She blinked back emotional tears. Another inch, and the stone cock rubbed up against something sensitive inside her. Her breath caught and she paused, her hands flat on his chest, wishing she could feel his heartbeat beneath the stone.
The bond sparked, and she sank further down on him. The girth split her open, and the stretch was at the edge of pain. But it wasn’t past it. Her total control meant she could take him at her own pace. Her muscles released their grip by degrees and slowly, slowly, her body opened, letting him in.
She rocked, adjusting the angle, and found the depth where it felt right. She rose and sank, her thighs doing the work.Silent and staring, Rikard was physically unresponsive, but their mental bond was on fire, spark turning to a flaming furnace, his pleasure and hers mingling until she couldn’t tell whose heat was whose.
He wanted to tell her something. She felt his frustration at being trapped inside stone and unable to speak to her like little lightning bolts. He wanted to ask her something.
So she tried to give him answers, saying everything she was feeling, everything she loved about him. She praised the way his body fit inside hers as though he had been carved for her, too. She told him he was beautiful, that she would choose him over a thousand other males, gargoyle or otherwise. She praised his gentleness and his restraint. His skillful hands and agile tail, his lips and teeth and tongue.
His pleasure surged, stronger now. She felt it pressing against her consciousness, enormous and patient, dwarfing hers. So she rode him more fervently, grinding her clit against his stone fingers at the base of his cock. She let her eyes fall shut, guiding her movements by what made her feel best.
Her orgasm vined and bloomed, and as the borrowed pleasure flooded him, she could swear she felt his purr.
She rode the aftershocks with her forehead pressed to his chest, breath ragged and thighs trembling. The cock was still hard inside her, would stay hard until the sun set. The sustained fullness in the aftermath was a new sensation, intimate and strange.
She carefully lifted herself off him, and rolled onto her side in the bed, cradled by his open wing. The bond hummed with shared satisfaction, thick and quiet. She lay there breathing, her hand resting on his frozen chest.
Then she noticed the blood.
A smear on his thigh, dark against the gray hide. She pressed a hand between her thighs and it came away red. Not much.Only a few drops, nothing alarming. Months ago, blood between her legs would have sent her spiraling into the dark place where blood meant violence, but this didn’t frighten her at all.
She was giddy with that triumph.
She was glad Rikard’s gaze was fixed on the ceiling, though, so he couldn’t see it. He would be appalled that he’d hurt her, even though she was the one who’d been in control. He’d worry too much, when it had been worth every drop.
She cleaned herself with a cloth from the basin. She cleaned him too, gently wiping the blood away. She’d bled. She’d heal. And tomorrow morning, if the baby slept and her body agreed, she would do it again, perhaps with some oil to ease the way this time. With more patience, too, now that she was certain that a gargoyle cock was not something to survive but something to savor.
She kissed his stone mouth again and again. Through the bond, faint but real, she felt him smile.
Chapter 35
Rikard
The stone cracked, and he was moving before his lungs had drawn a full breath.
Hanna was asleep, curled on her side next to him, one hand tucked beneath her cheek and the other resting on the coverlet near the spot where he’d lain frozen with no way to speak or move or do anything.
His hands found her shoulders, and he pressed her flat against the mattress.
She woke, blinking until her eyes focused on him, his bulk looming over her, his scarred face inches from hers, and the bond carried his fury to her in a hot, bright wave.
“Youbled,” he said accusingly.
“Good evening to you too.”
“You bled, Hannalinde.”
“You didn’t see it,” she said defensively, confirming his fears.
He growled at her. “I couldsmell it. You climbed on top of me six weeks after nearly dying from blood loss, and you rode to the point of injury, and I couldn’t stop you or tell you to slow down.”
“Didn’t it feel good, though?”
“Yes, but I spent the entire day trapped in stone knowing you’dhurtyourself so I could feel good, and I couldn’t even hand you a cloth.” He stopped only because his lungs were too tight to continue.
She had the decency to look slightly chastened. Only slightly. The bond told him the rest: she was not sorry. She was amused and aroused and enjoying the sensation of being pinned to the mattress by her husband.
“It was a few drops,” she said airily. “I bled far more working on your wings.”
