"Maximus. Now."
He moves up my body, cool skin dragging against warm, and looks at me for one long moment. Something in his face that isn't quite readable.
Then he pushes inside me.
Slow. One long unhurried stroke until he’s fully seated and we’re both holding very still, and I am aware of every point of contact between our bodies simultaneously. Cool and thick, andthe stretch of him pulling every nerve ending I have to attention at once.
I breathe.
He waits.
"Move," I say.
He does.
He sets a pace that is deep and thorough and precisely calibrated, each stroke rolling forward from his hips with an angle that hits the same point inside me with a consistency that I would find almost clinical if it weren't for the fact that his jaw is tight and his shoulders are rigid with the effort of keeping it steady. I can feel what holding that control is costing him.
I dig my nails into his back.
He drives deeper. His hands grip my hips and pull me into each stroke, and I wrap my legs around him and pull him closer, and the new angle pulls a sound from both of us.
His mouth drops to my throat. He drags his teeth along the vein there, slow, without breaking skin, and the bond flares so hard the room goes briefly white at the edges.
"Again," I say.
He does it again. Teeth at my throat and his hips keeping their rhythm and his thumb sliding between us to find my center, circling slow and steady while he moves inside me, and I am climbing again, the first release still warm in my bones and a second one building fast on top of it.
The Fae blood has made everything porous. The line between what I feel and what he feels is thinner than it has ever been, and I am getting both simultaneously, my own building pressure and the tight-reined want on his side of the bond, and the combination is staggering.
"Look at me," he says again. His voice has lost its smooth edge. He’s working to keep the pace.
I look at him. Gold light catching his jaw. Black eyes. The specific expression he gets when he’s losing control, and tonight I’m drunk and feel warm, and I hold his gaze and let him see everything on my face too, none of it hidden, and something shifts in his expression when I do.
His thumb presses firm. He drives deep. He says my name and I lock my legs around him and pull him closer, and we peak together, the bond flaring so bright it whites out behind my eyes for a long suspended moment, and the walls answer with gold, and I stop being aware of anything outside the two of us.
He settles beside me. His hand finds my hip. Cool fingers tracing slow and absent against my skin, the same line, over and over.
I have a thought that feels important.
It doesn't make it out.
The blood and the dancing and the night drag me under all at once, and I go without a fight, his hand still warm from me and the walls still glowing soft.
Chapter
Thirteen
Iwake before she does. It’s strange being on this almost-human cycle of waking and sleeping since crossing the Veil.
The Lithenmere's light cycle burns full gold above us, whatever passes for midday inside this mountain, and Celeste is still asleep.
The Fae blood. Still working through her system, slower than it moved through mine.
I lie still and take inventory. My head is clear. The bond is quiet, the deep settled quiet of her sleep rather than the absence of connection. Her hand rests on my chest.
Last night comes back in pieces. The rite. The blood. The way she giggled and danced in a cavern full of ancient beings, and the complete absence of any category in which to file that sound. The walk back to the chamber. What came after.
I press my mouth to her hair.
