He enters me slowly.
Every inch is deliberate, giving me time to adjust. His forearms bracket my head, muscles trembling with restraint.
“Okay?” The word vibrates through him.
“Yes.” I wrap my legs around his hips. “More.”
He moves.
And it’s nothing like I expected. Nothing like the controlled, predictable encounters I’ve always preferred. This is fire—literal and metaphorical. My flames rise without permission, dancing across my skin, reaching for him. His warmth answers, surrounding us both in a cocoon that should be terrifying but feels safe instead.
“God.” He groans into my neck. “You feel?—“
“Don’t stop.”
“Couldn’t if I tried.”
His pace builds. Steady. Relentless. Every thrust hits deep inside me, makes my back arch and my fingers claw at his shoulders. The walls I’ve maintained my entire life—the lists, the schedules, the desperate hunger for order—crumble under the weight of sensation.
I feel everything.
His hands gripping my hips. His mouth on my throat. His body moving with mine in a rhythm that seems impossible, inevitable, right in a way nothing has felt right since before the captivity.
“Rurik—“ His name tears from my throat.
“I know.” He shifts angles, hits deeper, and I shatter.
The orgasm rips through me without warning. Fire explodes across my skin, uncontrolled, consuming. I hear myself cry out—his name, maybe, or just sound without meaning. He follows moments later, groaning against my shoulder, his own flames mingling with mine until I can’t tell where I end and he begins.
We stay there, tangled and gasping, for what feels like hours.
Eventually, he rolls to the side, pulls me against him. His heartbeat pounds beneath my ear—fast, irregular, slowly calming.
“You’re incredible.” Rough. Wrecked. “Absolutely incredible.”
“You’re adequate.”
His laugh shakes us both. “Adequate. I’ll take it.”
I map patterns on his torso. Find scars I didn’t notice before—some thin and silvered with age, others thicker, more recent. A record of battles fought and survived. Of a life measured in centuries rather than years.
“How many of these do you have?” My fingers follow a particularly vicious line across his ribs.
“Lost count around the second century.”
“That one looks deep.”
“Rogue ambush. Eighty years ago, give or take.” He catches my hand, brings it to his lips. “Every scar is a lesson learned. A fight survived. A reason to keep going.”
“You make near-death experiences sound romantic.”
“Everything’s romantic when you’re involved.”
I should roll my eyes. Cut through the sentiment. But his tone makes me pause. Makes me look up, meet his gaze.
“I didn’t think I could feel this way again.” The confession slips out before I can stop it. “After everything. I thought that part of me was dead.”
His arm tightens around me. “And now?”
