She came back to herself in pieces.
"Bond me," she said.
The gold flared. "Jeanne, you’re sick...”
“Not anymore.”
“You’re too weak.”
“No, I’m not.” She released one of his hands and reached for the collar of his shirt, pulling him toward her. "Stop protecting me. Choose me. I need you. I need this, if I’m too survive."
“You’re delirious.”
“I’m not. I’m coming back. Can’t you scent it.”
His nostrils flared. “This can’t be real.”
“It’s real.” She put his hand on her forehead.
“It’s cool,” he said wonderingly.
He kissed her slowly, tentatively, as if she would break. His tongue swept against hers and the taste of him made her slick and she rejoiced omega. The need that lived in the marrow of her bones came alive. Her alpha's mouth was on hers and his hands were in her hair. The bond they'd been circling for weeks was about to snap into place and she couldn’t wait.
This is what they needed to do to break the curse.
She would be the omega to finally do it. Not Celeste.
Slick gathered between her thighs, her body preparing for what it had always known was coming.
Anatole groaned against her mouth when he scented it. His hands slid from her hair to her waist, pulling her against him, and she went, the fever's weakness falling away as if the proximity to her mate burned through the curse's grip and found the strength the fever had been stealing.
"Jeanne." Her name in his mouth was ragged, worshipful. His cock strained against his breeches, hard against her thigh, and her hips rolled into him without conscious decision, her body seeking the pressure it needed.
"If this is too much..."
"The fever has been too much. This is not too much. This is exactly enough." She pulled at his shirt. "Off."
He stripped it over his head in one motion, and she pressed her palms to his chest and abs. She knew the ridges and valleys of them the way she knew the rows of the vineyard she'd never see again. She kissed right over his heart, and she heard the sound he made, low and wrecked and not entirely human.
"I need..." He was shaking.
"I know what you need." She pulled him down onto the bed. He went, lowering himself over her, bracing his weight on his forearms, and the size of him over her, around her, was the same overwhelming rightness it had been every time, the alpha's body built to cover the omega's, to shield and claim and fill. “I will give it to you.” She’d give him the child that Adele never had a chance to.
She arched up against him, and the contact dragged a moan from both of them. His cock was an iron line against her thigh through the fabric, and she reached between them, her fingers finding the laces of his breeches, pulling them loose.
"Wait." His hand closed over hers. "Let me. I want..."
He pulled back enough to strip the breeches off, and she watched him, the body she'd learned over weeks of intimacy, the broad shoulders and thick thighs and the cock that had split her open during the heat, flushed and hard and already leaking. The knot at the base was beginning to swell, and the sight of it sent another pulse of slick through her, wetting her thighs, filling the cabin with the scent of omega arousal cutting through the fever's sourness.
His nostrils flared. "Your scent." His voice was guttural. "Under the curse, under all of it, you still smell like mine."
"I am yours. I'm choosing to be yours. Now stop talking and get inside me. I want you. Only you.”Something Marguerite and Adele never understood.
He peeled her clothes away with hands that shook and a focus that didn't waver. Her underclothes were soaked with slick and sweat.
Bare beneath him, she was burning but not from the fever. She shivered, and he caught the shiver with his body, lowering himself until his skin was against hers, chest to chest, hip to hip, the heat of him replacing the heat of the fever with something that didn't destroy.
"You're so wet." His hand slid between her thighs, fingers dragging through the slick, and her hips bucked into the contact. She spread her legs wider, making room for him, and the blunt head of his cock nudged against her folds. He pressed forward and the head of his cock breached her.
