I keep going. Slowly. Every scar I can reach. The ones on his chest, the ones on his stomach. I kiss each one like it's something that deserves to be acknowledged rather than hidden, something that's part of him rather than something done to him. His breath is coming differently now. Uneven. His hands hover without landing, like he doesn't know what to do with them, and I reach up and take one and press it to my hair and feel him exhale slowly.
"You're beautiful," I say against his skin.
"Vee—"
"You are." I look up at him. His eyes are very dark and very intent and they're unguarded in a way I don't think he lets people see often. "Every part of you. All of it."
He makes a sound that might be my name and pulls me up toward him and then his mouth is on mine again and this time there's nothing tentative in it at all.
We rearrange ourselves. His hands are careful. Always careful, always precisely aware of the size difference, always making sure I have room to move, to choose, to stop. I don't want to stop. I tug at the rest of our clothes until there's nothing between us and I feel him against me, warm and present and exactly as significant as the shirts suggested he might be, and I take a moment to appreciate that information.
"Okay?" he asks in a rough voice.
"Very okay," I say.
I rise up over him and he holds my hips, always carefully, as I guide him and sink down slowly. The stretch is significant and I take my time with it, feeling his hands flex against my hips and hearing the breath leave him in a long unsteady exhale.
When I'm fully seated we both stay still.
He looks up at me with an expression I've never seen on him before. Wide open. Unguarded in a way that I think might be entirely new territory for him, like he's never been here—not this exposed or this safe—and his body doesn't have a protocol for it yet.
I lean down and press my forehead to his.
"I've got you," I say.
His face breaks open.
Then I start to move.
His purr starts almost immediately—that stuttering depth that moves through his chest and mine and into the places in me that have been waiting for exactly this. His hands don't grip, they hold, a distinction I feel completely. One at my hip and one spread wide against my lower back, steadying without controlling, present without demanding.
I set the pace. Slow at first, learning the feel of him, the particular way we fit together. He watches me with those dark warm eyes that miss nothing, tracking every shift of expression, and when I find the angle that makes me gasp his hands tighten fractionally and he files it away like everything else he notices.
I move faster.
His purr deepens into something rougher and his hips begin to meet mine and the combination of that and the sound he makes when I lean down to bite his shoulder tips me over an edge I didn't see coming. I come with my face pressed into hisneck and his arms locked around me. His name escapes my mouth.
He follows close behind. His knot swells inside and a low sound tears out of him, his whole body going rigid. My body opens for it on instinct and when it locks us together the feeling that moves through me isn't just physical. It's the particular relief of finally. My omega goes absolutely quiet—not suppressed or sedated. Just satisfied in a way that has nothing to do with biology and everything to do with the specific man whose arms are around me.
We're locked together and I don’t want to be anywhere else right now.
He pulls me down against his chest, both arms around me now, his chin on my head. His purr has drifted into something steadier. The broken stutter is still there but it's rhythmic now, like it's found a pattern.
I listen to his heartbeat.
"Rhys," I say.
"Mm."
"Thank you. For telling me."
A pause.
"Thank you," he says. "For asking."
His arms tighten slightly.
Outside the window the last of the light is going. The cabin is quiet. Somewhere downstairs I can hear the low sounds of the pack existing. Finn's voice, a cabinet closing, the particular creak of the third stair that I've memorized without meaning to.
