Chapter 40 #2
Arranging them so the furs beneath me are exposed.
His tail finds the center point of his attention before he does—the curled tip stroking along my clit with the light pressure that he's learned through trial and error, through weeks of careful experimentation, the pressure that undoes me faster than anything else.
I'm already wet. The pregnancy has made me perpetually ready, the venom in my bloodstream keeping me hovering at a constant state of low arousal. His tail finds this and exploits it.
The motion is gentle, almost absent-minded in the way that males develop—the muscle memory of pleasure, the knowledge of what destroys me built into the movement itself.
He enters me slowly. Watching my face. His hands bracing on either side of my head, the massive frame hunched down, the same effort written in the set of his shoulders.
The width of him filling me is familiar now, the stretch that I've learned to crave instead of fear.
I'm small beneath him. I've always been small beneath him. The doll against the wall, the woman in the monster's arms.
I am no longer afraid of the scale. I was never afraid of the scale. I was afraid of what it meant to want it.
I wrap my legs around him. Pull him deeper. The stretch of his cock filling me is familiar now—the way the prehensile muscle adjusts, pressing forward, finding the wall, holding it, stroking.
The warmth of him inside me. The weight of him above me. The heat of his chest against my breasts, his heartbeat rapid against my ribs.
"Corvin," I say again. The new way. The meant way.
The sound he makes against the crown of my head is not a word. It's lower than a word. Older than a word.
The sound a creature makes when something it built its entire world around says the thing it needed to hear. The almost-growl that rumbles through his chest and into mine. His whole body tightens.
He drives in. Deep. Slow.
Each stroke pulling almost out, then filling me completely, the pace deliberate, meditative.
His tail finds my clit, the tip circling with that light deliberate pressure that he knows—that he has always known, since the first week, since the first accidental discovery—undoes me faster than anything else.
I come with his name in my mouth. The pleasure peaks and I'm saying it, over and over, his name the only word left in my vocabulary. The climax pulls through me in waves.
He comes with mine in his, the sound rough against my hair.
The heat of him flooding me in slow thick pulses, his cock pulsing deep inside me, the muscle spasming with the force of it.
His forehead presses against the top of my head because that's where his forehead reaches, that's the only height that allows him to be inside me and touching my face at the same time.
He holds himself there. Breathing hard. His cock still inside me, the prehensile flex stuttering through smaller and smaller movements until it goes still.
His tail wrapped around my thigh. His wings partially unfurled, the membranes quivering slightly with the aftermath of pleasure.
After, we lie in the furs. His body curved around mine, the size of him arranged to shelter rather than dominate. His hand on my belly.
His cock softening inside me, the prehensile flex going idle, staying. His heat at my back. The smell of him in the air around us.
The room he built is across the aerie. The pale furs glowing, warm. A threshold.
A beginning. A promise written in branch and stone and intention.
I turn my head to look at him. His amber eyes are open, watching me. The male and the monster and the creature who held my falling body and didn't let go.
Later, when the afternoon light has softened, he sits by the fire.
His back against the aerie wall, me between his legs, my spine against his chest. His dark red hair falls past his shoulders—thick, curled, the waves catching the firelight.
He runs a claw through the length of it, testing, then carefully brings a sharper claw to his crown horns where the hair has gotten too long around the base.
He trims the way someone does who has done it alone for years. Focused. Patient. The dark strands falling into the furs. His chin rests briefly on my shoulder while he works—not distraction, just the weight of him nearby, close.
The intimacy of it hits me sideways. The nine-foot creature who killed three Stained and claimed me and built a room for our child, sitting by the fire and trimming his hair with his claws because it's gotten too long.
Domestic. Tender. Him.
"It's a good room," I say.
"It will be hers."
The words land in my chest like a stone. Not a question. Not a hope.
A certainty. A future written in stone and furs. A room that will hold our daughter when the time comes.
"Yes," I say. "It will."
His hand tightens on my belly. His mouth finds the top of my head. We lie there as the afternoon light shifts, as the canopy settles into evening, as the aerie fills with the sounds of the world moving toward night.
Behind us, across the aerie, the pale furs glow in the dimming light.
Waiting.