She looked at the dark green of his fingers pressing dents into the white flesh of her thighs. She looked at the rise of her own belly where his hand had been, still flushed from the pressure. She looked at the place where he met her, the broad head of him notched against her, and she watched him push in.
The first inch was always the hardest. Her body seized and then gave, and the ridges caught at her entrance one by one as he fed himself into her with a patience that cost him. She could see it costing him. The tendons in his forearms stood rigid, his breath came shallow through his nose, and his jaw was clamped so tight the muscles bunched beneath his ears.
"More," she said.
He gave her another inch. And another. The ridges dragged against her walls, each one a blunt pressure that made her gasp and push down for the next. He let her. He held still and let her body pull him deeper. When she couldn't reach any further, he rolled his hips forward and sank the rest of the way in one long, grinding stroke that punched the air from her lungs.
She felt him everywhere. In her spine, in her teeth, in the backs of her knees. He was so deep the pressure had moved past pleasure into some territory that didn't have a name, where herbody couldn't decide whether to bear down or pull away and chose both at once.
"There," he said. His voice was wrecked. "All of me. Every inch."
She couldn't speak. She nodded, her fingers locked in the furs, and he drew back in a slow drag that lit every ridge against her walls until only the head remained, and then he drove forward.
Her whole body moved with it. Her breasts rocked with the force and she let them. Her belly shook and she let it. He set a rhythm that was deep and unhurried and brutal in its patience, each stroke bottoming out with a pressure that stole her breath and then retreating just far enough to make her feel the loss before he filled her again.
"This is what you asked for," he said, and his hand came back to her belly. Flat palm, fingers spread, holding the soft weight of her while he moved inside her beneath it. "This body. Carrying my child. You understand what you've given me?"
"Yes," she said.
She had given away every scrap of herself her whole life, and none of it had ever been giving because none of it had ever been chosen. This was chosen. This body that she'd worn like an apology, this belly she'd held in and turned sideways and tried to make less of—she was asking it to do the thing it was built for. Not for him. With him. Because she wanted to. Because she had walked into a yard full of warriors and opened her mouth and the sky had not fallen, and now she was lying beneath the man she'd claimed and telling her own body,yes, this, do this,and her body was listening.
"Yes," she repeated, louder this time.
"Good."
He bent forward over her without slowing his hips, and his mouth found the swell of her breast. His teeth closed over her nipple.
She arched into it, her hand flying to the back of his head to hold him there. His tongue was rough and his teeth were precise and the pull of his mouth sent a wire of sensation straight down through her belly to the place where he was buried. Her hips rolled up to meet him. The angle ground the base of him against her, and she made a sound that was half sob, half demand.
He released her breast and pressed his forehead between them, breathing hard against her skin. His hips had not stopped. The rhythm had thickened, the strokes shorter and harder, and she could feel him hitting the deepest part of her with each one, a blunt insistent pressure that was building toward something she couldn't control.
"You're going to come again," he said into her skin. "And when you do, I'm going to finish inside you. Deep as I can get."
She couldn't answer. The pressure had gathered into a knot low in her pelvis, pulled tight by the drag of his ridges and the weight of his hand and the raw fact of what they were doing. Not fucking. Not even the urgent claiming of the first night at the holding. This was the thing that came after choosing. After standing in a frozen yard and saying a word out loud and meaning it.
His mouth moved up her chest to her throat. His teeth found the tendon and his tongue followed, and the sound she made was animal and unashamed. Her heels dug into the small of his back and her hips locked against his and the knot broke.
It tore through her from the center outward, a clenching so deep it pulled him in. Her back came off the furs and her mouth opened and the sound that came out of her filled the room, filled the stone walls and the high ceiling and the space between his body and hers. She felt every ridge of him as her body seized around them, each one a distinct point of pressure that her muscles gripped and released and gripped again.
He followed her over. His hips slammed forward once, twice, and then locked. She felt the first hot pulse of him deep inside, thick and spreading, and his whole body stiffened above her. A groan tore out of his chest, and his hand on her belly pressed down as his hips ground into her in short involuntary pulses that pushed his seed deeper with each stroke.
She held on. Her arms around his neck, her legs locked at the small of his back, her face pressed into the hard curve of his shoulder where the muscle met the throat. He was shaking. She had never felt him shake before. Not in the lady's chamber, not in the pool, not in any of the nights between. His arms had braced on either side of her head and his breath was coming in raw, open-mouthed gusts against her hair and he was shaking like a man who had put something down that he'd been carrying too long.
The pulses slowed. His hips gave a last grinding roll and then stilled, and the weight of him came down on her by degrees, not all at once, controlled even now, even wrecked as he was. His forehead found the hollow of her throat and his breathing roughened there and she felt each exhale damp against her collarbone.
He didn't pull out.
Every other time, there had been a moment after the end when he withdrew and cleaned her and pulled her against his chest, efficient and tender in equal measure. This time he stayed where he was. Sunk to the root, his hips flush against hers, the last heat of him still spreading inside her in a slow thick pulse that her body answered with small involuntary contractions she couldn't have stopped if she'd wanted to.
His weight settled. Not all of it. Enough. His elbows stayed planted but his chest came down against hers, and the heat of his skin soaked through her from sternum to navel. She could feelhis heartbeat against her own ribs, heavy and deliberate, already slowing while hers was still racing.
"If it took," he said into her hair, "I'll smell it on you before you've missed a thing."
"And if it didn't?"
"Then tomorrow. And the day after." She felt him smile against her hair. "I've no shortage of patience and no shortage of stamina, and nowhere in the world I'd rather be than balls-deep in my woman."
She laughed. It came out wet and shaky and surprised her, because she hadn't known there was laughter in her alongside everything else. His smile widened against her scalp and his arms tightened and she lay beneath him, full of him, laughing into the warm skin of his shoulder like a woman who had never been taught to be quiet.
