They stopped there. Well short of everything he wanted, everything his body clamored for. But he wouldn’t take that step tonight, and she didn’t push for it, and it was right. It was enough. It was more than enough.
“That was—” She lifted her head. Her eyes were bright, her lips kiss-swollen, her whole face soft and open in a way he’d never seen before. “I didn’t know that I could still?—”
“You can.” He brushed a strand of dark hair back from her damp forehead. “You can have anything you want, little one. Whenever you’re ready. However you’re ready.”
She settled against his chest with a contented sigh, tucking herself into him like she’d been made to fit there. His arms closed around her, and he felt the last of the day’s tension drain out of her, replaced by a boneless satisfied heaviness.
“Take me to bed?” she murmured, already half-asleep.
“Always.”
He carried her to his sleeping cave after her breathing had gone slow and even. He stretched out beside her, and she curled intohim without waking, one small hand fisted in the fur over his heart. But he lay awake a long while after, staring into the dark, the fire’s glow flickering faintly on the cave walls.
Something had shifted tonight. Between them, and in him. He’d stopped protecting her from himself, and the world hadn’t ended. She hadn’t shattered. She’d bloomed. And he understood now, with a clarity that both thrilled and terrified him, that everything he’d been so afraid of had been a shadow of his own making. His fear, not hers.
She was braver than he was. Perhaps she always had been.
He pressed his mouth gently to the crown of her head and breathed in the sweet, warm scent of her. She hadn’t come to him tonight because she was frightened. She had come because she wanted him. And for the first time, he let himself believe she might actually choose him.
The thought was too large to hold all at once. So he held her instead, small and warm and trusting in his arms, and let the fire burn down to embers, and did not sleep for a very long time.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Polly woke slowly, drifting up through layers of warmth like a swimmer rising towards sunlight. She was surrounded by fur. By heat. By the slow steady rhythm of breathing that wasn’t her own. And when her eyes finally opened, she found herself looking at the broad expanse of Njkall’s chest, her cheek pressed against the dense softness of his pelt, her hand still resting over his heart where she’d put it sometime in the night.
She didn’t move.
Usually, waking like this triggered something in her—a small flutter of panic, a need to check her surroundings and remind herself that she was here by choice. In the first months on Hothrest, she’d sometimes woken with her heart pounding, half-convinced she was back in that terrible place where choices hadn’t existed at all.
But this morning there was no panic.
There was only warmth. Only the quiet darkness of the sleeping cave and the absolute certainty that she was exactly where she wanted to be.
That’s new,she thought, a smile tugging at her mouth. And maybe even more significant than what happened last night.
Her face heated at the memory.
Last night had been wonderful. Overwhelming and gentle and nothing like she’d feared. But a part of her had always hoped that someday, with someone she trusted, she might be able to enjoy being touched again.
What she hadn’t known was that she could wake afterward and still feel like herself. That she could lie here in his arms with the memory of his hands on her skin and feel nothing but contentment. She could stay because she wanted to stay.
Maybe I really am healing.
The thought felt too fragile to examine closely, so she simply rested her cheek against his chest and listened to his heart for a long time before slipping carefully out of his arms.
He stirred but didn’t wake. One large hand flexed against the furs where she’d been, seeking her warmth, and then relaxed again. A soft rumble moved through his chest—not quite a snore, more like a contented vibration—and she had to press her hand to her mouth to keep from laughing at the absurd tenderness that flooded through her at the sound.
She slipped out of the sleeping cave and padded barefoot across the cool stone of the main cave.
She gathered clean clothes and washed quickly in the cold water of the little spring at the back of their quarters. Her body was pleasantly sore in places she hadn’t expected, and every small ache brought back another memory of his hands and his mouth on her body.
Last night was real. I asked for what I wanted. And he gave it to me. And I’m still here. I’m still me. Nothing broke.
She dressed in a simple blue tunic and leggings and braided her damp hair back from her face. Then she took a breath, squared her shoulders, and went back to the main cave.
Njkall was awake.
He crouched at the cooking hearth, his back to her, bringing the fire back to life. The light from the new flames danced over his white fur, tracing the powerful lines of his shoulders and the broad expanse of his back.
