True Mating 🌶️
? Roman ?
“Stay,” Ivy says, then laughs once when I nearly pull the blanket with me trying to obey too quickly.
The word goes through me hard enough that I close my eyes for a second.
She has one hand braced against my chest and the other between us, guiding me to her. Her hair falls over her bare shoulders and brushes my wrists. The low infirmary lamp catches the silver at her skin, the small curve of her mouth, the determination in her eyes.
For all the hunger rising in me, I stay still.
She takes her time crossing the last distance between us. Her breath catches, and my hands close around her thighs before I can stop them.
“Ivy.”
“I know,” she whispers.
Then she sinks farther, taking me slowly, and the sound that leaves me is rough enough to make her smile.
The heavy door is shut, the bell is within reach, and Nora is downstairs. The world narrows to rain against the windows, Ivy’s breath against my mouth, and the warmth of her body settling around mine.
I’ve wanted her for longer than I let myself admit. More than her body, I’ve wanted this: Ivy asking for something without apologizing.
“You’re very quiet,” she says.
“I’m trying to hold still.”
Her mouth curves. “Keep trying.”
Then she moves again, and my head falls back against the pillow.
Her expression changes when she hears the sound I can’t hold in. Some of the uncertainty she carried into the room leaves her face. She finds a slow rhythm, testing it, watching me as closely as I’m watching her.
Pain catches sharply along my side.
Ivy stills at once. Her hands flatten against my chest.
“Roman.”
I catch her waist before she can pull away. “The wound.” Her eyes search mine.
“It hurts,” I tell her. “Give me a breath.”
She stays close, breathing against me while I wait for the hard pull beneath my ribs to ease. Then she shifts nearer and changes the angle with a practical patience that makes something in me ache for reasons that have nothing to do with the bandage.
For once, she’s the steadier one. I let her guide the pace, and when the pain catches again, I tell her instead of hiding it.
“There,” I say, kissing the corner of her mouth. “That’s better.”
She studies my face for another breath, then moves.
The first few motions pull at my ribs, but the pain dulls beneath the rest of her. Ivy braces one hand beside my shoulder while the other drifts down my chest, tracing places she has never let herself linger before.
My body answers before I can think.
Ivy’s breath catches. “You like that.”
I catch the back of her neck and bring her mouth to mine before she can turn it into another question.
I slide one hand into her hair and keep her close while the other moves between us. The second my fingers find her clit, her whole body tightens. Her mouth breaks from mine, and she says my name in a way that scatters every thought in my head.
I learn her quickly. The pressure she leans into. The rhythm that makes her hips move against my hand. The way her fingers grip my shoulder, then my chest, when she stops trying to hold herself still. She trembles around me.
I’ve never wanted to lose control more.
“More,” she breathes.
I give her what she asks for, working my thumb against her while I move beneath her in short, measured strokes.
Ivy gasps and presses closer, her body finding mine with more certainty now.
Her hair brushes my face when she bends forward, and I kiss the curve of her throat before lowering my mouth to her breast.
She arches above me with a broken sound, her fingers twisting in my hair.
“Don’t stop.”
I don’t. I keep my mouth on her while my hand moves between us and my body follows the pace she gives me. She says my name once, then again, and the third time her body tightens so suddenly that I catch her against me.
She comes apart in my arms.
I hold her through it, my palm warm between her thighs and my mouth against her shoulder while every tremor moves through her. Afterward, she stays folded over me for a moment, breathing hard against my neck.
When she lifts her head, her face is flushed and her eyes are bright.
“I’m not done,” she says.
The words nearly undo me.
She bends down and kisses me, and whatever distance I kept between us has nowhere left to stand.
“I love you,” I say.
The words leave before I can shape them into anything safer.
Her expression stills. For a moment, she only looks at me. Then her hand comes up and cups my face, her thumb moving once across my cheek.
“I love you too.”
She kisses me before I can answer.
Ivy takes the pace again, her body still sensitive beneath my hands. I hold her hips and follow where she leads, keeping one arm around her whenever the motion pulls too sharply at my side.
When my side tightens, she shifts closer and changes the angle without breaking the rhythm. She takes care of me without making either of us fragile.
I draw her down against me, one arm around her back, and meet her with slow, controlled strokes. Her mouth finds mine, and her hands slide into my hair.
She’s warm around me, her breath breaking against my mouth. Restraint thins with every movement.
I kiss along her jaw while she whispers my name against my skin. Warmth rises beneath my wrist, and Ivy feels it too.
Her fingers catch mine between us. The old vow marks glow silver-white against our skin, and she looks down for half a breath before threading her hand through mine.
The moment our palms meet, the warmth deepens.
It doesn’t pull at either of us. It doesn’t demand anything, and it doesn’t take. It settles through me with the quiet certainty of something that has waited a long time to be recognized.
I don’t hear Ivy’s thoughts or enter her grief. I only know she’s here, her fingers locked through mine.
I move with her until the pleasure begins to build again. Her body tightens around me, and my control starts to slip.
“Ivy.”
She hears the warning in my voice. Her eyes open, and her grip closes around my hand.
“Pull out,” she says, breathless but certain.
I do.
The loss of her heat is almost enough to break me. I guide her back against the pillows, keeping my weight off my injured side, and finish against the soft skin of her lower stomach with her hand wrapped around the back of my neck.
Her name leaves me on the last hard pulse.
For a few seconds, I can’t do anything except breathe. Ivy’s palm moves slowly over my shoulder, and the bond at our wrists holds warm and quiet between us.
Then she reaches for the folded cloth beside the water pitcher.
“I can do that,” I say.
“You can barely sit up without making that face.”
“What face?”
“The one you make when you’re pretending your ribs aren’t attached to you.”
I don’t argue, mostly because she’s right.
She wets the cloth with warm water from the covered pitcher and cleans her stomach, then hands it to me. I wipe my hand and the damp skin at her thigh before setting the cloth aside. The ordinary care of it settles something in me that the magic can’t reach.
Ivy checks the edge of my bandage next. Her fingers are gentle but unsentimental, lifting the linen just enough to make sure there’s no fresh blood.
“Still closed,” she says.
“High praise.”
“It’s all you’re getting until Nora sees it.”
I ease down beside her, careful of my ribs, and draw the blanket over us. Ivy turns onto her side and fits herself against my uninjured arm, one hand resting on my chest while our breathing settles.
Only then does the light beneath our wrists change.
Ivy lifts our joined hands between us.
The old vow marks remain exactly where they were, but another line has formed through each of them, fine and silver, curving in opposite directions. Her mark is whole. Mine is whole. When our hands meet, the new lines align into one unbroken pattern.
She watches it for a moment before looking back at me.
“So that’s it.”
“Looks like it.”
“Does it change anything?”
I brush my thumb over the new mark at her wrist. “No.”
Her brows lift.
“It only knows we chose each other.”
The warmth at our wrists settles.
The wound still aches, and the bond hasn’t healed me. Willow’s letter is still waiting beside the lamp, and Grant will still be there when morning comes.
Ivy rests her cheek against my chest. “You’re letting Nora look at that bandage when she comes back.”
“Yes.”
“And you’re not telling her I fixed you.”
“I’d rather survive the night.”
Her laugh is quiet against my skin.
Rain keeps moving over the windows. The compass catches one last line of lamplight beside Willow’s folded letter, and Ivy’s fingers remain threaded through mine beneath the blanket.