"Good," he says, and his mouth finds my throat while he pulls the shirt up and off, and the cold air of the abandoned house hits my skin for exactly one second before his hands replace it.
He is careful and then not careful at all, and the transition between the two is so smooth I don't notice where one ends and the other begins. His mouth moves down my throat to my collarbone to the curve of my breast, and I dig my fingers into his hair and make a sound I would be embarrassed about if the bond weren't currently broadcasting that he finds it devastating in the best possible way.
"God," I breathe.
"Still with me?" he asks, against my skin.
"Very much with you. Don't stop."
He doesn't stop. His mouth closes over my nipple and my back arches off the bench and his arm around my waist tightens, holding me steady, and the heat of his mouth against my skin is so directly contrary to every cold and careful version of him I spent months cataloguing that it scrambles something in me in a way I'm entirely fine with.
He lays me back slowly, making sure my bandaged arm is clear, and the stone floor is cold and the fire is warm and he's above me, braced on one arm, and he takes his time with me in a way that makes it abundantly clear that Ryder Ashford does nothing by halves once he's decided to do it at all.
His hand slides down my stomach, past the waistband of my trousers, and he watches my face the entire time, and when his fingers find the right place his expression does something complicated and devoted and I stop being able to catalog anything at all.
"Are you—" he starts.
"If you ask me again right now," I say, breathless, "I will absolutely lose my mind."
"I was going to ask if you were comfortable," he says, entirely too composed for a man with his hand where his hand currently is. "The floor is stone."
"The floor is fine," I say. "I'm fine. Please keep doing that."
He does.
He takes me apart slowly and thoroughly, his thumb circling my clit with a rhythmic, heavy pressure that has me crying out against his neck. He slides two fingers deep inside me, slick and stretching, matching the pace of his thumb until my hips are lifting off the floor to meet him. The bond between us runs so bright and open that I don't know where his focus ends and mine begins. When I come undone, my walls pulsing hard around his fingers, it's with his name trapped in my throat, my forehead pressed against his as the fire burns low behind us.
He gives me exactly ten seconds to breathe before I pull him back up to my mouth, my hands dropping to his belt. I undo the buckle with shaking fingers, pushing his trousers down until his dick springs free, thick and fully erect, pressing hot against my thigh. I reach down and wrap my fingers around him, feeling the heavy weight and the bead of pre-come at the tip. He lets me,helps me, kicking his clothes away until there is nothing between us, his hands sliding down to cup my bare ass and pull me flush against his hard length. He's watching my face with a focus that would be clinical if it weren't so clearly something else entirely.
"Tell me," he says.
"Still yes," I say. "Still sure. Come here."
When he finally pushes inside me, sliding into my wet heat in one slow, agonizingly perfect stroke, the sound he makes against my throat is low and wrecked. He's so thick he stretches me completely, filling me in a way that makes me gasp and cling to his shoulders. He is nothing like the professor right now, nothing like the man who stood in front of a Council and kept his composure under pressure. This version of him is unguarded in a way I didn't know he was capable of, his bare chest pressed against my breasts, his nipples scraping mine. Through the bond I feel it: relief, and want, and the specific terrifying thing underneath both of them that neither of us is going to name out loud yet but that exists anyway, solid and undeniable as the stone floor under my back.
He moves slowly at first, deliberate, checking my face, and I wrap my legs around his waist, pulling him deeper. His hands slide under my ass, lifting me slightly to adjust the angle, and he drives into me with a hard, snapping rhythm. The friction of his shaft against my clit with every thrust has me sobbing his name. The bond amplifies everything—every wet slide, every point of contact, the heavy muscles of his back flexing under my hands, the slap of his hips against mine. I press my face into his neck and hold on, letting him bury himself in me as I stop thinking about wraiths and evidence and Council votes and just feel this. Him. The thick, relentless weight of him stretching me open.
"Angelic," he says, strained.
"Don't stop," I tell him. "Don't you dare stop."
He doesn't stop.
The second time I come apart, he's right behind me, his grip tightening, his breath ragged against my shoulder, and the bond flares so fully open between us that for a moment I feel everything he feels: the release, the relief, and underneath it the thing that terrifies him most, which is exactly how much he means this.
Afterward, he doesn't move away. He shifts his weight so he's not crushing my arm, and then he pulls me against his side on the stone floor with his jacket folded under my head, and his hand settles at my waist, and neither of us says anything for a long time.
The fire has burned down to coals. The room is dim and warm and quiet.
"Your sister," I say eventually. "She would have been insufferable about this, wouldn't she."
He's quiet for a beat.
"Absolutely insufferable," he says. "She would have found a way to say I told you so about something she never actually told me."
"She sounds like she was excellent."
"She was." His arm tightens slightly. "She really was."
