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“Are you scent-marking me?”

“I am restoring the previous condition.”

“Then scent-marking.”

“Yes.”

She puts one hand flat on my chest and pushes. I could resist. I let her walk me backward until my legs meet the stone bench, and I sit, water pouring over both of us.

“Bench seating,” she says. “You did describe the facilities.”

She reaches down and wraps her hand around me, and whatever I intended to say leaves my head entirely. Then she turns her back to me, plants her feet on the stone on either side of mine, and reaches between her legs to guide me into her. She sinks down slowly, both of us facing the spray, and I watch over her shoulder as she takes every inch.

Mate is on top, my dragon observes. Mate is in charge.

She is.

A long pause. Acceptable.

She rides me with her feet planted and her thighs doing all the work until she finds the angle that makes her breath stutter, then claims it.

I keep my hands on her hips and let her set the pace. “Look at you,” I murmur. “Absolutely extraordinary.”

She moves faster, and I tighten my grip.

“Do you have any idea what you look like right now? Nothing in this house has ever been worth more than you. Not one single thing.”

Her breath catches.

“I can feel every little flutter, Nina.” My voice drops, rougher now. “Every time you tighten around me. Every time you want more.”

She makes a sound that nearly undoes me.

“That’s it. Just like that.” I tilt my head to the side, watching the water slide down her throat. “I want to watch you come. Right here, with the water running down your beautiful skin and my name on your lips.”

She takes my hands off her hips and sets them flat on the stone on either side of me. “Stay,” she says.

Mate has given us a command, my dragon reports, scandalized and thrilled in equal measure.

I hold still. She leans forward, bracing her palms on my knees, the water sheeting down the long curve of her spine to where we are joined, and she rolls her hips in a slow, deliberate circle that turns my vision gold at the edges. My fingers curl against the bench. Somewhere under my right hand, the stone makes a small, alarming sound.

She hears it. She glances down at my knuckles, where scales are glinting through the skin, then over her shoulder at me, and grins.

“If you crack the bench,” she says, “you’re explaining it to Mrs. Hughes.”

“Mrs. Hughes,” I say through my teeth, “has seen worse.”

“Has she?”

“No.”

She laughs and does it again, slower.

“Nina.” My voice comes out considerably rougher than intended. “You are going to be the death of me.”

“Is that a complaint?”

“Certainly not. But I would like it entered into the record that I died entirely content.”