Maren
The door closes behind us.
He locks it. The click of the bolt is loud in the small room, and then we're standing in the dim light from the window, the sounds of Korsmot muffled by stone walls, and he's looking at me and I'm looking at him and neither of us moves.
“Kovren.”
“I know what I need.” His voice is low and rough. “I know what I want. I just don't know if I can do it without hurting you.”
Not touching. Not intimacy. We've had that. What he means is the rest of it. The part we haven't done. The part where he's three times my size and made of muscle and barely contained violence and he has to fit inside me.
“Sit on the floor.”
He doesn't argue. He crosses the room and lowers himself down, back against the wall, legs stretched out.
I step between his knees. On the floor, his head is level with my chest. Familiar territory.
We've been here before, at Vorneth, his body mapped and known under my hands.
But his breathing is different tonight. Faster.
His hands hover at my waist and don't land.
“Hey.” I take his hands, place them on my hips. His palms settle against me, warm through the fabric. “We already know this part works.”
“This part isn't what scares me.”
“I know.” I pull my shirt over my head. His hands tighten on my hips, but his eyes don't widen, don't startle. He's seen me. He knows the sharp collarbones, the pack-strap calluses, the ribs he can count. His thumbs trace the familiar lines of my hip bones and some of the tension leaves his jaw.
I reach for his shirt. He helps, pulling it over his head, and then we're skin to skin from the waist up, his heat soaking into me, the bond humming between us the way it has since the stone.
“Your turn.” I pull at the laces. “These need to come off.”
His hands cover mine. Still them.
“Maren.” He's looking at me, and the fear in his face is specific and raw.
“You had three of my fingers inside you at Vorneth and you needed time to adjust. What I'm asking you to take is bigger than that.
I could tear you. I could do damage you'd need weeks to heal from. And I might not be able to stop once I start.”
“You'll stop if I tell you to.”
“You don't know that.”
“I do know that. I've known that since the ditch.” I hold his gaze. “And Mother Sanque's oil is going to do most of the work. That's what it's for. Not your chest. Not your scars. This.”
Something shifts behind his eyes. He lets go of my hands.
I work his laces open. He lifts his hips, helps me pull the trousers down and off.
He's hard, and I already know the size of him, the weight of him in my hands.
That part isn't new. But tonight I'm not just touching him.
Tonight I'm figuring out how to take all of him inside me, and the practical part of my brain is already running calculations.
“The oil.” I reach for the jar. Uncap it. The smell fills the room, herbs and honey and that warming agent I still can't name.
I don't spread it across his chest.
I pour it into my palm and wrap my hand around him, slicking him from base to tip. His head drops back against the wall, eyes closing, and a sound comes out of him that I feel through the floor.
“Maren. If you keep doing that I'm going to finish before we start.”
“No you're not.” I tighten my grip slightly. “But I need you slick. All of you.”
I coat him thoroughly. Then I kick off my own trousers and pour more oil into my hand and reach between my own legs, working it into myself.
Two fingers, then three, the stretch familiar from Vorneth but more deliberate now.
Preparing. His eyes open and he watches me, his breathing going rough and shallow, his hands opening and closing against the stone floor.
“We go slow,” I tell him. “I set the pace. Your hands stay on my hips unless I move them somewhere else.”
“Yes.”
“And breathe.”
“I'm trying.”
I position myself above him, my knees on either side of his hips, my hands braced against his shoulders. He's looking up at me, eyes amber and steady, and his hands are on my hips and I have never wanted anything this much.
I lower myself onto him.
The first inch makes me cry out. Not pain.
Pressure. More than his fingers, more than I expected even though I expected it.
My body stretching to take him, a fullness that pushes everything else out of my head.
His hands tighten on my hips, and I feel the effort it costs him not to move, not to thrust up, not to take what the beast is screaming at him to take.
“Stay still,” I manage. “Let me.”
“Maren, you're so...” He doesn't finish. His jaw works. His eyes are bright and agonized.
I sink lower. Another inch. The stretch burns and I breathe through it, letting my body open. Another inch. I can feel him against the front wall of me, a pressure that's right at the border between too much and not enough. My thighs are shaking from holding myself up, controlling the descent.
“Talk to me,” he says. “Please. I need your voice.”
“You feel enormous.” My voice doesn't sound like mine. “I feel you everywhere. I can feel you in my spine.”
He makes a sound. Low, wrecked.
I keep going. Working myself down, pulling up slightly when I need to, sinking back further each time.
The oil is doing its work. His hands stay on my hips.
His fingers trace the crease where my thigh meets my hip and the gentleness of it, the fact that he can be this gentle while he's clearly losing his mind, makes my throat ache.
When I've taken all of him, I stop.
We're both breathing hard.
“Maren.” His forehead drops against my shoulder. His breathing is harsh against my skin. “You took all of me.”
“I told you we'd fit.”
I don't move yet. Let my body settle. The fullness is immense, but the burn is gone, replaced by a pressure that's right on the edge of something I can't name yet.
His heart is hammering against my chest. Through the bond I feel what he's feeling.
Not details. Everything at once. The tight heat of me around him, the desperate effort of holding himself still, the hunger that goes so deep it doesn't have a bottom.
I rock my hips.
His hands spasm on my waist. The sound he makes is a groan that starts in his chest and never quite finishes, and I do it again, a small motion, testing the angle and the depth and what makes him grip harder and what makes his breath catch.
“There,” I say when I find the angle that lights up every nerve in the lower half of my body. Something in me clenches around him and his hands jerk on my hips. “Right there. Don't move. Let me.”
He holds himself still while I move on him. It costs him. The strain shows in his neck, the tendons standing out, the way his fingers press into my hips hard enough to leave marks. I'll have bruises tomorrow. I don't care.
I grind down against him at that angle, feeling him press against the spot that keeps sending heat up through my stomach and into my chest. Each motion is small and deliberate, and I am soaking wet, the oil and my own slickness making the friction unbearable, making the sounds between our bodies obscene, and I don't care about that either.
“Faster,” I whisper. “Help me. Move.”
He moves.
His hips roll up to meet mine and the depth changes and I cry out, sharp, loud enough that his hands go gentle immediately.
“Don't stop.” I grip his shoulders. “That was good. That was very good. Again.”
He does it again. And again. We find a rhythm, his body rising to meet mine, my weight pressing down against him.
It's not graceful. It's two people figuring out how their bodies work together and adjusting as they go.
My knees ache on the stone floor and I don't care.
His back must be raw against the wall and he doesn't care.
The heat builds. Low in my belly, spreading outward, pooling between my hips where he's buried in me. His hands are everywhere now, my hips, my back, my breasts, and I've stopped thinking about technique or angles. I'm just here. Moving on him. Feeling him fill me and withdraw and fill me again.
“Maren.” His voice has changed. Rough, urgent. “I'm close. I can't hold on much longer.”
“Then don't.”
“You first. I want you to come first.”
His hand slides between us. His thumb finds the spot above where we're joined, and the pad of his thumb is bigger than I expected, the pressure different from my own hand, broader, and I can feel the calluses on his skin, and I'm already so wound up that the first stroke makes my vision blur.
“There,” I manage. “Don't stop.”
He doesn't stop. He circles his thumb over me while I ride him, his other hand on my hip keeping the rhythm, and the tension builds in my thighs and stomach and the base of my spine until there's nowhere left for it to go.
I come with my face pressed against his throat, my body clenching hard around him, pulling tight and releasing in pulses that I feel all the way up into my ribs.
My nails dig into his shoulders. I can't hear anything except my own blood and the bond surging between us, his sensation flooding into mine until I can't tell where my body ends and his begins.
He follows. I feel it through the bond first, a wall of heat and release, and then he's gripping my hips and pulling me down hard against him and he groans my name into my hair. I feel him spill inside me, deep, his whole body going rigid and then slowly, slowly letting go.
I hold him through it. My arms around his neck, my face in his hair, both of us shaking.
The room is quiet after.
Not heavy. Not tense. Just still.
He's still inside me. Neither of us moves to change that. His arms are wrapped around me, both of them, his entire body curved around mine, and I am completely enclosed. My ear is against his chest. His heartbeat is loud and slow.
“The beast,” I say.
He's quiet for a moment. Checking.
“It never came up.” The wonder in his voice is so raw it hurts to hear. “The whole time. Not once.”
“The stone worked.”
“The stone. You. Both.” His arms tighten. “Maren, I've never. Not even before. It was never...” He stops. “I don't have words for what that was.”
“Then don't find words.” I press my mouth against his collarbone. Salt and oil and heat. “Just stay here.”
We stay.
Eventually he shifts, lifts me, lays me on the bed. It creaks in protest but holds. He settles on the floor beside it, his head level with the mattress, and I roll onto my side and drape my arm over the edge until my fingers find his hair.
“You're not sleeping on the floor.”
“The bed won't hold both of us.”
“Then I'm sleeping on the floor with you.”
“Maren.”
“Move.”
He sighs. But he shifts, makes room, and I slide off the mattress and into the space he's made. The stone floor is cold against my bare skin and then his body is against mine, warm, vast, and the cold stops mattering.
His hand settles on my stomach. The same place it rested at Vorneth, but different now. The bond hums between us, thick and sure, and I can feel his heartbeat in my own chest, slow.
“Kovren.”
“Mm.”
“I don't regret this.”
“Which part?”
“Any of it.” I turn in his arms until I'm facing him. In the near-dark I can just make out his features, the hard planes of his face, the lines around his eyes. “The ditch. The road. The fever and the fighting and the oath and the bond. Any of it.”
His hand comes up and traces my jaw. His thumb brushes across my lower lip.
He pulls me closer. I fit against him, my head below his chin, my back against his chest, his arm heavy and warm across my waist. The bond pulses between us. Settled. Ours.