Emma shrugged.
Arthur laughed, thin and flinty. “Was Ithatbad of a boyfriend?”
“No,” Emma admitted. “You just—youleft.”
She grimaced. It came out just as whiny and high school as she feared. That teenage bullshit she’d been running from was still there, she’d just grown around it. She’d made such a fool of herself yelling at him on the street, like all those old wounds still mattered.
Arthur was silent. He actually sounded guilty as he said, “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
Emma scoffed.
“No, seriously,” Arthur argued. “Come on, Emma. I had to follow my—”
“Heart?” Emma propped her chin up against his furry chest.
“Dreams,” he corrected. He ran a hand down her back, pressing his trimmed claws into the faint dents he’d left in her skin.
Emma tried not to think about how fast they would fade. “Is it everything you wanted? Being an actor?”
