Something is building toward a peak that frightens me, a crest I can sense approaching the way you sense a storm gather before it breaks. My breathing comes in short, shallow bursts. My body arches without my permission, every muscle straining toward his mouth even as my mind screams at me to stop, to be still, to be good.
I try to wrench myself away. My heels dig into the mattress and I push, but his hands grip my hips and hold me in place. His grip is firm, not painful, but immovable.
“Let go, baby.” His voice is a rough murmur against my skin. “You’re safe. Let it happen.”
“I can’t—I don’t know what?—”
“You can. Trust me. Let go.”
The tension snaps.
Something detonates inside me—a violent, obliterating convulsion that seizes every muscle I possess. My back arches so hard my shoulder blades leave the mattress. A cry tears from my throat, ragged and stunned, louder than any sound I have made in front of anyone, ever. My thighs clamp around his head. My fists twist in the sheets. Wave after wave of sensation crashes through me, relentless; each one crests and breaks and is followed by another, and I cannot breathe, cannot think, cannot do anything but ride it until my body releases me.
When it passes, I am shaking. My limbs have been unstrung. Tears leak from the corners of my eyes and trail into my hair.
I do not know what that was.
Ronan lifts his head. He presses his lips to the inside of my thigh, my hip, the plane of my trembling stomach, and climbs until his face is above mine. His mouth finds my forehead, my damp cheek, the corner of my lips.
“Perfect,” he says. “You are perfect.”
He kisses me, and I taste something unfamiliar on his mouth—warm, musky, intimate. It takes me a full breath to realize the taste is me. The thought should horrify me. It doesn’t. I kiss him back, clumsy and urgent, and grip his shoulders to anchor myself.
He draws back enough to study my face. His green eyes are dark and intent.
“Are you alright?”
I nod. My voice is gone. My mind is reeling, sorting through a myriad of thoughts it has no explanation for, trying to file what happened into a structure that cannot hold it.
I was supposed to endure. I was not supposed to enjoy. I was supposed to feel nothing. Instead, I felt…everything.
Housemother told me a wife submits. A wife lies still. A wife does not cry out.
Either Housemother was wrong, or I am damned.
A fragile thought surfaces, so quiet I nearly miss it—maybe Housemother was wrong about this.
The thought is terrifying and exhilarating and forbidden, and I hold it the way I once held that penny—precious, guilty, mine.
My awareness returns to the room in pieces. The glittering city beyond the glass. The warmth of Ronan beside me, propped on one elbow, his breathing uneven. My skin is damp with perspiration. The sheets are tangled around my calves.
And then I notice what I could not notice before. He is aroused. The rigid length of him presses against his sleep trousers, straining the thin fabric.
He gave. He did not take.
In the Enclave, men take. That is the order of it. A husband takes what is his by covenant, and a wife offers what she owes. But Ronan put his mouth on me and brought me to a place I did not know existed, and he asked for nothing.
“Do you want to stop?” he asks. His voice is strained. “We can stop. There’s no rush.”
I look at his face. The tightness in his jaw, the tendons standing out in his neck, the way his hand grips the sheet beside my hip. He is holding himself back. For me.
“I do not wish to stop.” The admission doesn’t come from duty. It comes from a greedy place. My body is still humming, still warm, and there is a new ache between my thighs. A curious desire. I want to know what happens next.
His eyes search mine. Then he stands and strips the sleep trousers from his body.
I have seen penises. Not human ones, but those of the farm animals at the Enclave. I have even watched as the animals mated.
I have never seen amanunclothed. Not fully, not this close. He is lean and sculpted, his abdomen ridged with muscle, his shoulders broad. My gaze travels lower.
