Page 55

“That.”

“This?”

“That. Don’t—Goran, don’t stop doing that.”

“I won’t.”

One finger. Just the one, worked into me slowly. It was thicker than two of mine. His thumb found my clit and settled there, and I stopped being a witch and became loud noises.

“More?” he said low, against my throat.

“Yes.”

“Say it.”

“Goran—”

“Say it, Rain.” His voice had gone somewhere I’d never heard. “The mouth is the authority here.”

“More!”

He gave it to me. Two, and eventually, with the oil and a great deal of his patience, three.

He asked for everything. Every time. And him asking was doing as much to me as his hands were. A male the size of a barn, braced over me in the lamplight, shaking with holding back, and still stopping to ask? I had no defense against that. None. He could’ve had anything in the house.

“You’re sure,” he said, at the threshold of it, braced above me on forearms I’d admired across two years of crates, every line of him held taut, the rumble low now.

I took his face in both hands. “Goran. I’ve been sure since the bitter greens. Come home.”

It took a while. A long while. And plenty of oil.

The head of him alone took a minute of my life. Then more of him. Then more than I’d believed a body allowed. He stopped every single time my breath changed, and I lost the ability to talk and had to answer him with my hands.

“Rain,” he rasped out. “Words. I need words.”

“No stopping now. Need. You can smell my need. My want. My craving for it all.”

“I do, but am I⁠—”

“Goran Brack, if you stop now, I will put something in your tea.”

His laugh snorted out. “You’re precious.”

“So are you, but give me everything or I’m going to climb on top of you and steal it.”

There was pressure, and then there was more of it, and then the world went down to breaths and the size of him and his eyes on my face, ready to still at my call.

I placed my heels on the small of his back.

He made a sound like thunder, and then he was home. All of him, every impossible inch, the two of us fitting together after two years of staring across the expanse of a market counter. He held himself in place, shaking, and I put both hands on his face and found that I was crying, though not from pain.

He kissed the salt off me one side at a time without shifting anything below his waist.

“All right?” He sounded wrecked beyond repair.

“Better than.”

We found our pace slowly. Then with more certainty. Then like we’d never done this any other way.