“I’ve got you.” His mouth pressed against my temple. Paint-streaked fingers brushed the hair from my face, and his thumb traced my cheekbone while he waited, letting my body catch up. The burn crested and tipped into fullness, my muscles unclenching, the ache transforming into a pressure that bordered on pleasure.
“Good,” he said against my skin.
His body locked against mine, the pressure building, stretching me to my limit, sealing us together. He ground into me in shallow, desperate thrusts, his cock throbbing as he spilled inside me, and each pulse sent aftershocks rippling through my core until I was trembling beneath him.
Solomon’s face hovered inches from mine, silver eyes burning, my blood on his lips, paint in his hair and streaked across the scar I’d traced so many times.
“I can feel you now,” I whispered. “Right here.”
His thumb brushed a tear from my cheek, smearing a faint line of cream paint along my skin. The gesture was so tender compared to the claiming that had preceded it.
“Worth waiting for,” he said.
I laughed. A wet, breathless sound that echoed through the empty bookshop. His mouth found mine again, gentler now, the desperation settled into certainty.
We lay tangled on the drop cloth, paint drying on our skin, the afternoon light shifting through the new windows and painting everything gold.
I pressed my cheek against his chest and listened to his heartbeat from the outside while feeling it echo from within.
Two simultaneous rhythms, one through my ear and one through the bond. Solomon’s hand moved through my hair, pulling paint-stiffened strands away from my face, and thesilence between us was the kind only he could create. Full, warm, needing no words.
“We ruined the wall,” I murmured.
“I’ll repaint it.”
“There’s a butt print in the cream coat.”
“I’ll fix it.”
“My butt print. In the fresh paint. On the wall of my future bookshop.”
A rumble moved through his chest. “It adds character.”
I traced a line through the paint drying on his ribs, drawing a lopsided heart without thinking about it. His hand caught mine and pressed it flat against his skin, holding it there.
The wail of a siren split the quiet.
Getting closer, then pulling up outside the bookshop.
A truck door slammed.
“Mira! Solomon!” Percy’s voice carried through the new windows with the subtlety of a bullhorn. “Time to go home! Lucian says dinner’s at seven and he’s making that thing with the potatoes, and I swear if I have to eat another of his super healthy dishes I will defect to a rival kingdom!”
Solomon groaned. His head dropped back against the drop cloth and his eyes closed.
“He’s so annoying,” he muttered.
I dissolved. Full-body, rib-aching, tear-inducing laughter that shook me against his chest while Solomon lay there, freshly claimed, knotted, covered in paint, and thoroughly inconvenienced by the world’s most enthusiastic interruption.
“We should probably get dressed,” I managed between gasps.
“Probably.”
“We also need to be more productive tomorrow. We got... sidetracked.”
Solomon’s eyes opened. The look he gave me was amusement, a fraction of softness that transformed his whole face.
“Again.Worth it,” he said.
