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I’m going to lose my fucking mind.

I push her back on the bed, and she goes down laughing, braids spilling across the quilt. I crawl over her, and she goes quiet, looking up at me with her big dark eyes.

“If you want me to stop,” I tell her, “say so. I’ll stop. It’ll probably kill me, and you’ll have to deal with a dead tree in your bed, but I’ll stop.”

She puts her hand flat on my chest, right over my heart.

“Rowan,” she says. “If you stop, I’ll set you on fire myself.”

God help me, I’m obsessed with this woman.

I line up and push inside her.

She’s so wet the head slips right in, and then she’s tight, so tight, stretching around me one slow inch at a time while her nails dig into my shoulders.

“Oh my God,” she gasps. “Oh my God, Rowan, I can feel… I can feel the grain… every ridge… it burns, it’s… fuck, don’t stop, it’s so good…”

I couldn’t stop if the entire forest caught fire.

I sink in deeper and deeper until I’m buried all the way inside her, my knot pressed right up against her, and we both just hold still. Panting. Staring at each other.

For four hundred years, I stood in one spot and never wanted to be anywhere else. Now there’s exactly one place in the whole world I want to be, and I’m in it.

Then I start to move.

First, in long, slow strokes, almost all the way out, then all the way back in, watching her face every time. She moans when I bottom out. Then her hips start rising to meet me. Her heels digging into my ass, her nails raking my back, and she grits out, “Harder. Rowan, please, harder,” and whatever was left of the gentleman Mother Wren carved me into cracks right down the middle.

I shove her thighs to her chest and fuck her.

Deep, hard, and relentless. The headboard slams against the wall over and over. Her breasts bounce with every thrust, and she’s not saying words anymore, just my name and noises I’ve never heard any living thing make.

“I’ve outlasted every storm in this valley,” I growl down at her. “I can go all night, sweetheart. So you better hang on tight.”

She sobs, clawing at my back.

“You paid good money for this,” I snarl. “Every single inch of it. Now take it.”

“Rowan… oh God… I’m gonna…”

“I know. I can feel it.” I drop my mouth to her ear. “And when you do, I’m going to knot you. I’m going to fill you up so full you’ll be walking funny all the way to town. And I want the whole village to see.”

She comes on the word village, screaming, and I slam my knot into her.

She takes it. Barely. Her back bows off the bed, and her pussy clamps down on my knot and locks us together, pulsing so hard I feel it in my teeth.

Then I’m gone.

It hits harder than the storm that brought me down, except this time I don’t fall. I just come and come and come, pouring into her, my knot swelling and throbbing, and I fucking roar. So loud that every bird for a mile takes off in a scatter.

And then… crack!

The bed folds. One whole side just gives and drops, and we crash to the floor in a tangle of quilt, splinters, limbs, and pillows.

Silence.

We lie in the wreck, still locked together, her face pressed into my chest.

And she’s shaking.