His fingers found the edge of the fur where she had tucked it under her arms and pulled. The fur fell open.
His gaze moved over her like a hand, touching every curve and hollow. When his eyes finally returned to her face, they were nearly black.
"I have been thinking," he said, his voice rough, "about this. While Tormund complained about iron weights. I was thinking about you. Here. Waiting."
His free hand came up to cup her breast, thumb dragging across her nipple. She gasped, her back arching into the touch.
"I was thinking about how you taste." His thumb circled, pressed, circled again. "How you sound." His mouth found her throat, and she felt his words vibrate against her pulse. "How you tremble."
She reached for him, fingers curling into the fabric of his tunic, pulling. He let her, leaning forward until her palms were flat against his chest, feeling the heat of him, the steady drum of his heart beneath her hands.
He lifted her from the chair, one arm hooked beneath her thighs, and carried her back through the doorway, back to the bed, back to the furs that still held the shape of her body. He laid her down and stood over her, stripping off his tunic in one motion.
The firelight carved shadows across his torso. Scars she had not seen before—a long line across his ribs, a starburst of raised tissue on his shoulder, the evidence of decades written into his skin. She reached up and traced the nearest one, a thin ridge that curved around his hip and disappeared beneath his waistband.
He went still under her touch.
"This one," she said. "What was it?"
"Spear. Warden's Ridge. Twenty-three years ago."
Her fingers moved to the next. The starburst on his shoulder.
"Arrow. Hollow Falls. I was young and did not move fast enough."
She pressed her palm flat against his chest, over his heart. The beat was steady and strong, unhurried despite the tension she could see in his shoulders, the way his hands had fisted at his sides.
"You're letting me catalogue you," she said.
"You catalogue everything. I would not ask you to be different."
She sat up on her elbows and kissed the scar on his ribs. Felt him inhale sharply, his stomach contracting beneath her lips. She kissed the starburst on his shoulder, tasting salt and heat. She kissed the hollow of his throat, where his pulse hammered against her mouth.
His control broke.
His hands were in her hair, tilting her head back, and then his mouth was on hers, devouring. He bore her back down into the furs, his weight settling over her, between her thighs, and she felt the hard length of him pressing against her through the fabric of his trousers.
She reached for his laces. Her fingers fumbled, clumsy with want, and he made a sound against her mouth that was half laugh, half growl and batted her hands away.
"Let me."
He stripped off his trousers and she saw him for the first time.
The theoretical knowledge she had accumulated over a lifetime of reading other people's correspondence had not prepared her for this. He was massive. Thick and ridged, the head flushed dark, curving upward toward his stomach. The ridges—she had read about those, in a medical treatise that had been filed under "comparative anatomy"—were pronounced, spiraling along the shaft.
She stared.
"Verity." His voice was strained. "If you need to stop—"
"No." She reached for him, and he caught her wrist before her fingers made contact.
"Not yet." He pressed her hand back against the furs, pinning it beside her head. "Not until you are ready."
"I am ready."
"You are not." He lowered himself over her, his free hand sliding between their bodies, finding the slick heat between her thighs. "You are close. But not yet."
His fingers parted her folds, and she gasped at the contact, still sensitive from before, swollen and aching. He stroked through her wetness, spreading it, his thumb finding the tight bundle of nerves and pressing.
