“You.” I said it simply. Clearly. A statement of fact. “I want you.”
He kissed me.
Not gentle. Not careful. He kissed me like something had broken loose in him, like all the restraint had finally snapped, and I was ready for it. I kissed him back with everything I had.
His hands released the furs and found my hips instead. I cataloged the details because I couldn’t help it: his mouth tasted like smoke and something wild, his skin burned against mine, the feathers on his shoulders were softer than silk when my fingers found them.
He made a sound against my mouth. A chirr. Low and vibrating, pleasure without language, and I filed that away too. The sound a transforming Roc makes when he’s losing his mind with wanting.
His wings wrapped around us. Not blocking the light this time. Blocking everything. The whole world reduced to the circleof his arms and the fever radiating from him and the desperate press of his mouth on mine.
I was straddling his lap and even sitting he was so much bigger than me, his chest a wall, his hands spanning my entire waist. I had to crane my neck to reach his mouth and even then he had to curve down to meet me.
He pulled back just enough to breathe. His forehead pressed against mine. Both of us panting.
“If we bond now.” His voice had gone guttural, barely human. “If I claim you now. It cannot be. Undone. And you deserve. Time. To be certain.”
I wanted to argue. Every nerve in my body wanted to argue.
But he was right. And the fact that he could stop, that he could pull himself back from the edge even now, told me everything I needed to know about the man underneath the transformation.
“Okay,” I whispered. “We wait.”
His exhale shuddered through both of us. He pressed his face into my neck, breathing me in, and his wings stayed wrapped around us like he couldn’t bear to let even the air touch me.
We rearranged ourselves without speaking. He leaned back against the book-wall and I leaned back against him, his arms around my waist. The nest was warm. He was warmer. I could feel his heartbeat against my spine, still too fast, gradually slowing.
“Yours,” he whispered. So quiet I almost missed it. “All of it. All of me. Yours.”
I thought about the bestiary entry. The Sky Jewel, a fragment of his life force, already given for me. But claiming. Bonding. The bestiary hadn’t mentioned any of that. And he’d said it couldn’t be undone.
There was more to learn. More I needed to understand before we took that step.
But that was for tomorrow. Right now, wrapped in his wings, feeling his heart beat against my spine, I let myself just be held.
I closed my eyes. For the first time in years, I didn’t count anything. Not his heartbeats, not my breaths, not the books or the furs or the seconds until something went wrong.
I just let myself be held.
In the drowsy space before sleep took me, I thought of Elspeth. I should write to her. Tell her I was safe. Tell her I’d found something I hadn’t known I was looking for. Tell her to hold on, just a little longer, and I’d find a way to bring her here too.
Tomorrow. I’d figure it out tomorrow.
