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“Continue,” I say.

He does.

His mouth moves down my throat, rough enough to leave heat behind. One hand spans my ribs. The other pushes my skirt and shift up and slides between my thighs, bark grain dragging over tender skin until my hips jerk against him.

“There,” I say.

He learns quickly.

The vine against my arm pulses with his heartbeat.

It holds me while his fingers work my clit, slow at first, then harder when I tell him. Every sound I make, the room answers. Leaves unfold. Moss deepens. The branches above us bend into the beginning of a bower.

He watches my face.

I come with his name in my mouth. Thighs clamped on his hips. Hands hauling on the vines. Through the bond I feel the pleasure strike him too.

He lowers me to the moss bed. The vines give me room to move. I pull the loosened dress and my shift over my head, dropping them beside the bed. Daurek lets the covering at his hips fall away.

The leaves at his temples have folded back. I touch the exposed seam beside his mouth.

“Do you want me inside you?” he asks.

“Yes.”

His body shifts between my thighs. His cock is dark ridged heartwood. I remember the feel of him inside me, and reach for his shoulders.

“Slowly at first,” I say.

“I will.”

He enters me by degrees, heat spreading with every inch. The fine ridges of his grain drag against nerves already swollen from his hand. I hold his shoulders, bark and leaves beneath my palms, and breathe until my body opens around him.

“More.”

One thrust seats him fully.

Hidden vines strain inside the wall.

I breathe against the pressure while he holds still, his forehead against mine.

Then I lift my hips.

His careful restraint breaks.

He drives into me, still listening. When I say harder, he gives me harder. When the angle is wrong, he changes it. I catch the vines in my hands and use them for leverage.

The branches above his bed close around us. White flowers, then red, open through the branches. I say his name against the flowers. He answers with mine.

My back arches. My legs lock. I come again, harder, and Daurek follows with a shout that shakes loose a rain of leaves across my skin.

He remains over me, breathing hard.

The branches settle. The vines uncurl from my arms.

Daurek touches the warm line the vine left on my forearm, well above the old scrape.

“There?” he asks.