I shattered.
The orgasm crashed through me, and I heard myself cry out his name, felt my body clench around nothing, felt his hands holding me through it while his mouth gentled but didn’t stop. He worked me through the aftershocks, drawing it out, until I was boneless and trembling and couldn’t remember how to breathe.
He pressed a kiss to my inner thigh. Moved up my body, settling over me, his weight braced on his forearms.
“Wren.” His voice was wrecked. His whole body was shaking with restraint. I could feel him hard against my thigh, feel how much that had cost him.
I reached down. Found him through the fabric of his trousers. He hissed, hips jerking.
“Your turn,” I said.
“You don’t have to.”
“I want to.” I stroked him through the fabric, felt the heat of him, the length. “Teach me what you like.”
He groaned. Dropped his forehead to my shoulder. “Everything. I like everything. Anything you do. Just—just touch me. Please.”
I pushed at his trousers. He helped, kicking them away, and then he was bare against me, and I could finally see him. Feel him. The hard length of him against my palm, hot and thick, and he made a sound like I’d wounded him when I wrapped my fingers around him.
“Like this?”
“Yes.” The word was barely a breath. “Yes. Just, yes.”
I stroked him. Slow at first, learning the shape of him, the weight. Then faster when his breathing went ragged. His hips moved with me, small desperate thrusts, and his claws dug into the furs beside my head, and his wings unfurled without his permission, spreading wide above us.
“Wren.” My name, broken. “I’m going to…if you keep doing that…”
“I want you to.”
He came with a roar. I felt him pulse in my hand, felt the hot spill across my stomach, felt his whole body shudder as the pleasure tore through him. His wings snapped wide, then folded down, wrapping around us both, and he collapsed against me, trembling.
We lay there. Breathing. His heart hammered against mine, gradually slowing.
“That was,” he managed eventually. “That was not waiting.”
“No.” I pressed a kiss to his shoulder. “It wasn’t.”
“The bond. We still haven’t completed it.”
“I know.” I traced the feathers along his spine, felt him shiver. “But that’s for when we’re ready. Both of us. This was just... this.”
He lifted his head. Looked at me with those golden eyes, softer now. Wondering.
“Just this.”
“Just us.” I smiled. “Learning each other.”
He kissed me. Soft and slow and tender, nothing like the desperate claiming of before.
“I love you,” he said against my mouth. “I have loved you since you walked toward me in that market. I will love you until the mountains crumble and the sky falls and the world ends.”
My chest ached. My eyes burned.
“That’s very dramatic.”
“I am very dramatic.” He settled beside me, pulling me against his chest, his wing draping over us like a blanket. “It’s part of my charm.”
“Is that what we’re calling it?”
