Maren #2
“Don't thank me yet.” She doesn't look up.
“I haven't told you anything, but…” A quick smile twists her lips.
“The bond will strengthen with proximity. Physical contact especially.” She says it matter-of-factly, like she's discussing the weather. “If you want to accelerate the process, skin contact is most effective. You’ll find some oil on the table. For the wounds.”
The guest chamber is narrow, stone-walled, lit by a single candle. The bed is built for a normal person. Kovren has to turn sideways to fit through the doorway, and when he stands inside, his head nearly touches the ceiling.
We eat in silence. The broth is good. Hot, rich, with herbs I can taste but can't identify. It settles into my stomach and spreads warmth through my whole body, loosening muscles I didn't realize I was clenching.
On the table beside the candle, a small jar. I pick it up, uncap it. Oil. Herbal, something that smells like honey and sage. Healing oil, the kind I'd use on damaged skin.
“Your wounds need tending.” I keep my voice professional. “The ones on your chest. The stitches are holding, but the skin around them is still inflamed.”
“You don't have to.”
“I know.” I gesture at the bed. It's too small for him. We both know it's too small for him. “Sit down. Take off your shirt.”
He holds my gaze, something shifting behind his expression. Then he crosses to the bed, and the frame groans under his weight as he sinks onto the edge. His feet stay flat on the floor, his knees jutting up, his body folded into a space that can't possibly contain him.
He starts unfastening the ties of his shirt.
I've seen his chest before. Treated his wounds, stitched his skin, pressed my hands against his heart to feel its beating. But that was medical. Clinical. The touch of a healer doing her job.
This feels different.
The shirt falls away, and I see the full extent of him for the first time without the urgency of saving his life.
Broad shoulders, heavily muscled. The bark-like texture of his skin, rough and strange and beautiful in a way I didn't expect.
Scars layered over scars, pale lines crossing the bronze, each one telling a story I can't read.
The wounds I stitched, still angry but healing, surrounded by mottled bruising.
And the heat. Even from across the room, I can feel the warmth of him, radiating like a banked fire.
He's looking at me looking at him. Something uncertain in his expression, something almost vulnerable. Like he's waiting for me to see something that will change my mind.
I cross the room. Dip my fingers into the oil.
The first touch makes him hiss.
His muscles jump under my hands, tension running through him like a current. His skin burns against my palms, rough and hot, and I feel the ridges of old scars beneath my fingertips.
“Too cold?”
“No.” His voice is strained. He doesn’t say anything more.
I spread the oil across his chest, working it into the damaged tissue around the stitches. He breathes in short, held pulls, each one controlled and deliberate. Under my hands, his heartbeat thuds too fast, too hard.
“You're tense.”
“Observant.”
“Kovren.” I pause, my hands flat against his chest, feeling the heat of him seep into my palms. “It’s just me. Relax.”
“I know.” He looks down at me. Those amber eyes, dark with something I'm only beginning to recognize.
“Then what?”
“I’m afraid I might hurt you.” His voice drops lower. “That I might want something I shouldn't want. That the beast isn't the only thing inside me that's been starving.”
I should step away. Should put distance between us, give him space to breathe.
I don't.
I shift behind him, spreading the oil across his back.
“You won't.”
“You don't know that.”
“I do.” He's looking at me now, really looking, turned enough that I can see his face in profile. “You’d never hurt me, Kovren. I know that.”
My hands still on his back.
The moment stretches. The oil is warm and slick between us, and his pulse drums against my fingertips, too fast, too hard.
“The bond,” I say. My voice comes out rough. “Mother Sanque said skin contact strengthens it.”
“Yes.”
“Is that why this feels...”
“I don't know.” He turns on the edge of the bed, and his movement is so sudden that I gasp, my hands suddenly on his chest instead of his back, pressed flat against the muscles over his heart. “I don't know why any of this feels the way it does. I just know I don't want you to stop.”
I should be clinical about this. Professional. A healer tending wounds, nothing more.
But I'm not just a healer right now. I'm a woman standing held by a man who looks at me like I'm the only light in a very dark room. A man whose heart is pounding under my palms, whose hands are gripping the edge of the bed hard enough that the wood creaks.
A man who's been alone for too many years.
I lean forward.
His breath catches.
I press my lips to the scar over his heart.
The sound he makes is not human.
Low, broken, somewhere between a groan and a growl. It rumbles through his chest and into my mouth, vibrating against my lips. His hands come up, and for a moment I think he's going to push me away, but instead they cup my face, tilt my head back, and then his mouth is on mine.
He kisses me like he's drowning. Like I'm the only air he's ever going to get.
His hands slide into my hair, down my back, and then he's lifting me again, effortless, pulling me up and onto his lap until I'm straddling his thighs.
Sitting in his lap, I'm finally at his eye level. Finally face to face without straining.
“Maren.” He whispers my name against my lips, between kisses. “Maren, Maren, Maren.”
“I'm here.”
“I know.” He pulls back just far enough to look at me, and his eyes are clear amber, no gold at all. “The beast is quiet. Completely quiet. I can't even feel it.”
“Good.”
“It's never been like this.” His thumb traces along my jaw. “Even in the best moments, there's always a whisper. A reminder. Right now there's nothing. Just you.”
Something cracks open in my chest that I couldn't name if I tried.
His hands slide up my back, pulling me closer. I should feel overwhelmed. Swallowed.
I feel safe.
He kisses me again, and this time there's no hesitation, no trembling uncertainty. His hands map my body like he's memorizing the shape of me, learning the curve of my waist, the dip of my spine, the way I arch into him when he finds a particularly sensitive spot.
“Can I—” His voice is rough, broken. His fingers hover at the hem of my shirt. “I want to feel you.”
“Yes.”
He pulls the fabric over my head in one careful motion, and then his hands are on my bare skin, and I forget how to breathe.
His palms are huge. Rough with calluses and scarred from centuries of violence, but so gentle against me that I want to cry. One hand spans my back, fingers curling over my shoulder. The other cups my ribs.
“So small,” he murmurs. The words vibrate against my throat where his mouth has found the pulse point. “So fragile. I could break you without meaning to.”
“You won't.”
“I know.” He presses a kiss to my collarbone. Another to the hollow of my throat. “Because you'd tell me to stop. And I'd stop. For you, I'd stop.”
His mouth traces lower. I arch into him, fingers gripping his shoulders, and let him explore.
He finds my breast with his mouth and I gasp.
“Good?” He pulls back immediately, eyes searching my face. “Too much?”
“Don't stop.” I grab his head, pull him back down. “Don't you dare stop.”
He laughs against my skin, a sound I've never heard from him before, low and warm and wondering, and then his mouth closes over my nipple and I stop thinking entirely.
His hands continue their mapping while his tongue works. One slides down my back, cups my ass, presses me harder against him. I can feel him through his trousers, hard and ready, and a thrill of nervous anticipation shoots through me.
Later. That's a problem for later.
Right now his other hand is sliding around to my stomach, fingers trailing lower, and I make a sound I don't recognize as he brushes against my waistband.
“Can I?”
“Yes. Kovren, yes.”
He works the laces with shaking fingers. It takes him longer than it should, his hands clumsy with want, but finally he manages, and then his hand slides inside and I cry out as his fingers find where I'm slick and aching.
“Gods.” His voice is wrecked. “You're so wet. So sweet.”
Ridiculous, but I can’t even argue. I rock against his hand, chasing the pressure. “More. Please.”
He gives me more. One thick finger slides inside me and I gasp at the stretch of it. Just one finger, and already I feel full. He must feel my tension because he stills immediately.
“Too much?”
“No. Just... wait a minute. You're big. Everywhere.”
“I know.” He presses his forehead to mine, his finger still inside me, not moving. “We don't have to—”
“I want to.” I rock my hips, taking him deeper, and we both groan. “Don’t stop. Just go slow. Let me adjust.”
He goes slow. So achingly, torturously slow that I want to scream.
His finger moves in and out in a rhythm that makes me mindless, and when he adds a second, I feel the stretch burn in the best way.
His thumb finds the spot that makes me see stars and circles it while his fingers work, and I'm grinding against his hand, lost in the sensation of being filled and touched and wanted.
“Look at you.” His voice is reverent. “Taking my fingers so well. So tight around me. Can you take another?”
“Yes—” The word breaks off into a moan as he adds a third finger, stretching me wider than I've ever been stretched, and the fullness is overwhelming in the best possible way.
“That's it.” He watches my face, drinking in every expression. “That's it, Maren. Let me see you fall apart.”
His thumb presses harder, his fingers curl inside me, and I shatter.
The orgasm crashes through me in waves, my whole body clenching around his fingers, my nails leaving marks in his shoulders. He works me through it, gentling his touch as the aftershocks fade, until I'm limp and trembling in his lap.
“Beautiful.” He kisses my forehead, my cheeks, my mouth. “The most beautiful thing I've ever seen.”
I reach for the laces of his trousers. “Your turn.”
He catches my wrist. “You don't have to—”
“I want to.” I meet his eyes. “Let me touch you. Please.”
He releases my wrist.
My hands shake as I work his laces. He helps, his own fingers steadier now, and when he finally springs free, I just stare for a moment.
He's proportional. Of course he is. But seeing it, thick and long and flushed dark with wanting, makes the reality hit different.
“We don't have to—” he starts again.
I wrap my hand around him. Or try to. My fingers don't even close all the way around.
The sound he makes is inhuman. A growl that rumbles through his whole body, his hips jerking up into my grip.
“Like this?” I stroke, watching his face. Learning what makes his breath catch, what makes his eyes flutter closed. “Tell me what you need.”
“Tighter.” The word comes out strangled. “You won't hurt me. You can't.”
I tighten my grip, and he groans. I find a rhythm, using both hands now to work him, and his head falls back, tendons standing out in his neck.
He's massive in my hands, burning hot, and the thought that I'm doing this to him, that I'm the one making him fall apart, sends another pulse of heat through me.
“Maren—” His voice is wrecked. “I'm going to—”
“Yes. Come for me.”
He does. His whole body goes rigid, a roar tearing from his throat, and he spills over my hands in hot pulses. I work him through it the way he worked me, gentling my touch as the tension drains from his muscles.
When it's over, he pulls me against his chest, both of us breathing hard, slick with oil, sweat and each other.
His hand traces down my side, fingers slow and heavy, and I feel him stirring against my hip again.
“Wait,” I say. “Not tonight.”
He stops. Immediately. His hand goes still and his arms wrap around me instead. “Okay.”
“Come here,” I say.
We figure out the logistics of sleep. The bed is hopeless for him. He stretches out on the floor, his back against the bed frame, and pulls me down in front of him. I settle between his legs, my back against his chest, and his arms wrap around me, heavy and warm.
I can feel his heartbeat through the thin fabric of my shirt, slow and steady.
“The beast?” I ask.
“Quiet.”
“Good.”
“Maren.” His voice is sleep-thick, vibrating against my back where his ribcage presses.
“Mm?”
“Thank you.”
“For what?”
His arm tightens around me, pulling me closer.
“For staying.” His lips brush my hair. “For not running. For being here.”
“Where else would I be?”
He doesn't answer. Just holds me, his massive body curved around mine like a shield, and I listen to his heartbeat slow as sleep finally takes him.
In the next room, I can hear Mother Sanque turning pages.
And somewhere out there, his brother is screaming in the darkness.