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And then he breaks. He bursts inside my mouth, and I take it all. I suck, lick, and drain every spurt like I’m starving for it.

“Yes... take it all,” he chokes out, his grip going rigid in my hair.

I don’t need to be told. I suck with a desperate hunger, my throat working with every swallow, even as a trail of cum trickles down my chin. My cock twitches at the view even as his balls empty and he sags against the mattress, the haze of the orgasm forming a blurry sheen over his eyes.

Finally, I pull away, forcing his hands to fall from my head, and grin as I lick the crown one last time. “Nobody else gets this version of you. Say it back.”

“Nobody else.” His voice comes out small, stripped of its usual bite.

“That’s right.” I grab him, pulling him on top of me. I grip his hair with one hand and clamp the other around his throat, releasing a hum as our nipples brush.

“You do this on purpose.” My cock is still heavy against his thighs. “Every time. You find the exact thing that gets under my skin and you go for it.”

He looks at me, his eyes searching mine, before he whispers, “Because you’re the only one who can keep up.”

I lift a brow, my grip tightening just enough to make him gasp. “Is that so?”

“Yes,” he breathes, leaning down until our foreheads touch. “I’m not going anywhere.”

I huff out a chuckle, releasing his throat only to drop a biting kiss to the slope of his collarbone, marking the territory I’ve already won.

I've started doing this without deciding to. A mouth against whatever part of him is closest, at moments that don't call for it. He hasn't mentioned it once. I'm choosing to take that as him keeping his own count.

"My turn," Rowan says.

I raise a brow, still catching my breath against his collarbone. "Your turn for what, mouse? You just came down my throat."

“You said teach me tonight.” His voice is rough, wrecked, but there's steel under it — the same steel he gets behind the Noctis when he decides a passage will obey him.“You've had your lesson. I want mine.”

“You want me to teach you⁠—”

“No.” His hand flattens against my chest, and he pushes me back into the pillows, and Light help me, I go. “I want to learn you. You never let anyone. You direct everything, every time, and I—” His flush climbs, but he doesn't look away. "I've been paying attention all night. Let me find out where you resonate.”

Something in my chest pulls dangerously tight.

No one has ever asked to learn me. People take what I offer, which is exactly as much as I decide to give. Rowan is asking for the parts I don't hand out, and he's asking with my shirt sleeves still swallowing his wrists and my marks scattered down his throat, and I have never wanted to say yes to anything so badly in my life.

“Careful,” I murmur. “You don't know what you're asking for.”

“Then teach me by holding still.”

Fuck. Fuck.

I lie back and open my hands flat against the sheets, and the look that crosses his face — disbelief, then hunger, then a concentration so total it borders on reverence — is worth every ounce of control it costs me.

He starts the way he started with the bow. Carefully. Two fingertips drawn down the inside of my forearm, so light it shouldn't do anything, except he's watching my face while he does it, cataloguing, and when my breath catches he notes it — I can see him note it — and does it again slower.

“There,” he whispers. "First note.”

“Mouse—”

“Quiet. Luneth hates it when people rush.”

A laugh tears out of me and dies halfway, because his mouth has found the spot below my ear, then the line of my jaw, then down — mapping me exactly the way I made him map the strings. Pressure first. Then leaning in. The dip beneath my ribs makes me jerk; he lingers there, merciless. The crease of my hip. The mole by my ribs he stared at earlier, which he now drags his tongue across like he's been thinking about it for an hour. By the time his fist closes around my cock, slicked with lube he found without asking — of course he found it, he's been watching where I keep everything all night — I'm strung so tight my thighs are shaking.

“You're trembling,” he says, wonder in it.

“You're gloating.”