His hands come up slow and his large fingers find me. He does not squeeze. He just lays his palms against the sides of my thighs, his blunt claws pressing through the sweatshirt, anchoring me to the floor between his knees.
I lean forward and press my forehead against his.
He breathes me in. His chest expands against me, a massive shuddering intake of air.
"Mine?" he whispers.
The word is rough. The vowels clipped. The sound of a voice that has not been used for anything but survival in a very long time.
It is the first time he has asked.
"Yes," I say against his mouth. "Yours."
He does not crash into me.
He tilts his head. His mouth finds mine with a slow, broad, asking pressure. His lips are warm. His tongue comes against my teeth, asking. I open for him.
The thread under my ribs changes shape. It starts to braid. The unfinished line slides into the slot waiting for it under my sternum, alongside the others.
Harek groans into my mouth. He shifts his hands from my thighs to the hem of the sweatshirt, his palms sliding up under the fabric until he finds my bare waist. His skin is rough — facility scars, mountain calluses — and the friction of his hands against my ribs makes my belly clench.
He lifts me.
Smooth, sudden, his massive strength making the transition effortless. I am straddling his lap on the floor, my knees on either side of his hips, the sweatshirt bunched around my waist.
He looks up at me. His green eyes are wet at the rims. The skin at his temples and the line of his jaw has gone faintly luminous — the deep olive of him lit from underneath, the fae part of him surfacing for the first time since the corridor — and his dark green-black hair is falling across his forehead where I have been pulling at it.
"Jen," he says. The name is clearer this time. He shaped the consonants with his lips carefully. "Jen."
"I need you." My fingers tighten in his hair. "Harek. I need you inside me."
He rips his shirt over his head one-handed and then lifts us both off the floor and shoves his pants down, until he is free between us. He is thick, the tip already weeping a clear hot moisture against my thigh.
He positions the heavy head of his shaft against me, holding himself still on a single ragged breath, waiting.
I do not nod.
I press down.
I lower onto him an inch at a time. He is wider than Thaw. The stretch is sharper at the entry and I have to breathe through the first half because my body is sorting it — pain and need turning to pleasure. He bottoms out and I whimper,
He is so still under me he might as well be carved of stone.
His hands clamp onto my hips, his fingers digging into the flesh until the skin turns white, but his movement stops there. He holds himself completely still inside me, his forehead resting against me, his whole body trembling.
"Stay," he rasps into my skin. "Stay."
The word goes through me.
Not more. Not mine.
Stay.
I think about finding him on the kitchen floor.
He was waiting for me.
I wrap my arms around his shoulders. I pull him closer. My mouth finds the curve of his ear.
