The bond flared bright and hot and impossible to ignore, synchronizing with the peak of my orgasm as it crashed through me. The circuit completed fully, a rush of sensation that was mine and his and ours all at once.
I came apart with his name on my lips, my body clenching around him, the bond singing through every nerve I possessed.
Through the haze, I heard him swear. Felt him thrust deeper, harder, his rhythm breaking as he followed me over the edge.
“You’re so—” he said.
“I’m so what?” I asked, genuinely curious even through the aftershocks still rolling through me.
“Everything.” He said it flat. Factual. Like he was annoyed by the truth of it. Like he’d argue with it if he thought that would help.
He said it the way he said things he didn’t want to admit but couldn’t argue with. Border patrol reports. Pack law. I was apparently now in that category.
I had no idea what to do with that. So I pulled him back down and stopped thinking about it.
Then the bed gave way.
The frame dropped with a crack that was probably audible from the courtyard, and we landed hard, staring at each other in the sudden wreckage. Silence rang out.
I started laughing first. He followed a second later, the sound of it low and real, nothing like the controlled almost-smiles I’d cataloged before. I filed that away too. This laugh. The way it looked on him.
He kissed me before I’d finished, still half-laughing, and when he moved inside me again, it was slower than before, unhurried, as if the urgency had burned off and left somethingsteadier in its place. I pulled him down and stopped thinking about anything at all.
Finally, he collapsed beside me, pulling me against his chest before I could move away. Closer than necessary and closer than our strategic alliance required. I noticed this and didn’t correct it, which was significant and I knew it.
His arm stayed around me, heavy and warm.
I counted his heartbeats against my ear, waiting for my own pulse to slow to something approaching normal. The bond had settled back to a low hum, present but no longer overwhelming. Evidence that what had happened would be impossible to dismiss as temporary insanity.
A scratch rang out on the door.
“Go away,” Feral said without opening his eyes.
Silence answered him.
I stared at the ceiling, reality reasserting itself in uncomfortable ways. “He can hear everything.”
“He’s fine.”
“He’s going to tell everyone.”
Feral opened one eye, focusing on me with lazy amusement. “He can only talk to you. How will he do that?”
I considered this. “I genuinely don’t know, but he’ll find a way.”
A pause stretched long enough that I almost thought the issue had resolved itself.
“New hazelnut bowl,” Feral called out, loud enough for Acorn to overhear through the door.
“He’ll want the imported ones,” I said.
“Done.”
The soft scratch of tiny claws on wood told me Acorn was moving away from the door, satisfied with the negotiation.
I turned my head to look at Feral. “You bribed my companion with expensive nuts.”
“It seemed the most efficient way to make him go away.”
