We moved together slowly.
There was no urgency, and no heat biology driving us forward. Just two people who had spent six months talking around what they meant to each other finally saying it in the only language that had no room for omission or fear.
I kept my eyes on her face.
She kept her hands on my chest, her fingers pressed against the scales, feeling the warmth of them pulse beneath her palms with every movement. Her eyes dropped to them occasionally, wide and wondering, watching them glow brighter and brighter in the amber dimness of the room.
"It keeps getting brighter," she breathed.
"Yeah," I managed.
"Is that because of..."
"Yes," I said. "It's because of you. It's always been because of you."
Something in her expression broke open completely at that. Every last wall. Every piece of armor she'd built out of Colin's carelessness and her mother's criticism and years of telling herself she wasn't enough for anyone.
Gone.
She pulled me down and kissed me hard and I felt the shift in her, the moment she stopped waiting for something to go wrong and just let herself have this.
Have us,my dragon groaned.
Her mouth found my neck and I felt her hesitate there, her lips pressing against my pulse, and I knew what she was feeling because I was feeling it too. That she was feeling the pull and the sense of something arriving that had been on its way for a very long time.
"Kael," she said against my skin, her voice barely a whisper.
"Tell me," I said.
"I want..." She stopped. Pressed her lips to the place where my neck met my shoulder. "I want you to bite me."
The words moved through me like fire.
My dragon surged forward and I held it back by a thread, keeping my movements slow and deliberate even as everything inside me roared to comply.
"You're sure," I said.
"I'm sure," she said. "I'm choosing this. I'm choosing you."
I turned my face into her neck, found the soft curve where her neck met her shoulder, and pressed my lips there first. Felt her shiver. Felt her hands grip my back.
Then I bit her, calmly and gently claiming her.
The way I did everything that mattered to me.
She gasped, her whole body arching up into mine, and I felt the bond snap into place like a key turning in a lock that had always been there waiting. Warmth flooded through me so complete and total it was almost overwhelming.
The scales blazed hotter on my skin.
We moved together faster now, the careful patience giving way to something deeper and more urgent, her voice in my ear and her hands in my hair and every sensation amplified through the new bond between us.
And then I followed her.
My knot locked.
She made a soft broken sound at the fullness of it, her hands gripping my arms, her eyes going wide and dark.
"Oh," she breathed.
