Sank down.
I stopped breathing.
Only felt.
The tight, slick grip as she took me in, inch by inch. The way her face changed, concentration and discomfort and then something else, something that looked like wonder.
She was so small around me. I could feel her body stretching to accommodate, feel the effort it took her to take all of me. I wanted to tell her to slow down, to be careful, but I couldn’t speak. Could only lie there and feel her claiming me with her body.
“Wren.” Her name finally broke free. “Wren. Wren.”
She took all of me. Settled into my lap with me buried inside her, and for a moment neither of us moved. Just breathed. Just felt.
The fullness. The heat. The strange, perfect rightness of our bodies joined. She was overwhelmed. She was aroused. She was terrified and exhilarated and she had never wanted anything as much as she wanted this.
“Move,” I managed. “Please. Need to feel you. Move.”
She moved.
And the void began to release me.
Every roll of her hips pulled me further from the darkness. Every slide of her body around me anchored me more firmly to the world. Her pleasure rose, a rising tide that fed back into my own, and I felt something else too: her determination. Her fierce, stubborn refusal to let death have me.
She was saving my life with her body. With her choice. With her love.
I found the strength to move with her. Weak thrusts at first, my body still fighting the exhaustion. But she felt so good. So impossibly good. The tight grip of her around me, the small sounds she made when I hit the right angle, the sharp inhale when I thrust deeper.
Mine.
Not the beast’s possessiveness. Something older. Something that had been waiting since she’d walked toward me that first day, fearless and decided. I had just been waiting for her to know it too.
I pulled her down against my chest. Buried my face in her neck and breathed her in. She smelled like ink and old paper and something sweet underneath, something that was just her. Her small sounds of pleasure vibrated against my skin while she rode me.
“Wren.” Her name again. I couldn’t stop saying it. “I can’t. I need...”
“Take it,” she gasped. “Whatever you need. Take it.”
The last of my control snapped.
My wings rose without my permission. Spreading wide, then curving down to cage us both. A shelter. A wall between her and everything else in the world.
I wanted to tell her she was mine. Wanted to demand she say it back. But the words wouldn’t come, so I said it with my body instead: driving into her, claiming her, making her feel how much I needed her.
She knew. She always knew.
“Yours,” she gasped without being asked. “I’m yours, Tavrin. Always.”
I set a pace I couldn’t have managed five minutes ago. The bond was feeding me her energy, her life, her fierce andstubborn vitality. Every thrust drove me deeper into her body and deeper into the bond and further from the darkness that had nearly claimed me.
My fever broke. I felt it go: the frantic heat banking to something sustainable, the fog lifting from my thoughts. I could think again. Could feel again. Could see her face clearly, really see her, not through the haze of desperation.
She was close. The tension building. The pleasure coiling tighter. Her eyes half-closed, her lips parted.
Beautiful. She was so beautiful.
“Let go,” I said, and my voice was mine again. Clear. Present. “I want to feel you. Let go.”
She came apart.
