Chapter Six #3
The sensation ran through her so suddenly and so completely that her whole body arched to meet him, pushing further onto him, seeking more before she had even finished taking in the first rush.
He looked absurdly pleased with himself, which only made her cling to him harder, pulling him into her in every way she could.
The spiral in her belly began to grow then, deepening and widening with every flutter, a fractal multiplying inside her, until she could not have named where it ended and where she began – until it reached the very peak of her soul and shattered.
It broke over her with such force that for an instant she could do nothing but hold on to him and let it happen.
Her voice gave her away utterly. She writhed and pulsed hard against him, her moans and cries tumbling together in some indistinguishable noise, the cascade of ecstasy so great it almost hurt.
Derran looked as though he had been starved for the sounds she made as badly as she had been starved for making them.
“You’re soaking,” he murmured next to her ear.
“I – ” she tried, still gasping for air, and started over, “You know – ”
His grin told her he did. He knew exactly how much she had missed feeling him, so solid inside her.
So filling.
So… big.
And he very much enjoyed that knowledge, feeling similarly himself, wrapped in her dizzying embrace.
He gave her time to breathe. Time for him to look at her face and wonder hazily how such stunning beauty could be possible. Time for him to wonder how lucky he had been to find her first. To love her first.
Then she caught at him again, asking without words, pulling at his waist to restart his movements.
He answered instantly. After that there was no teasing in him, only devotion and hunger and the joy of being able to love her without interruption.
He wrapped his arms around her, twisting them to the side so they both lay facing each other, pulling their bodies tightly together, filling her with his length and a rhythm that stirred in her belly once more, gathering her back up even as it unmade her all over again.
Then, as her wings were freed from beneath her, Ina had a thought spurred by the desire to please him as he did her.
She shifted and loosened her wings, vibrating them, copying how she had seen him do it many times, the sensation reverberating through both of them.
His eyes widened at that, then closed as he moaned at the new thrill rising in him, moving on instinct and not control.
The ebb and the flow swirled into her, and she rode the wave of him as he plunged to shore.
Their moans mingled together this time in the same pattern as their throbbing bodies, tremors passing through them when release came again, leaving them both spent and shaking.
When at last they came to rest, Derran lay beside her with one arm still over her waist, both of them breathing as though they had crossed some great distance.
After a little while he said, half to the ceiling and half to her, “That was... new.”
Ina turned her head toward him. “Good new or bad new?”
He looked at her, eyes brilliant and a little dazed still.
“Incredible new,” he said. She smiled.
Later, much later, when the room had gone blue with evening and the balcony doors, slightly ajar, admitted only the hush of high wind, they still lay together in nearly the same way, neither willing to let go of incredible new.
Derran was easier in stillness than anyone had a right to be.
He lay on his side facing her, one hand moving idly over her arm, then her shoulder, then back again as if reacquainting himself with every curve and angle.
Ina, heavy with the pleasant weariness that followed joy honestly spent, drifted in and out of speech.
He said something about her dancing which made her laugh into the pillow. She told him his dancing counts were smug. He argued that no one had ever before accused numbers of vanity.
She reminded him that he had once spent an hour coming up with jokes just to see which one caused her the prettiest laugh. He insisted that had been a perfectly reasonable competition, though he recalled with some chagrin that no clear winner had been declared.
Their voices grew softer without their meaning them to.
At some point Ina tucked herself against him and stopped trying to answer at all. Sleep had begun drawing at her in steady pulls. Derran shifted to make room for her, one arm around her waist, his chin brushing the top of her hair.
She was nearly dreaming when she felt him press a kiss there. After that, she slipped under.
Derran did not sleep. Not yet.
He lay awake with Ina in his arms and looked toward the cracked balcony doors where the last color had left the sky.
The room was familiar to him in every ordinary way, and nothing in it felt ordinary at all.
Her weight against him, the loosened strands of her long copper hair across his shoulder, the quiet rise and fall of her breathing, even the place where one of her hands rested open against his chest, all of it seemed to settle something in him that had been restless too long.
He held her a little closer, careful not to wake her, and stayed that way for a long time before sleep came for him too.