The moonlight caught his eyes when he looked up at me, and I lost my breath for half a beat. The brown was still brown — but underneath it, somewhere in the iris, there was a low gold-red shimmer that hadn't been there yesterday. The mark of what he was now. The Archer. My mate. Both at once, hidden in plain sight inside the eyes I had loved since I was twenty.
I would have to ask him later if he had noticed it in a mirror. For now I just looked.
Moving a strand of hair from his eyes and gently cupping his face, I asked, “Did you feel it? When you came inside me?”
“Feel what? Because I felt many things,” he teased, arching a brow.
“When we came, specifically when you filled me with your cum, I felt your pleasure as if it were mine. Everything felt intensified.”
“I did, and at one point, I thought it was too much. The pleasure was unlike anything I’ve ever experienced.”
“Me too.”
I kissed him slowly, savoring every moment.
Stars twinkled above us, the moon bathing us in its soft glow. Di rested his head on my chest again, tracing patterns on my skin with his fingertips. Gazing upward, I wondered,how did we end up here? How did I get so lucky?
“Maybe I’m the lucky one,” Di said.
“You heard that?” I startled slightly.
“Hard not to hear when you said it out loud.”
“I didn’t.”
“What?” Di froze.
“I didn’t say it out loud. You heard my thoughts.”
“What!?” He jumped and tried to sit up quickly, but I held him firmly in place.
He'd gone very still under my hands. I could feel his pulse jump, actually jump, under the skin of his throat.
"It was in here," he whispered, tapping the side of his own head. "Not behind me. Not in front of me. In here. Like, like a thought that wasn't mine. Like remembering something I never lived. Fuck, Dagon, your voice was inside my head."
"I know," I said gently.
"I don't know what I expected the mate bond to feel like, but it wasn't your voice showing up in my brain unannounced." He laughed, small, shaky, awed. "How are humans supposed to handle this. How do demons handle this. Holy shit."
"Most demons never have it," I reminded him. "Mates are rare. The bond is rarer. You're holding something most of my kind dies without knowing."
That sobered him.
He let me pull him back down onto my chest.
“Relax, sweetheart. It’s the mate bond.”
“But how? Can you hear my thoughts too?”
I shook my head reassuringly. “No. You sense the thread between us, right?”
“Yeah, it’s a little bit strange. It feels like something I've been missing my whole life, finally making me whole. I can’t see it, I can’t touch it, but I feel it inside, binding us together.”
“I feel it too.” Kissing his nose, I kept talking, “When you want to say something to me telepathically, just reach out to the thread with your mind and speak.”
“Reach for it?” He looked puzzled but adorable. “How can I reach for it?”
“Close your eyes.” When he hesitated, I added softly, “Trust me.”
