Reciprocal #2
He pressed a third finger in beside the first two, working me open slowly, deeply, paced exactly to the sounds I tried not to make.
Every time I tried to chase the rhythm, he took it from me and made it slower, his tongue moving in long, unhurried strokes until my whole body started to shake against his mouth and hand.
“Rhain.”
“Yes.”
“This is unfair.”
His answer came against me, warm and entirely too pleased. “This is the point.”
Then he withdrew his fingers. The loss of them was enough to make me lift my head in protest, but he only looked up at me, eyes dark and bright, and licked them clean with a deliberate care that made my brain briefly evacuate the premises.
He leaned in and kissed the inside of one thigh, then the other, each touch slow and possessive.
The bites grew firmer as he went, never enough to mark, only enough to warm the skin and let me know exactly what he was thinking about before he settled his shoulders under my legs and went back to work.
Both hands held my thighs open. His tongue moved over me with long, unhurried pressure first, then shifted. Every time I started to understand the rhythm, he changed it. When I moved against him, he hummed, almost satisfaction and almost laughter.
“There,” he said against me.
One slow stroke of his tongue followed the word. Then another.
He kept patient circles where I wanted more, one hand on my hip holding me down while his thumb traced the crease of my thigh in a rhythm my body could not predict. He pulled me back from the edge once, then again, and the second time, the sound that came out of me was half laugh, half curse.
He hummed against me, pleased, and the vibration almost sent me over.
Two fingers slid into me again, curled, and found the place that pulled my back off the bed.
“Rhain.”
“Yes.”
“I’m going to—”
“Not yet.”
“Rhain.”
“Patience, kjaere.” The Norwegian endearment landed in my chest in a register I had no defense against. I came on the sound of it without his permission.
Rhain laughed softly against me. “Shameless.”
He worked me through the orgasm anyway, tongue and fingers still steady as the wave kept going past the place it was supposed to break. The bond rang, heat blooming as the second channel opened hot and bright beneath it.
Rhain’s hands tightened on my thighs. A sharp sound left him, uncontrolled and pleased. “Oh,” he said softly. “That works.”
He stayed there, gentling me through the aftershocks as if he had all the time in the world and intended to spend every second of it learning what else the bond could do.
When he came back up the length of my body, he took his time.
He kissed the inside of one knee, the curve of my hip, the place between my breasts, each touch slower than it needed to be and exactly as slow as he wanted it. By the time his mouth found mine, I tasted myself on him, and heat rose bright enough to make my fingers tighten against his shoulders.
He braced himself over me.
The air between us felt charged, almost physical, running so hot that every breath seemed to catch on the space where our bodies had not yet joined. He looked down at me with vertical pupils, mouth wet, mask gone entirely, and the expression on his face was not control.
It was wonder. Unpolished. Unhidden. Almost startled by itself.
His hand slid to my hip and lifted me. He held there for one suspended breath, the blunt heat of him pressing against me, slick and ready, while the bond stayed open between us and turned anticipation into its own kind of touch.
He pushed in.
He was different from Dominic. Longer. Leaner.
A different angle, a different pressure, a new fullness my body had to learn around him.
The bond carried every small adjustment both ways, every breath, every tremor, every place I opened and he felt it happen.
The relief of being filled was mine, but the wonder of filling me arrived through the line as his, and the two ran together until I could not have told you which one had started the heat.
Rhain went still above me. For one impossible second, neither of us moved.
Then he laughed, soft and disbelieving, almost embarrassed. “Faen.”
I lifted my hips to him, and whatever discipline still lived in him answered like it had been waiting for exactly this.
He pulled out almost all the way, then pushed in again, slower this time, deeper. Bracing himself on one arm, he took my hand beside my head and laced his fingers through mine as if even this needed a formal point of contact, one more claim made with care.
The next stroke pulled a sound out of me I would owe him nothing for later, because he had taken it.
“More.”
He gave it to me.
And then the joy broke loose in him.
This was nothing he had been rationing. Brighter than the prince’s polished hunger, looser than the diplomat’s disciplined attention, almost boyish for one impossible second, a delight so naked it made the bond flare open under both marks.
He kept his mouth near the new claim at the right of my throat, and every few strokes, he licked the bond awake.
Light pressure. Just enough to make it sing.
Heat rose in me and stayed there, building in a register I had never had the vocabulary for while he talked against my skin in Norwegian.
What he felt of my pleasure ran back into me a half-beat later, brighter for the trip, so that every stroke gave me his and mine at once.
Min.
Mine.
Vakker.
Beautiful.
The words came out of him in fragments, half-syllables and broken endearments, less chosen than escaped. He was past performance now. Past courtly control. Past every polished layer he had worn into rooms where wanting anything too visibly could be used against him.
He was in the joy of it. The realization hit almost as hard as his body did.
Rhain changed the angle and drove deeper, slower, each stroke dragging over the place inside me that had no defense against him.
His mouth returned to the new mark at the right of my throat and stayed there, teeth closing over it with more pressure than before, and the claim answered like it had a pulse of its own.
Heat gathered deep and would not crest.
It wound tighter with every stroke, every drag of him, every deliberate bite of his teeth into the place he had made his. I was caught between his mouth and his body, between the claim on my throat and the fullness of him inside me, with nowhere for the sensation to go except deeper.
He felt it building. The bond gave me no privacy from him now, and he used every piece of what it told him. His rhythm changed again, still deliberate, still precise, but harder beneath it. Less diplomat. More man. More dragon. More of the thing in him that had waited to stop asking politely.
My control broke somewhere I could not follow. “Rhain.”
His breath caught. His teeth bore down on the mark, and white flashed behind my eyes.
The release that had been climbing since his mouth found my throat finally broke through me, sharp and total, pulling my spine from the bed as my body clenched around him in helpless waves.
My thighs locked at his hips. My hands found his back.
A sound tore out of me with no language in it at all.
I felt him lose control through the bond.
One moment he was still holding the rhythm, still shaping the pleasure with that devastating, careful patience. The next, my body clenched around him and something in him broke.
“Faen.” The curse was rough against my throat, almost bitten off.
His hips drove deeper, harder, no longer measured, and the bond gave me every piece of it: the shock of his restraint snapping, the heat of his pleasure rising too fast to contain, the fierce, helpless satisfaction of feeling me pulse around him.
His hand tightened at my hip.
His mouth stayed locked to the mark.
Rhain had stopped guiding the moment.
Now he was inside it with me.