For a few breaths, neither of us moves. The whole tent feels held inside that pause.
Then his hand slides slowly, carefully, just enough to draw me a little closer against him. He exhales once against the back of my neck, and the sound of restraint in him is almost worse than if he had simply taken what he wanted. Because now I can feel how much he is holding back. How much he is always holding back.
His hand shifts again.
I turn then, not fully, just enough that I can find him in the dark.
He is awake now. I can tell by the way he is still. By the way all his attention narrows the moment my face tilts toward his. The fire is too low to show much more than shape and shadow. The line of his jaw. The breadth of him.
“You’re trying very hard not to touch me more,” I whisper.
Silence.
Then, very quietly, “Yes.”
The honesty of it reaches right through me.
I do not know whether it is the dream, the darkness, the warmth, or the dangerous softness of these last few days, but something in me gives way a little at that answer. My hand lifts and finds him in the dark. A shoulder. The edge of his chest. Warm skin where his shirt has shifted open.
He goes still all over again.
The simple contact feels louder than words.
“Kaiven?” I ask, the question half lost against his skin.
“Veli,” he says, the word so soft I almost do not hear it. “My beloved.”
My breath stops.
That is not a word he has taught me. Not one I have heard before. The sound of it in the dark, spoken with that low rough certainty, undoes something deep inside me.
And then he moves.
A slow deliberate shift, a turn, a rise up on one arm beside me. The furs fall away from my shoulders, and the cooler night air touches my skin, making me more aware of the heat clinging from the brazier and the heat rising now from him. I can feel him looking down at me even if I cannot see the details of his face.
His other hand comes up to trace the line of my throat with the very tips of his claws. A slow deliberate mapping that is somehow more possessive than a grip would be. My pulse jumps beneath his touch. He feels it. His thumb brushes there, over the frantic beat.
“The sound you make in your sleep,” he says, the words a low vibration against my cheek as he leans closer. “It calls to the blood.”
I do not know how to answer that. I do not even know what it means, not really. But the way he says it makes me feel hunted and cherished all at once.
His head lowers. I feel the warm gust of his breath just before he tastes the line of my jaw.
My body arches before I can stop it.
A low growl rumbles in his chest, a sound of pure primal satisfaction. He likes my reaction. He likes the way I respond without thought, my body knowing a truth my mind is still catching up to.
He moves again, covering me more fully, caging me in with his size. The reality of him settles over me. The sheer, solid mass. The strength in the arms bracketing my head. The raw heat pouring off him. He is so much larger than me. His shoulders block out what little light there is. His thighs press against mine, heavy and immovable.
His mouth finds the sensitive skin below my ear. He nips. Just a gentle scrape of teeth, a warning of the fangs I know are there. A shiver racks my entire body.
“Kaiven,” I whisper, and it’s not a protest. It’s a surrender.
“Narai,” he corrects against my skin. My mate. His hands move. One slides down my side, past my hip, to grip my thigh, pulling it up and over his hip. The new position opens me to him, leaving me bare, vulnerable.
He holds me there for a moment, letting me feel the position. The control he has.
Then he begins to move. A slow, torturous rocking of his hips against me. The barrier of our thin sleep clothes is an agony. A friction that builds a deep, heavy ache inside me.
