Page 38

I teach her, on a bridge with no rail, sixty minutes before Cassian Vane comes down that shaft. It takes her nine attempts. The consonant sits behind the teeth in a place her mouth has never needed. On the ninth she gets it.

She says it properly, in my language, in a room full of moving rings, and the sound of it goes through me in a manner I am not prepared for and do not attempt to hide.

“Again,” I manage.

She says it again.

What happens after that is nobody’s business but ours. I pull her into my lap right there on the edge of the gallery, her back to my chest, boots still dangling over the drop. The stone is cool under my thighs.

Her weight settles against me and I feel every point of contact—the soft press of her ass against my cock, already hard and straining, the heat of her through the thin fabric of her pants. I yank those pants and her underwear down just far enough, shoving the material to her knees. One of my hands bands across her chest, pinning her back against me; the other slides between her legs and finds her soaked.

“Fuck—Draeven—” she gasps as two thick fingers push into her cunt without preamble. She’s wet enough that they slide in easy, and the sound she makes when I curl them is raw and unguarded. I work her open, thrusting slow and deep while my thumb finds her clit and rubs in tight circles. Her hips roll, grinding down onto my hand, chasing the friction.

“So ready for me already,” I growl against her ear. “This pretty cunt is dripping all over my fingers.”

She reaches back, fumbles with the fastenings of my pants, and frees my cock. It springs heavy against the soft curve of her ass, ridged and leaking. She wraps her small hand around the shaft and strokes once, twice, smearing the wetness from the head down the length. The contrast of her soft human skin against the harder ridges makes my spines flatten completely against my back.

“Now,” she demands, voice breaking. “I need you inside me now.”

I lift her just enough, line the thick head of my cock against her entrance, and thrust up in one smooth, powerful stroke. She takes every inch with a long, broken moan, head falling back on my shoulder as I bury myself to the hilt. The heat of her is almost shocking—tight, wet, gripping every ridge so perfectly that my vision narrows for a second.

“Shit—Clara—” I groan, holding still for a beat so she can adjust, so I can feel the way her walls flutter and clench around me. “You’re so fucking tight. Taking all of me like you were made for it.”

“Move,” she gasps. “Fuck me. Hard.”

I give her exactly that. One arm locked across her chest to keep her steady on the narrow bridge, the other hand still working her clit in firm circles, I start thrusting up into her with deep, powerful strokes. Every ridge drags along her inner walls on the way out and forces back in, the wet slap of skin on skin echoing off the ancient stone. Below us the rings keep turning, indifferent and eternal, the soft mechanical hum a counterpoint to her moans and my rough breathing.

She bounces on my lap, taking me deeper with every roll of her hips, the angle letting me hit that spot inside her that makes her thighs shake. I feel every flutter, every pulse of her cunt around my cock. My spines are fully flattened; every sense is narrowed to the heat of her, the way she squeezes when I grind deep, the smell of sex and cool stone and the faint ozone of the instruments turning far below.

“Ride my cock,” I growl against her ear, voice rough. “Take it all, just like that—let me feel how greedy this pussy is for me.”

“Yes—fuck—right there—” Her hand comes up to grip my forearm across her chest, nails digging in. “Harder. Don’t stop. I’m so close⁠—”

I pinch her clit between two fingers and slam up into her harder, the new intensity dragging a sharp cry out of her. Her walls clamp down hard, pulsing in long waves as she comes, the rhythmic squeeze almost enough to pull me over with her. I fuck her through it, relentless, chasing the way her body milks me, until the last tremor fades and she’s panting, limp against my chest.

I don’t stop.

I shift my grip, both hands on her hips now, and lift her slightly so I can thrust up into her from a deeper angle. The change wrings a fresh, broken sound out of her. She’s oversensitive, still fluttering around me, but she pushes back to meet every stroke, greedy for more. Cum and her own slick make everything wetter, louder. The bridge is narrow; one wrong shift and we’d both go over the edge, and the knowledge of it only sharpens everything.

“Again,” I tell her, mouth against the side of her neck, teeth scraping lightly. “Come on my cock again. I want to feel it.”

She does. The second orgasm hits her harder than the first—her whole body locking, a broken cry torn from her throat as her cunt spasms around me in tight, rhythmic pulses. The squeeze is too much. I bury myself as deep as I can go, forehead pressed to the curve of her shoulder, and come with a guttural groan, pumping thick jets of hot cum into her until it spills out around my cock and drips onto the white stone between us.

We stay locked like that while the aftershocks fade, both of us breathing hard, my arms wrapped tight around her. The rings turn far below, patient and eternal. Neither of us speaks for a long time. There is nothing left that needs saying with words.

Eventually I ease her off me. Cum slips down her inner thighs. I help her pull her pants back up with careful hands, then settle her sideways across my lap so her legs are no longer dangling over the drop. She rests her head against my shoulder. My arm stays around her. The whole machine turns quietly beneath us.

There is a thing my aunt told me when I was nine, which I have carried for twenty-eight years without ever having a use for it. She said the trouble with recognition is that it hands you the answer before you have earned it, and that a man who trusts it without going back and earning it afterward is not bonded. He is merely lucky.

I went back and did the earning, and that deserves recording somewhere in this building, alongside a very great many years of other people’s careful notes.

“You’ve gone quiet,” she says eventually, voice soft.

“I’m filing something.”

“In the archive?”

“In me,” I say, which is not a sentence I have ever produced before, and she laughs and doesn’t make me explain it.