Wren
Iwoke in the dark with his hand on my hip.
We’d been sleeping in the nest for three nights now.
Ever since that first night, when he’d shown me what he was building and I’d climbed in beside him and neither of us had been able to pretend we wanted to be anywhere else.
He’d offered to carry me back to my room each morning. I’d refused each time.
The nest was better. The nest was ours.
His hand flexed in his sleep, fingers spreading across the curve of my hip, and I felt the prick of claws through the thin fabric of my shift. Not enough to hurt. Just enough to remind me what he was.
As if I could forget.
I turned my head to look at him. The nest was dark, but my eyes had adjusted enough to make out the shape of him. The broad line of his shoulders. The feathers that now covered most of his chest, bronze and black in the dim light. The sharp angle of his jaw, relaxed in sleep.
He was beautiful. I’d stopped pretending I didn’t think so.
His hand moved again. Slid from my hip to my stomach, palm flat against me, pulling me back against his chest. I felt the heat of him through my shift.
The solid weight of his body curved around mine.
And lower, pressed against my backside, the unmistakable evidence that his body knew I was there even if his mind was still sleeping.
We hadn’t talked about this. About the nights when I woke to find him hard against me, or the mornings when I pretended not to notice him slipping away to compose himself before I opened my eyes. We’d agreed to wait. The bond couldn’t be undone, and he wanted me to be certain.
I was certain. I’d been certain for days.
But he was so careful with me. So determined to give me time I wasn’t sure I needed.
I should close my eyes. Go back to sleep. Wait for morning like a sensible person.
Instead, I shifted. Pressed back against him, just slightly, and felt his whole body tense.
“Wren.” His voice was rough. Barely awake. “What are you doing?”
“Nothing.”
“That was not nothing.” His hand tightened on my stomach. “That was very specifically something.”
“I moved. People move in their sleep.”
“You’re not asleep.”
“Neither are you. Anymore.”
He made a sound low in his throat. Not quite a growl. Something rougher. His hips shifted, pressing harder against me, and I felt the full length of him through the layers between us.
“Wren.” A warning this time. “If you keep moving like that, I will not be able to…”
“What if I don’t want you to be able to?”
Silence. His breathing had gone ragged. His claws tiny points of pressure against my stomach.
“We agreed to wait.”
“We agreed you wouldn’t bond me until I was certain.” I turned in his arms, facing him now, close enough that our breath mingled. “I’m certain, Tavrin. I’ve been certain since you showed me this nest.”
His eyes gleamed gold in the darkness. I could see the war in them. The desperate wanting fighting against two hundred years of control.
“The bond is permanent.”
“I know.”
“Once it’s done, you’re tied to me. Forever. You can never leave.”
“I know.” I reached up, touched his face. Felt the feathers soft against my palm, the hard line of his jaw beneath. “I know what I’m choosing.”
The sound he made wasn’t human. A keen. A cry. His mouth found mine in the dark, and there was nothing careful about it.
He kissed me like he was drowning. Like I was air and he’d been holding his breath for centuries.
His hands were everywhere, my hair, my shoulders, sliding down my back to grip my hips and pull me against him.
I felt the hard length of him pressed between us, separated by nothing but thin fabric, and I wanted even that flimsy barrier gone. Wanted nothing between us.
I reached for the hem of my shift but he caught my hands.
“Wait.” His voice was wrecked. Shaking. “Wait. I need to, I want to—”
He couldn’t finish the sentence. But his hands found the hem instead, and he drew the fabric up slowly. Over my hips. My stomach. My breasts. Over my head and away.
The cool air hit my skin. I should have felt exposed. Vulnerable. Instead I felt powerful, watching his eyes trace down my body with something like reverence.
“Wren.” Just my name. But he said it like a prayer.
His hand settled on my ribs. Slid up, slowly, until his palm curved over my breast. The heat of him. The careful way he touched me, like I might break if he pressed too hard.
“You won’t hurt me,” I said.
“You don’t know that.”
“I know you.” I arched into his touch. “I know you’d die before you hurt me.”
His thumb brushed my nipple. I gasped, and his eyes went dark with satisfaction.
“I want to touch you,” he said. “Everywhere. I want to learn what makes you gasp like that. What makes you shake. What makes you say my name.”
“Then touch me.”
He did.
His mouth followed his hands. Down my throat, across my collarbone, lower. When his lips closed over my nipple, I made a sound I didn’t recognize. When his teeth grazed the sensitive peak, my hips jerked against him without permission.
“There,” he murmured against my skin. “Just like that. Let me hear you.”
He worked his way down my body with devastating patience. Kissing. Tasting. Learning every inch of me while I writhed beneath him, my fingers tangled in the furs, my breath coming in sharp gasps.
When he reached my hip, he paused. Looked up at me, gold eyes bright in the darkness.
“I want to taste you.” His voice was rough. Almost gone. “Will you let me?”
I couldn’t speak. Could only nod.
His hands parted my thighs. His breath was warm against my center, and I was already shaking, already desperate, and he hadn’t even touched me yet.
Then he did.
His tongue traced a slow line through my folds, and I stopped breathing. He made that sound again, the chirr, the vibration of pleasure without language, and it rumbled against my most sensitive flesh, and I nearly came apart right there.
“Tavrin!”
“Shh.” His hands gripped my hips, holding me still. “Let me.”
He took his time. Learned me with his mouth the way he’d learned me with his hands.
Long slow strokes that built the pressure gradually.
Quick flicks that made me cry out. He found the spot that made my back arch off the furs and focused there, relentless, patient, driving me higher and higher until I was shaking, until I couldn’t think.
“Please.” I didn’t recognize my own voice. “Please, more…”
He sealed his mouth over me and sucked.
I shattered.
The orgasm crashed through me, and I heard myself cry out his name, felt my body clench around nothing, felt his hands holding me through it while his mouth gentled but didn’t stop.
He worked me through the aftershocks, drawing it out, until I was boneless and trembling and couldn’t remember how to breathe.
He pressed a kiss to my inner thigh. Moved up my body, settling over me, his weight braced on his forearms.
“Wren.” His voice was wrecked. His whole body was shaking with restraint. I could feel him hard against my thigh, feel how much that had cost him.
I reached down. Found him through the fabric of his trousers. He hissed, hips jerking.
“Your turn,” I said.
“You don’t have to.”
“I want to.” I stroked him through the fabric, felt the heat of him, the length. “Teach me what you like.”
He groaned. Dropped his forehead to my shoulder. “Everything. I like everything. Anything you do. Just—just touch me. Please.”
I pushed at his trousers. He helped, kicking them away, and then he was bare against me, and I could finally see him. Feel him. The hard length of him against my palm, hot and thick, and he made a sound like I’d wounded him when I wrapped my fingers around him.
“Like this?”
“Yes.” The word was barely a breath. “Yes. Just, yes.”
I stroked him. Slow at first, learning the shape of him, the weight. Then faster when his breathing went ragged. His hips moved with me, small desperate thrusts, and his claws dug into the furs beside my head, and his wings unfurled without his permission, spreading wide above us.
“Wren.” My name, broken. “I’m going to…if you keep doing that…”
“I want you to.”
He came with a roar. I felt him pulse in my hand, felt the hot spill across my stomach, felt his whole body shudder as the pleasure tore through him. His wings snapped wide, then folded down, wrapping around us both, and he collapsed against me, trembling.
We lay there. Breathing. His heart hammered against mine, gradually slowing.
“That was,” he managed eventually. “That was not waiting.”
“No.” I pressed a kiss to his shoulder. “It wasn’t.”
“The bond. We still haven’t completed it.”
“I know.” I traced the feathers along his spine, felt him shiver. “But that’s for when we’re ready. Both of us. This was just... this.”
He lifted his head. Looked at me with those golden eyes, softer now. Wondering.
“Just this.”
“Just us.” I smiled. “Learning each other.”
He kissed me. Soft and slow and tender, nothing like the desperate claiming of before.
“I love you,” he said against my mouth. “I have loved you since you walked toward me in that market. I will love you until the mountains crumble and the sky falls and the world ends.”
My chest ached. My eyes burned.
“That’s very dramatic.”
“I am very dramatic.” He settled beside me, pulling me against his chest, his wing draping over us like a blanket. “It’s part of my charm.”
“Is that what we’re calling it?”
“We are.” He pressed a kiss to my hair. “Sleep now. We have time.”
I closed my eyes. Let his heartbeat steady me. Let the warmth of him sink into my bones.
We had time. We had each other.
For now, that was enough.
I woke to his body going rigid around me.
Dawn light filtered through the library windows. I’d slept the whole night in the nest, in his arms, and I felt more rested than I had in months.
But he wasn’t relaxed. Every muscle in his body had gone taut, his head tilted at that sharp angle that meant he was listening to something I couldn’t hear.
“What is it?”
“Someone.” The word came out flat. Dangerous. “Coming. Up the mountain.”
“That’s not possible. There’s no path.”
“Wings.” He was already shifting, moving me carefully off his lap, rising to his full height with his own wings flaring wide. “Hired. Drake. One rider. Maybe. Two passengers.”
I scrambled out of the nest and ran for the balcony.
The drake was small against the dawn sky, laboring upward with two figures on its back.
It wasn’t long before I could make out the shape of one of the riders.
I’d know that silhouette anywhere.