Chapter 34 #3
“A third,” he said after a while, voice strained. “You’re—I need a third finger, Calder, you’re not small.”
Slowly, I bunched three fingers together and slipped them back inside him. I watched his jaw work through it, the small flinch and then the give, the way his breath evened out once his body had taken what I gave.
He was hot inside, and tight around my fingers. I could not stop thinking about what he would feel like around my length.
I watched his body respond little by little—the flush rising up his throat and the way his hips began to roll over my hand. The way he said my name. “Calder. Calder.” Like it was an instruction and a reassurance at the same time.
“Now,” he panted eventually. “Now. Please.”
I pulled my fingers free, and he whimpered at the loss. I spat into my palm, slicked myself, and lined up where he was already open and wet for me. I paused there, testing his reaction. He peered up at me, eyes wide and cheeks flushed–unafraid.
I pushed in a fraction of an inch. His mouth fell open, his hand finding purchase on my shoulder, nails digging in. I stole another inch, and another. His body resisted, then yielded to the intrusion. I had never known heat like that. I had never known anything like that.
“All the way,” he demanded. “I’ve got you. All the way, Calder.”
I sank into the hilt, and he made a sound I wanted to hear again for the rest of my life.
I stopped there. I had to. My arms shook and my vision blurred. Every part of me that had been starved—and it had been every part, for longer than he could imagine—was suddenly fed, overfull, and I could not move yet or I would not be able to make this last.
For three centuries, something was missing. There was a difference. I had watched humans hold each other and had not understood why.
I understood now. I understood in my body, in the press of his thighs against my hips, in the way his chest rose against mine with every breath.
I understood that I had been cold, and now I had found warmth.
I had believed myself complete. Only now did I realize I had simply never known another way to exist.
His hands cupped my cheeks. “Hey,” he said, softly capturing my attention. “Hey. I’ve got you. Take your time.”
“I do not—” My voice did not sound like my own. “I do not have a word for this.”
“You don’t need one.”
He kissed me, stealing all of my control with one single rock of his hips.
I thrusted at first, because I was still afraid for him, and then faster, because he demanded it–harder, harder. His squeezed my waist, heels digging into the small of my back.
I braced one hand beside his head and gripped his hip with the other, fucking him the way my body wanted to—deep, steady, the drag and push of it lighting up every nerve I had—and he met me for every thrust.
“God—Calder—just like that—”
I did not need that translated. Milo’s body spoke its own language–the pitch of his voice, the way he tightened around my shaft, and the way he gasped my name like a prayer.
I shifted my weight, changed the angle, chasing something his body had told me it wanted.
He cried out—short, sharp, his nails raking down my back—and I did it again–and again.
Watching him. Learning him. The specific angle that made his breath stop.
The specific depth that made him swear. I was keeping a record.
I was going to have this memorized before I was finished.
I lowered my head to his throat, feeling his pulse beat beneath my lips. I did not bite. I wanted to, but I did not. I pressed my open mouth to his skin, breathed him in and kept moving.
His hand worked between us, fist tight around his shaft. I felt it against my stomach with every thrust. I watched his face—the way his jaw went slack, the way his eyes grew bleary—and I understood he was close. That I had gotten him there.
That knowledge did something to me I was not prepared for. “Milo Hart.”
“Yeah—yeah, come with me—”
He released first, his body tensing beneath me. He clenched around me in a long, shuddering wave. His climax pulsed hot between us. The sound he made—low, broken, my name in it—undid me.
I followed him over the edge.
It was not a sensation I had a map for. It was heat and release and a profound sense of rightness. My hips drove forward one last time and held there, my body spilling into him. I pressed my forehead to his and breathed through it and did not dare speak.
He stroked the back of my neck, slow and steady, like he was gentling an animal. Perhaps he was.
After a long moment, I lifted my head.
He looked wrecked, hair standing in all directions, flushed down to his chest and lips swollen. He looked at me like I was something he had found and intended to keep.
“Hi,” he said.
“Hi.”
“You okay?”
I considered it. My body was still coming back to itself. My hands were still shaking, faintly, where they braced against the grass. I did not know what I was yet, on the other side of this, but I knew one thing with clarity.
“I am not afraid.”
His face softened. He understood what I meant by it.
“I know. “Me neither.”