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The upward motion meets my downward drop, seating himself deeper than before. My cry tears raw from my chest. He stops again for one heartbeat, and I slap my palm against his chest before he can drown himself in concern.

“Again,” I beg, because there’s no pride left. “Onyx, again. Like that.”

His growl is almost pained. Greedy flame.

“Yes,” I gasp, and the admission burns through me in a way shame can’t touch. “Yes, fine, greedy, whatever you want to call it, just do it again.”

He starts lifting and lowering me in short, punishing strokes, letting gravity and his strength work together until I’m riding him without enough control to pretend I’m in charge.

Feel how deep I am. Feel how my body heals what it opens. Feel how safely I ruin you.

That is what does it.

My orgasm hits so hard I don’t make a sound at first. My whole body locks around him, pleasure dragging me under in a bright, brutal rush. Then the sound comes torn out of me—half sob and half his name, as I spill between us, my cock jerking untouched against the ridged plane of his body.

My hole clamps around him in pulsing waves, slick heat and healing warmth and pleasure all tangled so tightly I can’t tell whether I’m breaking or being held together.

His hips jerk, cock swelling inside me, slit pulsing hard, and I know he’s right there, too.

“Come for me, Wildheart,” I whisper, voice barely there as I clench around him. “I’ve got you.”

His hands grip me with a force that would frighten me if it were anyone else, but the claws are gone, and every ounce of that strength holds rather than hurts. He thrusts up once, hard and deep, seating himself as far as my body can take.

His release is different in this form too—more. Thicker. I feel it inside me in heavy pulses, each one making his body throb, warmth spreading through me to ease the strain even as he fills me again and again. The healing and the stretch and the release all tangle until I can’t tell where pleasure ends, and recovery begins.

I collapse forward onto his chest before he’s finished, and he catches me instantly. We fall back together, one arm wrapping around my back, the other supporting my hips so I don’t sink down too hard. Even in the middle of his own orgasm, he protects the places that might hurt. That knowledge punches through me so deeply that my eyes burn against his chest.

The bond floods with him: pleasure, love, disbelief, wild gratitude, the stunned ache of being taken by the mate who learned the hidden shape and called it his.

When the last pulse fades, I’m shaking too hard, breathless against his chest, body stretched around him, full of him, healed and sore and ruined in a way that feels strangely clean.

His slick continues to warm inside me and around us, easing the places that took too much pressure, soothing the ache before it can deepen into pain. I can feel it working. That is the strangest part. Not magic in a sparkling sense; nothing pretty. More like root and sap and old instinct doing exactly what it was made to do.

Keeping me whole after the beast has had me.

Onyx’s hand strokes down my back. Little Ember?

I answer by patting his chest weakly, because words are a faraway concept right now, and I don’t have a map.

The bond warms with relief.

After a long moment, his body gradually shifts beneath me. The ridges soften first, the thickness easing enough that I can take a full breath without feeling split open by it. I gasp when I feel his cum trickling out of me.

Onyx stills. Pain?

I shake my head against him. “No. Weird. I’m full and feel your cum slipping out of me. Just give me a minute to feel weird.”

His hand settles at the back of my neck, thumb moving slowly. Yes.

A tired laugh slips out of me. “At least you admit it.”

My body is old. Old things are strange.

“Your body is very, very strange,” I murmur, turning my face enough to kiss one raised mark on his chest. “Also useful.”

The bond gives me a flicker of confusion, then amusement, then a satisfaction so deep my toes curl despite every nerve in me being exhausted. Useful?

I close my eyes, smiling against him because I can’t help it. “You’ve got healing monster slick.”