27. Chapter 27
He set her down inside the cabin door then leaned his forehead against hers.
“Maren.”
“Yeah.”
“If you aren't sure we can wait.”
“I'm sure. I'm sure I want you to bite me. I'm sure I want the bond to complete. I'm sure I want what comes after.”
“Okay.”
He kissed her.
Slow.
Different from the kiss the night of the fire in the hearth and the sweatshirt from her father.
Different from the kiss at the bay door when she'd said I love you and he'd said of course I came for you.
This kiss had a place it was going that the other kisses hadn't been going to.
They both knew it, and it was in his mouth and in her body at the same register as a heartbeat.
His hand went to the back of her neck.
Jace walked her backward to the bed without taking his mouth off her.
She didn't remember her sweatshirt coming off.
She remembered her hand at his belt. She remembered him pulling his shirt over his head in one motion when she hadn't asked for the shirt yet.
She remembered the cabin was the cabin and the bed was the bed and the lamp was on and she wanted the lamp on.
Her bare back against the sheet.
His weight on her the way it had been the first time, careful, but less held-in this time, because he had been holding in at the first time and they had both survived the first time and tonight was something else.
His mouth was at her throat early.
Not to bite. To say something wordless about the shape of the next beat. His teeth on the skin at her collar so she could feel them. Not closing. Registering. There. I am here. We are going here.
Her chest opened around it.
The bond opened around it.
Since the night after the rescue she'd had to pay attention to feel it. Tonight she didn't have to. Tonight it was ringing. A clear tone at the base of her sternum going through her like a bell and landing on his side of the line and coming back.
Maren could feel his want.
She could feel his fear, which wasn't fear of her or of the moment, but the particular small fear of a man about to change the shape of his life with his teeth.
She could feel his love.
She could feel all of it at once.
“Jace.”
“I can feel everything.”
“Same.”
“More than last time.”
“Yeah. It gets bigger the closer we get.”
“Go.”
Jace took his time.
His mouth was on her mouth. Then at her jaw. Then under her ear. The place at her collar where his teeth had registered earlier without closing was right there, and he didn't go back to it. He was saving it.
Once again, Maren ran her palm down the long muscle of his back, just as she had the first time.
His mouth moved down her body at half the pace it had the first time, taking her in, unhurried, because now he had the rest of their life to learn her slower. The hollow of her throat below the mark-spot. The inside of her arm. The soft of her ribs.
When his tongue circled her nipple the heat in her belly pulled tight and low.
His pleasure at giving it to her came through the bond as a warmth against her chest, not the sensation itself, just the wanting of it from his side, and that made her own want grow. She arched. Her hand gripped his hair.
His hand moved down the way it had before. Her ribs. Her belly. The inside of her thigh. He was taking longer than he had before, unhurried, settling into her, and she was wetter than she'd been then, from the want of him layered on top of knowing him now. Jace smiled against her skin.
His fingers circled her clit at the exact pressure he had learned on her. The pressure she needed. Her breath cracked. Her hips came off the sheet. Maren bit her lip to keep from making sound. He watched her face. Waited for her to let it go. She let it go.
She came on his hand again, faster this time, because he knew her now, because her body had already learned what his fingers could do.
His satisfaction came through the bond as a warm pressure against her sternum, the emotion of it, not the sensation of it, and that made her own peak land harder.
She made a sound she had never heard herself make before. Her hand tightened in his hair.
Her want. His want. Hers. His. Blurring at the edges.
Maren lost track of whose breath was whose.
She didn't mind.
Jace stopped his hand.
His forehead came down to hers. His breath was uneven against her mouth.
“Maren.”
Maren opened her eyes.
He was asking her with the whole of his face. The whole of his body held still above hers. Waiting.
“Yes,” she breathed.
His teeth closed at her throat in the second after the word left her mouth.
There was a flash of pain on the soft part of her neck between the collarbone and the throat. Then the warmth of his teeth. Then something else entirely, which was the bond opening the rest of the way open.
A rush of him came through her. All of him at once went into every part of her as if he had always been meant to be there.
Maren felt the depth of Jace's feelings for her. The love. The way she had been at the center of him since the day he had scented her at the diner, and under every single thing he had done for her and said to her and not-said-to-her since.
A minute ago she would have said such love was impossible. Now she knew it in every piece of her, down to a cell level.
She sent him hers back the same way. All of her love for him, held down under three years of running and I'm-fine and I-don't-need-anyone, let all the way open into every piece of him. All at once. All of her, to him.
He came into her careful. Watching her every expression, mapping every response, every change.
All of it amplified now because the bond was carrying each shift in his own body the moment it moved through hers, and she was carrying him, everything she felt showing up in him a half-second later, and him adjusting to it.
She felt her hands shaking a little. It wasn't bad shaking. It was being-full-of-him shaking.
She bit her lip again. He felt it through the bond before he saw it. He pressed his forehead to hers and said her name. She let the sound go into his mouth.
The peak came through her the way the peak came through her the first time, but bigger now.
Because it was wider, because she could feel his body arriving at the same place as hers.
He was carrying her and she was carrying him.
Her hand was in his hair pulling, and as her back lifted off the sheet her mouth found his.
They held each other after.
The bond settled.
It didn't go quiet. It sat at a low hum the way it had been, but the hum was different. The hum had her in it on his side and him in it on her side, and when she closed her eyes she could feel the cabin through both of their senses.
“Jace.”
“Yeah.”
“Can you feel me?”
“Yeah.”
“All of you.”
“All of you.”
She didn't cry.
She laughed once. Soft. Her forehead against his collarbone.
“That was a lot.”
“The right kind of a lot.”
“Later we'll talk about it.”
“Later.”
They lay tangled some time.
His fingers in her hair.
Her fingers over the mate-mark at her throat. She could feel it. Warm.
She smiled into his skin.
“Mine,” she said.
The word came out the way a word came out when it had been in a person's mouth for some time and had finally been allowed to be said out loud.
“Mine,” he said back.
Mine, his wolf said through the bond.
She sent it back through the bond. Yours.
Both of them. Both true at once.
Her eyes fell shut.
His fingers in her hair.
She fell asleep inside of a minute.
He was asleep inside of two.
The cabin around them was the cabin around them. The compound around them was the compound around them. The pack around them had known what was happening the second the bond had snapped all the way open, because packs knew, and nobody came anywhere near the cabin door, because packs also knew that.
Outside, the first evening of a pack's completed bond.
Inside, two people breathing at the same rate.