Chapter 20 #2
I went back to it, and the relief on his face was enormous. He let himself move, let himself feel it, let himself believe I was choosing this. The tension built in his muscles, in the way his breathing came apart.
He made a sound like a warning. "I'm. You should."
I didn't stop. I went deeper, changed the angle, and felt his control break. He came, and I stayed with it. When I finally pulled back, he was breathing hard, his arm thrown across his face like he needed a second to process what had happened.
I climbed back up his body and settled over his hips. His arm came around me, pulling me against his chest. We lay there breathing, for a moment before I grinned at him.
"I know you prefer to watch, but I want to feel you deep inside of me."
Kearan choked on his response.
"It's okay. Just lay there and watch me pleasure myself with your cock."
Another strangled sound. I shifted my hips and took his hard cock into me. With one hand on his chest, I slowly rode him. He finally moved, gripping my hips as he watched me ride him. Over and over, I rolled my hips and took him deeper into me.
His eyes rolled back as he bit his lip. Then he moaned as his face scrunched. I felt his cock twitch inside of me as he released. I smiled unabashedly as I felt him give in to me. Reaching down, I parted myself until I could circle my clit.
When I looked at his face again, his gaze was glued to my clit and how I played with myself. I bucked and moaned, my movements becoming more erratic as I pleasured myself.
This time when I came, it felt like everything exploded. I collapsed against his chest and he held me like that while our breathing evened out and he'd gone soft.
"Okay," he said finally. Voice still rough. "That was."
"Good," I supplied, because he was clearly at a loss on whether it was appropriate to be this wrecked by something I'd just done to him.
"More than good." His hand moved across my spine, slow. "I want to be inside you. Again."
My body answered that with enthusiasm. But I heard what was underneath it too. He wanted to finish this. He wanted the part where we were the most open. The bond at the level where there was nowhere left to hide.
"Okay," I said.
He shifted under me, and I understood I was supposed to move. I straddled him, his hands coming to my hips to steady me. The angle of him against me was right, and I was already moving toward it before he could ask. I sank down slow, feeling the stretch, the fullness, the recognition of it.
His hands gripped my hips and his eyes closed for a second.
"Move," he said. "However you want. I'm just going to be here and I haven't had enough yet."
So I did. I found the rhythm that felt right, the angle that stacked the sensations on top of each other.
His hands guided, not controlling, just steady.
His eyes were open now, watching my face, and that attention was the most intimate thing I'd ever felt.
Being watched like I mattered. Being held like he'd never let me fall.
The pleasure built again, deeper this time, slower, moving through my whole body instead of pooling in one place. My hands were on his chest, feeling his heartbeat, and he moved under me to meet my motion.
"There," he said when I found the angle that caught my breath. "Stay with that."
So I did. I moved in that rhythm and watched his face change as it built for him too. His hands tightened on my hips. The muscles of his stomach shifted under my palms. His breathing went ragged again.
"I want to feel you come," he said. "Through the connection."
So I gave him that. I moved toward it, let it take me, and felt my body seize around him. And under it, something else. A moment of absolute clarity where I understood the bond was completing.
No explosion. No detonation, no psychic feedback, nothing dramatic.
Just a settling, a knowledge moving through me like he'd been wired into my chest and I was learning how to breathe around him.
His emotions came through the connection.
What he was feeling, the texture of his pleasure and his relief and his certainty that this was right.
His hands pulled me against his chest, his body moved up to meet mine, and he came inside me. That plus the bond closing was more than my nervous system could hold. I buried my face in his neck and rode it out.
When it started to fade, when my breathing slowed, I noticed the scar. Glowing. Actually glowing, the skin gone warm gold, which should have been impossible. I pulled back enough to see it, and the light faded as I watched. The scar stayed. But something about it felt lighter. Less weighted.
He was still inside me, still connected to me in a way I didn't have words for. His heartbeat came through the bond. His relief, his certainty, his knowledge that the fear he'd organized his whole life around had just been proven wrong.
"Did you," I started.
"Feel the best thing to ever happen to me?" He finished it. His voice was steady. "No. Better than I ever imagined." He said quietly. His hand moved up my spine to my shoulder blade.
Just this. Two people carrying each other now. His calm came through the connection, his certainty. He could feel whatever I was feeling, which right now was satisfaction and relief and the absolute knowledge that I'd made the right call.
I settled back down against him, my ear over his heart. I could hear it beating, and through the bond, I could feel it too. Him present in more than one way at once.
"Thank you for the honor of choosing me as one of your mates," he said. The formality would have been strange in any other context, but this was Kearan, and formality was how he marked the things that mattered.
"Thank you for finally deciding to stop running."
His arm tightened, and we lay there in the quiet. The bond was complete. The fear was disproven. And the man holding me was finally, absolutely certain that I wasn't going anywhere. That was enough. For now, it was more than enough.