19. Leire #2
“Very much.” I reach for his shirt. “This is supposed to be mutual nakedness. I’m reading the fine print of the situation and you’re in breach of contract.”
“You’re making legal jokes right now?”
“I make jokes when I’m nervous. Also when I’m happy. Also when I’m angry. Basically all the time. It’s a character flaw.”
“It’s not a flaw.” He lets me pull off his shirt, lets me finally see the body I’ve been imagining since the first time I watched him move through my shop.
He’s built exactly as he should be—lean and powerful, muscles carved from years of fighting and shifting and protecting.
Scars mark his skin. Old ones faded white. Newer ones still pink.
I trace one across his ribs. “This one?”
“Warding Line breach. Three years ago.”
Another, curling around his shoulder. “This?”
“Training accident. Torin felt guilty for six months.”
“The man who made the fish pillow did this to you?”
“He’s very strong. And very clumsy. It’s a dangerous combination.”
I lean up. Press my lips to the scar. Feel him shiver under my mouth.
“Leire—”
“I want to know all of them.” I kiss another scar. Another. “Every mark on your body. Every story you carry.”
“That could take a while.”
“Good thing we have time.”
We take our time.
I’ve had sex that was fast and urgent, bodies crashing in desperate release. This isn’t that. This is... learning. Discovering. Building a new language with every touch.
He kisses down my throat. My collarbone. The swell of my breasts. I arch into his mouth, fingers tangling in his hair, and the sound that escapes me is embarrassingly needy. I don’t care. Not here. Not with him.
His hand slides between my thighs.
“Oh—” The word breaks apart as his fingers find exactly where I need them. He watches my face while he touches me, reads my reactions, adjusts his rhythm until I’m gasping, climbing, shattering.
“That’s it.” His voice is dark honey. “Let go.”
I come undone.
The orgasm crashes through me—unexpected in its intensity, drawing out longer than I thought possible. He works me through it, gentle now, letting me ride the aftershocks until I’m boneless and panting and staring at him with open wonder.
“How—”
“Tiger senses.” His smile is smug. Earned. “I can tell exactly what you like.”
“That’s cheating.”
“I prefer ‘tactical advantage.’”
“Of course, you do.” I pull him down to kiss me. Taste myself on his lips and find I don’t mind at all. “Your turn.”
I push him onto his back.
He goes willingly, watching me with eyes that glow in the dim light. I straddle his hips, feel the evidence of his want pressing against me, and take a moment to just... look.
This man. This intense, protective, infuriating man who showed up in my life like a storm and refused to leave. Who fought for me when I didn’t want protecting. Who saw through every defense I had and stayed anyway.
“What?” His voice is strained. Barely controlled.
“Appreciating the view.”
“Leire—”
“Patience.” I echo his earlier restraint back at him. “Some things are worth savoring. Also, I’m mentally cataloging your abs. Give me a minute.”
“You’re cataloging—”
“Shh. Counting.”
His laugh is startled, genuine, slightly desperate. “You’re going to kill me.”
“Death by appreciation. What a way to go.”
I reward his patience by sinking down onto him.
Oh.
The sound we both make is guttural. Animal. His hands fly to my hips, steadying me, and I have to pause just to breathe. Just to adjust to the feel of him inside me, stretching me, filling spaces I didn’t know were empty.
“Fuck.” His head falls back against the pillows. The tendons in his neck stand out. “You feel—”
“I know.” I rock my hips. Experimental. Feel the way his whole body shudders. “I know.”
We find our rhythm slowly. Build it like music, like magic, like two people learning a language they’ll speak for the rest of their lives. His hands guide me but don’t control. My body moves over his, taking what I need, giving everything I have.
The pleasure builds. Different from before—deeper, fuller, threaded through with emotion I’ve been running from for two years.
“Leire.” His voice is wrecked. “I need—”
“Yes.”
He flips us in one smooth motion. My back hits the mattress. His weight settles over me. And then he’s moving, really moving, and I can’t think anymore. Can only feel.
Every thrust drives us higher. Every gasp and moan builds toward the inevitable. His forehead presses against mine. His breath mingles with mine. His eyes—those amber, inhuman eyes—lock onto mine and don’t let go.
“With me.” Not a question. An order. “Come with me.”
I shatter.
And at the peak of it, at the moment when everything narrows to pure sensation—
He bites.
His teeth sink into the junction of my neck and shoulder.
Pain flares, sharp and bright, and then transforms into heat. The mark burns—not unpleasant, but intense, like his tiger is writing itself into my skin. Into my blood.
My magic responds.
I don’t plan it. Don’t even think about it. But power surges up from deep inside me, and I feel it flow into him. Into the skin beneath my hands, the muscles flexing under my palms, the heart pounding against my chest.
A witch’s mark. Answering his.
The world goes white.
Not literally—I can still see, still feel, still hear his ragged breathing against my throat.
But everything else falls away. The cabin.
The battle. The fear and the doubt and the years of isolation.
All of it stripped to nothing, leaving only this: two people who chose each other.
Who claimed each other. Who built something new from the ruins of their pasts.
Aslan’s head lifts. His eyes are wild. Shocked.
“What—” He touches his chest, where my magic sank in. “What did you do?”
“I don’t know.” The honest truth. “But I think... I think I claimed you back. Surprise?”
The aftermath is quiet.
We lie tangled in sheets that smell like sex and sweat and magic, his body curled around mine. His hand traces lazy patterns on my stomach. The claiming mark on my shoulder throbs in time with my heartbeat—not painful anymore, just present. A reminder of what we’ve done.
“I can feel you.” His voice carries wonder and confusion. “Not your thoughts. Not your emotions. Just... you. Direction. Distance. Whether you’re alive or not.”
“GPS awareness.” I turn in his arms to face him. “That’s what Anouk mentioned once. What the mate claiming does for shifters. You’ll know where I am. I’ll know where you are. That’s it.”
“That’s it?”
“Were you expecting telepathy? Shared dreams? A mystical mind-meld?”
“I don’t know what I was expecting.”
“Well, sorry to disappoint. You get a permanent internal compass that points at me, and I get...” I touch the mark on my shoulder. Feel the warmth of it. “I’m not sure what I get. But something changed.”
He studies me in the dim light, firelight casting shadows across his face. “The Preservers said you have mate potential. That witches with that signature could pair with shifters.”
“Pair.” I wrinkle my nose. “Clinical word for what we just did.”
“Would you prefer ‘made passionate love under the mystical bonds of fate’?”
“God, no. That’s worse. That’s so much worse.”
His laugh is low. Surprised. Like he didn’t expect to find humor here.
“I love you.”
The words fall into the silence.
I go still. My heart stops, restarts, hammers against my ribs.
“What?”
“I love you.” He says it again, simple and certain.
Like it’s the most obvious thing in the world.
Like he’s been holding it back for weeks and finally let it loose.
“I’ve been fighting it since the moment I saw you.
Telling myself it was a pull I couldn’t explain.
But it’s not. It’s you. The way you refuse to stay down no matter how many times life knocks you over. ”
His hand cups my face. Thumb brushing away tears I didn’t realize I’d shed.
“I love you, Leire Firesinger. And I’m done pretending otherwise.”
I should say it back.
The words are right there, burning on my tongue. I love you too. Four syllables that would change everything.
But I’ve been burned before. Believed before. Trusted before.
“I—” My voice catches.
“You don’t have to say it back.” He watches me with steady eyes. Patient. Understanding. “I’m not asking for a return. I just needed you to know.”
“It’s not that I don’t feel it.” The words tumble out, clumsy and desperate. “It’s that the last time I loved someone—the last time I trusted completely—he testified against me. Helped exile me. I lost everything. I want to say it. I want to. But—”
“But words have weight.” He presses a kiss to my forehead. “And you’ve had too many people throw them around without meaning them.”
“Yes.” Relief at being understood. At not having to explain. “Exactly.”
“Then show me instead.” His arms tighten around me. “Stay. Tonight. And when you’re ready—if you’re ever ready—you can say the words.”
“That sounds like forever.”
“Would that be so bad?”
I think about it. Really think, with every ounce of pragmatic cynicism I’ve earned.
Forever with this man. This intense, protective, occasionally terrifying man who looks at me like I’m his whole world. Who fought through an army to reach me. Who showed me his terrible fish pillow and the soft parts he hides from everyone else.
“No.” I curl closer to him, my head finding the hollow of his shoulder. “I don’t think it would be bad at all.”
Later—much later, after sleep claimed us both and dawn light crept through the windows—I wake in his arms.
The claiming mark pulses warm against my shoulder. My magic hums where it’s woven into his skin. He’s still asleep—the first peaceful rest I’ve seen from him, his face soft in ways it never is when he’s awake.
I watch him breathe. Count the scars I learned last night. Trace the shape of his mouth, his jaw, the silver at his temple that tells a story he finally trusts me with.