"I'm looking. I see you." Her voice was ragged. "Don't stop."
He kissed down her stomach, felt the muscles tense beneath his lips. Kissed the jut of her hip bones, the soft skin of her inner thighs, and when he spread her open with his thumbs and put his mouth on her, the sound she made erased every other sound on the ship.
She tasted like honey and salt, like her scent distilled to its purest form. He licked into her, tongue flat and slow, and her thighs clamped around his head as her hips bucked. He pinned them down with one forearm across her lower belly and kept going, lapping at her clit, then lower, gathering the slick that was flowing freely now and spreading it with his tongue until she was shaking.
"Anatole." His name came out broken. "Please. I need you inside me. I need to feel you."
"Not yet." He slid two fingers inside her while his mouth worked her clit, and she arched off the bed, a sound tearing from her that was half-scream, half-sob. Her inner walls clamped around his fingers, slick and hot, and he curled them upward, pressing against the spot that made her vision blur.
"I can't. I'm going to..."
"Then let go. Come on my fingers and my mouth and then I'll give you the rest."
She came with his name on her lips, her body convulsing, her walls pulsing around his fingers in rhythmic waves. He worked her through it, gentling his touch as the aftershocks rippled through her, and when she finally went limp, he kissed her inner thigh and moved up her body.
Her eyes were clear. Focused on him. Not glazed, not distant, not pulled toward anything except the man above her. It was working.
"More," she whispered, reaching for him. "I need all of you. Fill me up until there's no room for anything else."
He pushed inside her in one long stroke, and they both stopped breathing.
The wet heat of her body gripped him, slick and swollen from her orgasm, and the sensation was so intense his arms shook. He buried himself to the hilt and stayed there, forehead pressed to hers, fighting the urge to move before she was ready.She was tight around him, her inner walls still fluttering with aftershocks, and each flutter sent sparks racing up his spine.
"Move," she said. "Anatole, please move."
He moved. Long, deep strokes that he could feel in his entire body, each thrust designed to reach as deep as he could go, to fill her so completely that there was no space left for the curse to inhabit. Her legs came up around his waist, heels digging into his lower back, pulling him deeper, and the angle changed in a way that made her gasp.
"There," she breathed. "Right there. Don't stop."
He didn't stop. He fucked her like the curse was a tide and his body was a seawall, like every thrust was a declaration that she was his and he was hers and no dead witch's magic was going to take that away. The bed groaned beneath them. The cabin filled with the obscene, wet sounds of their joining and the mingled scent of alpha and omega, pine and honeysuckle so thick in the air that breathing was like swallowing each other.
"Talk to me," she gasped between thrusts. "Keep talking. Your voice helps."
"You're mine." The words came from somewhere deeper than thought. "You're mine and I'm yours and this is real. This isn't biology, this isn't the curse, this is us. You chose me on the deck of this ship in front of my pack and I'm choosing you right now, in this bed, with my cock inside you and my wolf howling your name."
"Yes." She was crying. Not from pain, not from sorrow. From the intensity of being so full of him that the door's song was nothing but static. "Keep going. Don't let me go."
"Never." He shifted his weight to one arm and slid his hand between them, his thumb finding her clit, circling it in time with his thrusts. "Come again. Come on my cock this time. Let me feel you fall apart while I'm inside you."
She came harder the second time. Her back bowed, her nails raked furrows down his shoulders, and the clench of her body around his cock was so intense that his knot swelled in response, catching on her rim with every thrust. He could feel the bond hovering at the edge of his awareness, the place where the mating bite would seal them permanently, and his wolf lunged for it with the same single-minded fury it had every time.
He turned his head. Buried his face against her shoulder. Not her throat. Not the mating gland. Her shoulder, where his teeth could sink into muscle without triggering the bond that might feed the curse.
"Bite me there," she said. "I know you need to bite. Do it there. I can take it."
He sank his teeth into the curve of her shoulder as his knot locked them together, and the dual sensation of her body clamping around his knot and his teeth in her flesh pushed him over the edge. He came with a sound that was more wolf than man, his hips jerking, seed flooding her in thick, hot pulses while her orgasm milked every drop from him.
For a long time, neither of them moved. His teeth were still in her shoulder, his knot still locked inside her, their bodies shaking with the aftermath. When he finally unclenched his jaw and pulled back, there was a perfect imprint of his bite in her skin. Not the mating gland. But a claim nonetheless.
"Did it work?" she asked, her voice barely above a breath.
He listened. The hum was still there, vibrating through the floorboards. But Jeanne's eyes were clear, fixed on his face, and her scent had steadied, the guttering-candle thinness replaced by something stronger. His scent was all over her, sunk into her pores, marking every inch of her skin.
"For now," he said. "It worked for now."
They both knewfor nowwasn't the same asenough.But it was what they had.
Knotted and tangled and sweat-damp, he held her and she held him and they pretended the hum vibrating through the floor beneath them didn't exist.
