He returned to his enviable task, stroking as he had before while nudging the clawless fingers into her entrance. “May I?” he murmured in her ear.
“Fallen gods, yes,” she gasped, hips bucking toward his hand. His fingers slipped in easily. Her warmth enveloped him, and it felt nearly as good as if his cock had entered. His skin felt alight, every part of it. He almost believed he could come if she did.
His fingers worked steadily, rubbing her inner walls as his thumb circled outside. He instinctively responded to the catch of her breath and the subtle shifts of her hips that told himthere, that angle, that depth and pressure. His mouth stayed on her skin, claiming her with his tongue even when he couldn’t with his teeth, and his fingers continued their dance, and the tension in her body built and built.
When she finally came, she gasped his name, and that was like a release itself, the way it burst through his veins. The climax moved through her in waves that he felt in his own body through the places they were pressed together, the tremor in her thighs and the pulse in her throat and the convulsive grip of her fingers on his thigh. He held her through it, clamping his wing tight around them, and the purr that poured from him shook the bed frame.
Afterward, she lay against his chest, breathing hard. “That was incredible. I think you’ve created a monster.”
“That makes two of us,” he said wryly.
She turned to press her forehead against his chest, the laughter shaking through her warm and unguarded.
He stayed with her until she slept and then rose to dress for work. It was only then that he noticed that, where the repair in his wing had been, there was now a healed membrane. He would not believe it to be true except that a faint ghost of silvery leaves marked it as his wife’s handiwork.
Somehow, where all the masons had failed, Hanna had succeeded.
Chapter 26
Hannalinde
Her stomach felt like it was full of moths.
Somehow, the knowledge that shecouldheal his wings made her more anxious. What had been an impulsive expression of love was now much more serious business. She’d spent two days strategizing the best course for the next repair. Rikard was desperate for it to work, and she did not want to let him down.
“Hold still,” she ordered her husband, who was squirming with understandable excitement.
He settled down, and she selected a larger tear along the upper strut, mapping the anchor points where the scar tissue was thickest. Then she blew out a breath to settle her nerves and began to work. It was just embroidery, after all, and she was good at that.
She spent several hours working a pattern of flowers and stars while Rikard sat still as a stone. By midnight, the embroidery was some of her finest, both sturdy and beautiful. She tied the final knot, cut the thread, and sat back to admire the lacework bridging the gap.
But it was still lacework in the morning.
She checked it the moment she woke, climbing onto a chair to examine the wing where Rikard roosted. The silk was silk. The membrane beneath it was still torn, the broken edges unchanged, the gap unbridged by anything except thread. Beautiful thread, but thread nonetheless.
She tried again the next evening. A smaller tear this time, near the trailing edge. Same needle, same spool of silk. In the morning, the same beautiful result that remained thread and nothing more.
“That’s all right,” she said when Rikard woke that evening and discovered the failure. “We’ll try again.”
“We should stop.” Rikard’s voice was flat as he waved away her needle. He moved to the window and stood with his back to her, his wings unbound, the two embroidered repairs a taunt among the cascade of gaping tears. “It’s fruitless. The first was an anomaly.”
His hopeless tone made her jaw set. “Why, though? I must have done something different.”
“Hannalinde.”
“Don’t say my name in that voice.” She jabbed her needle into the pincushion. “Something happened the first time that didn’thappen the second or third. I used the same thread, the same needle, the same technique. I don’t understand.”
“What is there to understand?” He shrugged, still not looking at her. “Some wounds don’t heal.”
“Why not?” she burst out, frustrated. Rikard didn’t turn. She stared at the three repairs. The first repair, the one that had worked, the healed membrane smooth and whole with its ghostly watermark of silver leaves. Beside it, the second and third embroideries looked like jewelry pinned to a torn sail. Pretty, but useless.
Same thread. Same needle. Same technique. Same wing. What had been different about the first time?
She replayed the evening in her mind. Where he sat. The repositioned lamps. The first anchor stitch into scar tissue, which had resisted, requiring more pressure than she’d expected. She’d pushed it through with a thimble.
She’d pricked herself.That’s why she’d used a thimble. There had been blood, just a drop. She hadn’t thought much of it at the time. A seamstress’s fingers bled so often it barely registered. But the blood had been there, on her fingertip, on the needle, on the thread that she’d drawn through the membrane.
Blood and stone make magic.
