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His answer is barely shaped. Yes.

I almost smile, but the look on his body stops me from turning it into teasing. He’s trying to hold still for me, and it’s costing him. His whole lower body is tense, thighs shifting under my hands, the hidden seam slickening beneath my touch.

The wetness surprises me. It beads slowly, carrying his scent so strongly that my head feels light. Cedar, rain-soaked bark, stone, dark green leaves crushed underfoot. Onyx, but deeper. More intimate. The first-body version of him, less softened for me.

And when my thumb glides carefully along the seam, the slit parts all the way, and I stop breathing.

His cock is bigger in this form. Thicker, heavier, and ridged with those same tree-growth patterns, but the texture is more pronounced. The slick coats him as he slides further free, the opening pulsing around the base.

My hand can’t close around him the same way as it could before. He’s too thick for that, too heavy. The sheath flexes at the base each time I stroke down, as if his body wants to draw him back and push him out all over again. The sight of it does something deeply unfair to my nerves.

Onyx’s skull tips back again. His throat works around a sound that never becomes human. His thighs tense around me, fur brushing my legs, and the den fills with his scent so sharply that my mouth waters.

“You were holding back a lot,” I say, because my brain apparently wants to state the obvious while I’m kneeling between his legs with my hand on his true-form cock.

His eyes lower to me through the skull. I made the first taking possible.

That shuts me up. He told me he softened his shape for me. I understood, sort of. But seeing the full truth of him now—feeling the size and texture and heat of what his body keeps hidden—makes that first night different in my memory. He didn’t only restrain himself emotionally; he altered himself. For me.

I lean down before I can say something that cracks my voice, and I lick his cockhead before I can convince myself not to.

Onyx breaks his stillness with a low growl, skull tipping back, antlers scraping hard enough to send bits of root and soil pattering down around us. I don’t take much; I can’t because he’s fucking massive. But I don’t need to take all of him to learn him.

He tastes like strawberries—wild strawberries.

I feel him fighting himself, so I reach up blindly with my free hand and catch two of his fingers, guiding his hand to the back of my head. His claws retract before he touches me, and his palm settles into my hair with almost frightened care.

I drag my tongue along the underside, tracing one raised line as far as I can. His hand tightens in my hair, still too gentle to direct me, but no longer hovering uselessly in the air. Good. That’s what I want. I want him involved in his own pleasure. I want him to understand that being touched does not mean he has to lie still like a creature waiting to be judged.

I take the head into my mouth properly, and hum. Onyx snarls above me, the sound shaking the den walls, and the bond floods with filthy, reverent hunger.

My hand moves where my mouth can’t. The slick makes every stroke smooth, but the ridges still catch against my palm and tongue, making my imagination do unhelpful, vivid things about what that would feel like inside me. My body clenches at the thought, and there’s no hiding that from the bond.

Onyx feels it. Little Ember thinks of taking true shape.

Heat rushes up my chest and neck. I lift my mouth just enough to breathe. “Maybe Little Ember is busy.”

The skull lowers toward me. His eyes burn bright enough to turn the whole den blue at the edges. Little Ember drips when he thinks of being opened by the beast.

My face goes hotter, because yeah, I can feel the slick gathering between my cheeks again. I look down at him in my hand, and more slick spills from him as I stroke, gathering over my knuckles, dripping onto the fur at his lower belly. The scent thickens until my thoughts turn hazy. I lower my mouth again, taking the head, licking and sucking as much as I can manage while my hands work the rest of him.

His pleasure through the bond becomes almost too large to take. I feel every place I touch from his side. My mouth wrapped around him, hot and wet. My fingers sliding over the bark-patterned ridges. The strange shock of being wanted in a body he expected would frighten me. The awe of my stubbornness. The dark, possessive pleasure of watching me learn something hidden and choose not to stop.

When I slip my hands between thighs, a sharp twinge from last night catches low in my body. I stiffen, expecting the ache to spread when I rub my hole. It doesn’t.

The place where I’m sore warms instead. A creeping relief moves through me in a slow wave, easing the tender pull in my muscles and softening the bruised ache between my thighs. I pull out, breathing hard, staring down at the slick shining on my fingers.

Onyx lifts his head at once. Pain?

“No,” I say, distracted, still staring at my hand. “Actually… the opposite.”

I rub my slick-coated thumb over my rim again. The warmth sinks in, and the tenderness fades. Not completely, not magically erased in a blink, but eased. Soothed—the ache is being coaxed closed from the inside.

My mouth drops open.

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Lucas