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It wasn’t hard enough.

She ground her hips against him, desperate for the friction of him, the pulsing feel of his want.

It still wasn’t enough.

Elyria trailed a line of kisses up Cedric’s jaw, then gently pressed her lips to both of his closed eyelids, and it was his turn to shiver.

“Are you sure?” he whispered.

“I’ve never been more sure of anything,” she replied, rolling her hips against him and eliciting another groan. “I need you. I need you so much.”

“Stars a-fucking-bove, I need you more.” And then his lips were on hers again, his tongue sweeping into her mouth as she opened for him.

Her hands skimmed up the sides of his chest as she lifted his tunic over his head and discarded it somewhere behind him. He did the same to her, planting a soft kiss to her bondmark as soon as it was bare, and Elyria’s entire body lit up.

This. This was what she needed. Just the feel of him, his lips on her lips, his skin on her skin, his love vibrating down the bond, erasing every bad thing that had happened, that would ever happen.

The corners of Elyria’s eyes pricked as she kissed him once more, lingering for an extra moment on his scar. She continued down the side of his neck, over his collarbone, until she reached the twin crescents she’d left on him.

Her own mark pulsed encouragingly as she lifted her face to meet Cedric’s awestruck gaze.

“I love you,” she said down the bond, and then, because she wanted him to hear the words as much as feel them, she repeated them aloud. “I love you. I should have told you a hundred times before. I thought it every moment we were apart. And I’m so sor⁠—”

He devoured her apology, kissing it away, letting it dissipate into the ether where it belonged. It was stupid to have even tried to say it. In her heart of hearts, Elyria knew he’d had to have known the depths of her feelings this whole time, knew that he had felt them just as much as she did. But that didn’t stop her desire to speak them aloud, like doing so would solidify their existence, their permanence.

She had spent so much time living in the regret of not saying it sooner. Of worrying she had missed her chance.

She would not make that fucking mistake again.

“I love you,” she said again.

“I love you,” he replied, the words simple and honest and earnest. “I am in love with you. And I couldn’t even tell you exactly when it happened, because it feels like I always have been. Even when I thought I hated you, or hated who I thought you were, there was still something inside me that knew.”

Elyria let out a sound that was half laugh, half sob, but the tears that spilled from her eyes this time were not born of grief or sadness. “I knew you would come for me.” She took his face in her hands, one palm gently cupped around each side of his jaw. “Even without being able to hear you or feel you. Even in my darkest moments—and I would be lying if I said there hadn’t been many—I knew.”

Her thumb brushed against his scarred lip, and he pressed a kiss to the pad of it.

“Nothing in all four quarters of hell could have kept me away,” he said.

She dipped her head to graze his jaw with the tip of her nose, taking a deep, drugging inhale, letting his charred sandalwood scent fill her soul. Then she was traversing the muscled column of his neck again, lower and lower, until she was back at his bondmark. And when she planted a sweet kiss there before grazing the edge of her teeth against the mark, something within her knight shifted. A feral sort of growl rumbled from his chest as he threw his head back, lifting his hips so the hard edge of him ground against her core, and she shuddered with delight.

Cedric ran his hands up Elyria’s back—lovingly, reverently, his hands hot, desire pulsing down the bond between them. His fingertips brushed against her shoulder blades, against her slivered scars, against the nothingness there . . .

. . . and Elyria froze.

Every muscle in her body seized, her nerves lighting up with a conflicting mess of emotions she couldn’t pin down. Despair and desire and anger and adoration and loss and love and shame and shame and shame and sh⁠—

“What’s the mat—” Realization seemed to dawn on Cedric just as quickly as Elyria’s reaction had caused her to seize. He yanked his hands back to his sides like they’d been burned, then let them hover in the air between them, as though he couldn’t decide if touching her again would make things better or worse.

She didn’t know either.

Those warm brown, gold-ringed eyes roved across Elyria’s face, indecision furrowing his brow. Finally, he settled on laying one hand loosely over her knee and used the other to tilt her chin.

She let out a shaky breath.

“I am so, so sorry, Elle.” Their bond flooded with the proof of the words, a cutting burst of sorrow that wrapped itself around Elyria’s ribs.

She’d thought she would hate it. She’d spent not a small number of hours over the past few weeks preparing herself for the possibility of freedom and what that would mean. The inevitable pity, the stares, the concern. But somehow, now that it was here, now that it was coming from him, she found it was less humiliating than she’d thought it would be.