I straddle his lap, the furs pooled around us and his hands braced at my hips and his forehead tipped down toward mine. My body is shaking with my need for him and only him.
I haven't checked the door. I haven't thought about exits. I am entirely here, in this room, in this body, with this ridiculous,enormous man — and I feel, with some astonishment, like myself.
Like the version of me that exists before everything went wrong.
I rock my hips, slow, testing, feeling the blunt heat of him against me — not yet, just the pressure, the promise of it — and he makes a sound low in his throat that I decide immediately I want to collect.
"Beautiful," he says. Low and rough and without any performance to it. Just fact, stated plainly, the way he'd tell me my guard was dropping or my footwork was off. Matter-of-fact and total. "You feel so good."
I press down and he groans — real and helpless, his hands tightening at my hips — and something in my chest does something complicated that isn't entirely about the physical.
I reach between us and take him in my hand and his whole body goes still, breath suspended, gray eyes on mine. I take my time. I watch his face. I like watching his face — the way every expression moves across it without apology, nothing held back, nothing managed. He's sopresent.Always. It used to unnerve me. Now I understand it's one of my favorite things about him.
I sink down.
The stretch is slow. Full. His jaw tightens and his exhale comes out unsteady and I feel every inch of him and I keep going, working down unhurried, until I'm seated and we're both breathing like we've just completed a different kind of sparring entirely.
"Alright?" he manages.
"More than." I roll my hips, just barely, a test, and his grip at my waist flexes hard. "Verymuch more than."
His laugh is breathless. The sound loosens something in me and I start to move — a slow roll, finding the rhythm, the angle — and his head tips back for a moment before he brings it backlevel and looks at me like I'm the most interesting thing he's encountered in his entire life.
I brace my hands on his shoulders and I ride him and I say the things I've been turning over in my head for weeks without meaning to.
"I hated you being loud," I tell him, breathless, "when I first got here. I thought it was — I thought it meant you were dangerous." I roll my hips deeper and his groan is gratifyingly wrecked. "And then I realized you're just —fullof it. Life. You're just full of life and joy and it spills over everywhere and I—" I falter as he rolls up to meet me and the thought scatters. "Ineedthat. I didn't know I needed it but I do."
His hands slide up my back, drawing me closer, his mouth finding my jaw.
"All of it," I manage. "The noise and the laughing and the way you shout at people during the obstacle course like they can't hear you from three feet away?—"
"They go faster." He says it into my neck, strained but absolute.
"They do." I press my lips to his temple, his cheekbone, the corner of his mouth. "You're everything I want. I didn't want to want you and you just—" I pull back to look at him, moving against him, heat building. "You just kept showing up."
"I always will." His voice has gone rough, scraped down to its foundations. His forehead drops to mine, the two of us sharing breath, the rhythm between us building into something that crowds out every other thought. "Aislin, I will always be there for you."
I bite back asking why. I want to learn to just accept the way he cares for me without questioning it.
But Ursik sees it anyway.
"I have always liked everything you are," he says, his thumb pressing to my jaw, tilting my face up. "The sharp tongue and theway you stand in front of every person you care about without thinking twice about yourself—" He groans, low and unsteady. "—and the good heart you hide like it's a liability. All of it. I want all of it."
Something in my chest cracks wide.
"I'll protect it," he says. "All of it. Every part of you." His hands tighten and his voice breaks at the edges. "Iswearit."
I crash over it with his name in my mouth and he follows me — his whole body shuddering, the groan he makes rough and unguarded and completely his — and I hold on and let him and I don't run.
URSIK
SIX MONTHS LATER…
Iwake before Aislin does.
That happens sometimes — my body clocking sunrise before my brain catches up, the old soldier's habit of snapping alert at the first grey light.
But where once I'd be on my feet with my boots half-laced before the thought formed, these days I stay exactly where I am. I've gotten very good at that particular stillness. It's the best kind of discipline I've ever practiced.
