7.3
He hummed and leaned back a little, and the relief was pronounced through the bond. “Thought I’d ruined everything for a moment.”
Orma smoothed his hair back from his forehead. “You couldn’t do that,” she disagreed, but it only earned her a rueful smile.
“You think that now, maybe. Until I’ve come home too late for the third night in a row, or I left my boots too near the doorway and you trip over them.” He frowned, obviously imagining it, and he very nearly rose off her to go find them, needing to make sure she’d be safe.
Orma caught him before he might do any such thing and tugged him back to her. Pressed and fussed until he was using her as a pillow and she might play with his hair, trying to rekindle what had temporarily cooled.
“Say it again, please,” Athan murmured.
She paused, considering what he meant, then felt a warmth fall over her when she realised his intention. “I love you,” she reminded him, curling her fingers through his hair, urging him to look at her. To see the truth of it, to feel the whole.
She did not ask when he last heard such a thing. She did not have to.
It was in the ache she felt echoed through the bond.
It was in the way he curled himself about her, tightening his hold and keeping her as close as he possibly could.
He’d waited. Alone. Wondering where she might be, when she might come to him. He’d filled his home and his days with use and purpose, but it wasn’t the same as family.
As having someone to remind he was loved. That she cared for him for more than what he might do. How well he might heal.
“More than the Brum,” Orma continued, a strange lump of fondness nestling in her throat as she looked at him. “Which is saying quite a lot.” She swallowed thickly. “Although he cannot speak for himself, so perhaps that is presumptuous of me.”
Athan moved. Nuzzled his face into her middle, then brought his eyes up to hers. “We shall pretend it is more,” he agreed, eyes shimmering in the lamplight. “Because it pleases me to believe so.”
Orma’s lips quirked into a smile, and their little upset passed as if it had never been except...
Not quite. Because an understanding lingered. Of what he needed of her. More than touches and kisses. He needed her words. Needed them to fill too many years of silence. It did not come naturally, but she would try, for his sake.
And, maybe, for hers too.
“I am surprised he leaves us alone in here,” Orma mused, running her finger down the back of his neck, pleased with her reward as he shivered at her touch.
Athan snorted, teasing her shift down as far as he could make it. He’d run out of ties, and it was already scandalously open from his earlier tugging. He’d have to take it all the way off next, if he wanted more of her.
Her breath grew a little shorter, but she would not rush him. He’d find the ties on her shoulders when he was ready. And she would be pliant and keep quite still, and let him take in the sight of her, scars and all.
She would not even complain about the lamp.
Or... she would try not to.
“I knew there would be limits to my mate’s patience,” Athan breathed into her skin. “Sharing our bed with Brum might have been unreasonable.”
Her muscles tightened when he kissed the delicate skin beneath her breasts. She was smooth there, with no puckering scar to distract him.
And it felt...
She took a calming breath, but found it rather insufficient. It tickled, and bothered, and she wasn’t supposed to like it as much as she did.
“You were worried she would prefer his company to yours, admit it,” Orma teased, feeling flustered and out of sorts, but unwilling to do anything about it. “I suspect he would make a welcome bedfellow in the winters. Perhaps I will keep that in mind.”
It was a tease with no possibility of genuine threat, but he surged upward, enough that his fingers might delve at the knots on her shoulders and subdue the last of her ties. “He will be banished to the garden,” Athan pronounced, with as little weight as her own reflection. Athan would deny the Brum nothing.
And that was part of why she loved him.
“None of our family will be banished anywhere,” Orma declared, just in case he needed to hear it. Because she was his mate, not some faceless girl he’d dreamed of, trying to make little considerations about his life before she existed to object to them.
She was real, and whole, and a little battered, but she could let him keep his house and keep his Brum and there would be room for the lot of them.
“Agreed,” Athan said, his tone slightly absent as he delicately pulled at her shift. She didn’t help. Didn’t shift about and make it easier for him. There was something thrilling about watching him work, feeling fabric that had just been a simple nightdress a moment before suddenly being something more.
It was a whisper against her skin. It was the tickle of the ties as he used them to brush against her collarbones.
It was the slide and pull as he brought it downward, trapping her arms as the cuffs caught.
Which made her squirm. Not in the playful manner they’d had before, but anxiously. “Athan,” she murmured, not wanting to make a fuss, but her heart was racing.
“Ah,” Athan soothed. “I have forgotten some.” He brought her hand up for his inspection, then curved it so he might release the small knot that held her sleeve together. He did not linger, just released first one cuff, then the other, before he placed a kiss to the inside of her wrist, helping the fabric fall away. “Better?”
She smiled a little apologetically as she nodded. “I felt stuck,” she admitted. Which wasn’t the word she wanted, but the one she was willing to give. Trapped was closer to the truth. Held down. And evidently, that was something she couldn’t bear any longer.
Athan brought his thumb to her bottom lip. “You can tell me anything,” Athan reminded her. “For your comfort, or simply for the sake of doing so.” He smoothed his hand over her shoulder, bared now to his touch. “But perhaps we needn’t keep them in the room with us.”
He glanced at her worriedly, and she took a moment to understand his meaning.
She needn’t expound. Not unless she wanted to. She did not need to dredge up the reasons. The history behind a scar or a fear. It was enough for her to say she didn’t like it. Enough for her to grow uncomfortable, and he would change it. Do anything she asked.
She relaxed, her smile a little easier. “All right,” she agreed, and was rewarded with a kiss as he smoothed his touch from her shoulder all the way back down to the tips of her fingers before twining his hand with hers.
“Better?” he asked, brushing his lips against her cheek while he squeezed her hand.
She sighed, so very grateful for him. “Better,” she granted. Would there be more moments like that? She didn’t like to think so, but perhaps it was better to be prepared. To acknowledge them and move on rather than... dwell.
She did tend to do that, didn’t she?
She nestled closer, grateful she liked his weight on her. That she could be close without feeling confined. His presence meant safety, meant kindness and understanding. “I love you,” she repeated, and that time was for her own sake rather than for his.
He brought her hand to his mouth and pressed a kiss to the tips of her fingers.
Then her wrist.
Where the threads conjoined, fusing into a cord. Where he’d played and she’d grown frightened because she liked it far more than was reasonable.
Orma swallowed, more than aware of what it felt like to have him touch there. She watched as the threads shimmered at his retreat, as they flickered and pulsed, as he blindly sought the most critical point.
Blind, but not. He might not see them for himself, but he could feel it through her. From the bond that flared, from the quickening of her breath, from the way she kept so very still as she waited to see what he would do next.
He kept his thumb pressed against where the threads tangled, then he followed the line up her arm. She refused to think about books and diagrams. About what he might have committed to memory and why he had.
Was he thinking of this? Of what such knowledge might be used for? Or was this all intuitive?
She took a breath. Then another.
She would be present. She would trust him.
She made a little sound when he reached the next tangle. Just above the joint of her elbow, which he kissed with a hum of recognition when she squirmed slightly to be touched so.
If he could learn, so might she. When she urged him onto his back and captured his wrist and committed the feel of him to memory. When she christened their bond with claiming kisses.
But this was lovely, too. To wait and wonder. To feel the added pulse when he found another spot at the curve of her shoulder. Her throat. Downward. All while holding onto her wrist and that first-found point.
“You must think me selfish,” Athan murmured into her middle. Her shift had been pulled to just below her waist, and he seemed determined to make use of his new discovery. “For I did not help you with my ties and now I get to have you so.” Another kiss, this time to just above her navel. Her scar was lower, but she tensed all the same, then quieted. He could look. Athan could see anything he liked. He would love her just the same.
“Most inconsiderate,” Orma agreed, and then he was pulling her shift lower still, and there were her hipbones. The very edge of her scar was visible, but she tilted her head back and closed her eyes, not quite ready to watch his expression as he took it in. It healed well. She’d been promised. It would fade so well she’d hardly need to think of it.
They’d been wrong about that, too.
Her body liked to keep its scars. They did not fade and flatten, but pinked and twisted, ensuring they would stay a constant reminder to keep the memories close.
There was no mistaking how pleased he was with each bit of her he uncovered. She waited for the threads to turn to pity, for his ardour to cool in favour of playing the healer.
He did not tug her shift lower, so he might inspect her scar. Instead, he went leftward, seeking the profusion of her hipbone, smoothing his lips over the skin just above. She jolted. Drew in a sharp, startled breath.
Watched as she could just make out the corners of his mouth pulling upward in a smile as he did it again, this time holding her hips down gently so she couldn’t move away so easily.
She had never imagined what a kiss might do. That gentle suction and a warm hand in hers could illicit such responses. Had never really imagined anything but chaste kisses at all. A cheek. A peck on the lips. Nothing like this.
Had he?
When he read through his texts—not hers, but the ones during his apprenticeship. When he was in that cusp of being grown, all anxious anticipation that even the very day of majority, and his mate would be there, ready to celebrate.
She ran her fingers through his hair and was rewarded with his hum of approval, and he released his pleasant torment of the little spot on her hip.
“Happy?” Athan asked, looking up at her. He did not appear worried. His eyes were warm and soft, and a lump settled in her throat to be regarded so.
Happy wasn’t the word. It was there about the edges, along with the thrill of her newfound freedom. “Bothered,” she decided, forcing down the urge to tilt her hips and ask for more of his kisses.
Athan chuckled, skimming his lips across the very edge of her shift, catching the edge of her scar. It prickled, and it wasn’t the same pleasant awareness and her breath caught until he settled back over her other hipbone. “Is that what I’m doing? Bothering you?”
She swallowed, her thoughts a jumble of sensation as he kissed, fully aware that this was lovely and she should be grateful for his attentiveness, but it wasn’t quite right. Wasn’t low enough, wasn’t stroking at the need that suddenly felt terribly urgent. “Yes,” she managed to get out, growing more frustrated than was reasonable. It wasn’t fair that he did not seem to share in the discomfort. That he could make lazy work of his exploration while she twitched and pulsed and needed.
Wanted.
That’s what this was. It was love and desire and it was all right because he was Athan and he’d be patient with her. Would do anything she asked of him if she was only brave enough to do so.
Was she?
It was indecent. Not at all how a lady would act, or even worse, not something she might say.
But she wasn’t in a fine tower. Her ancestors would be horrified enough by her new station as a healer’s mate, and she doubted there was more she could do to offend them.
She took a breath and took the hand that held hers and brought it where she wanted it. Covered still by cloth, but aching in a way that was new and no less troublesome. “Can you...” she began, but words failed her. She was flushed all over, and she was shocked at herself and a little bit horrified. But beneath all that, was him. He was... proud of her? Which was strange and unsettling, but she held onto it with as much strength as she could muster. She did not have to be a lady. She did not have to come from an impeccable bloodline. Orma just had to be his.
And he would be hers.
He cupped her through the fabric, and her hand fell away, unable to bear the idea she’d pushed him there. His first touches were tentative, and she should have told him to take off her shift entirely. To strip off his own clothing while he was at it. To give her time to stir his blood and to make him want, so she wasn’t alone in her audacity.
She might have done a lot of things, but his touch grew more insistent, and it suddenly became very difficult to imagine doing anything at all but... this. It wasn’t quite right, not just yet, but it was enough to keep her still, to wait, to let him settle into a rhythm that pleased her. She should care about ruined shifts and hadn’t her mother warned about fluids in one of their talks ages ago? She couldn’t quite recall now.
He adjusted his position, and she bit her lip hard because there was the source of it, the pulsing, the wanting. It had just been a brush, and Athan glanced upward to gage her reaction as he passed over it again. She felt so sensitive already, she couldn’t quite imagine how much more it might feel if the fabric was no longer between them. Should she ask for that? Or be content with having his touch directly where she most desired it.
Would there be shimmers of the bond, even there? She remembered being a little girl. Stripping off her clothing and stealing to the looking glass. She hadn’t thought much of anything about where the tangles landed, wanted only to dance about her room and watch the threads follow, glimmering in the firelight.
Her mother had come in a moment later, urging her back into her nightdress because one did not dance in the nude, not when there were gowns for such things, and wouldn’t she rather twirl a pretty skirt?
Another touch, this time firmer, a little more sure of himself. And it was not a conscious choice to move, but she did, her hip twitching and arching. Or it might have done, if Athan had not placed a little more weight on her, holding her fast. “This all right?” he asked, because she did not like to be caged, did not like to be tied down, but this wasn’t that. This was Athan, and he wanted to please her, and she nodded because words felt terribly far away when he was tending to her.
With her assent, he tugged down the fabric just enough that he could place a kiss to the scar across her middle. Small, they’d called it, but to her it was anything but. Red and swollen in places, and her mother reminded her often they needed to be massaged with oils if she ever wanted it to get better.
She stopped asking a long while ago if Orma wanted her to do it for her.
“My Orma,” Athan breathed, and air caught in her lungs because he’d never said her name like that. He was always so careful, didn’t want her to feel presumed upon, never laid his own claim.
The bond flared.
The pulse thrumming through her blood along with it.
And suddenly the touches were not enough and too much all at once. Because they weren’t right, and he wasn’t as overcome as she was, and that was unbearable.
She sat up, and Athan looked at her in alarm, and Orma did not quite recognise herself as she pushed him onto his back. His head wasn’t on the pillows, and that should matter, but what seemed of far great import was getting this clothing off of him.
And, for that matter, the rest of her nightdress. It was caught about her hips, and she was kneeling on the bed rather than standing properly on the floor, but she shimmied out of it anyway, tossing the garment wherever it pleased as it landed.
He opened his mouth, likely to ask if she was all right again, but she halted him by leaning down and kissing him soundly. No more distractions. No more teasing and exploring while he was neglected.
She did not care what he said. He might derive great satisfaction from caring for his patients, for tending to her every need, but it could not possibly follow that he had none of his own.
“My Athan,” she murmured into his ear, her voice low. She smiled to herself when he swallowed, and it was his turn for his hands to clutch at the bedclothes as she went back to the knots at his shoulders. His cuffs. They yielded to her touch this time, now that she knew what she was doing wrong. And if she’d been bold enough, she would have suggested they do this standing, because there was little enticing about the awkward manoeuvring of cloth, either down hips that had to rise and lower, or over wings that did not want to be bothered so.
But he’d managed it. And if she felt a little silly, and not at all as comely as he had been while he’d undressed her, then she would make up for it with kisses.
His wrist.
Right above his elbow.
The curve of his shoulder.
His throat.
While he was left to struggle not to reach for her. To hold on to her hips and let her attend to one side, then the other.
It was easier for her. The threads told her where to go, and she had only to follow. To let her heart warm to him, to excite him with her lips and her touch as he’d done to her.
She’d left the laces of his trousers alone, and she could admit a sort of nervousness about it. It wasn’t fear—she banished that thought entirely. But it was new, and she was not nearly as familiar with a body as he was, and males were built strangely. Not that she would ever say so to the Maker directly in a prayer, but perhaps in the privacy of her own thoughts when her mother had tried to explain it to her.
Tucked neatly away until their services were required, she’d said, her lips tight and her eyes away from her daughter’s.
She was no girl any longer. She was a woman who wanted her mate, and she would not grow silly and anxious over something as inconsequential as laces on trousers.
She did not lie over him as he’d done with her. Did not trail kisses across his torso, although she could plainly see where the bond nestled.
She was growing impatient while he was lying there, seemingly content just to watch her.
She took a breath. Reached for the bond as well as his laces, and found the comfort she needed. She was doing fine. More than fine. He was so pleased he was near to bursting with it, and he wanted to touch, to pull, to bring them together, but he was restrained. For her. To let her have her fun, to be pliant and amiable to her whims.
It didn’t mean she had to look. She didn’t know how she’d feel if he stared at her most intimate places—most especially if he’d be thinking of others he’d seen, despite the context differing vastly than his time with her.
She compromised by tugging the legs off him, wondering if he’d mind if she tossed them away as she’d done her shift, or if that would seem insulting. He hadn’t complained about the shirt, so she did not bother with ceremony, and dropped it off the side of the bed.
“You are beautiful,” Athan observed, and she sat back on her heels, wondering why he might say such a thing. Her bad hip was in plain view. The sutures they’d used made a pale zigzag across the curve that should have been smooth and lovely. She hadn’t brushed her hair before she’d gone to find him.
Orma blinked, glancing down at herself. She was too thin, but even so, there were little rolls of softened flesh that surely were not beautiful.
She opened her mouth to give her objections. To list all the things she found to be quite the opposite.
Then closed it again.
He thought her beautiful. Scars and all.
She felt a wave of tenderness for him, and she forgot about the rest of it. About laces and undressing and explorations as she stretched herself over him, holding him to her as best she could. Which really was an entirely new level of indecency if she took the time to think of it, but she didn’t. “Thank you,” she murmured, her voice a little smaller than it had been, and for entirely different reasons. Her mother had taught her to be polite, to accept compliments without fuss.
His arms came about her, and her skin prickled with awareness. To be touched all over, all at once. For it to feel so strange and so right, for skin to press against skin. To open her eyes and peek at the threads that fused and merged, settling together.
She gripped him tighter and tried to contain the sudden burst of emotions. He smoothed her hair behind her ear, trying to coax her up so she might look at him. “What happened?” Athan asked, his thumb making slow patterns across her cheek. He was searching her eyes rather than the bond, as if he wanted her to answer on her own.
Her throat ached, and the delightful sensations she’d experienced had quieted under the flux of her own feelings, but that was all right. They’d come back with a little attention, she was certain. “You think I’m beautiful,” she confessed, embarrassed she needed to explain, but wanting to be honest with him. “And I think you mean it.”
He smiled, but it was tight about the edges. “I do,” he promised her. He was quiet for a moment, which allowed her to settle, to sigh, to feel what he must have before, certain if he began petting her hair, she would fall asleep just like this, sprawled out on top of him like a living blanket. But instead, he delved, bringing her attention back to him. “Was that truly one of your worries? That I would find you somehow... lacking?”
She did not know how to answer that. It was, but that wasn’t the whole of it. It was more that she’d been certain he’d find all of her lacking, the very circumstances of their mating, the limitations of what she might give him, whether in his home, or in his bed, or the children they would never have. Her marred sort of beauty felt very far down the list until suddenly they were undressing and he was so...