Chapter 23 #2
Not the desperate kisses from before, when they’d been trying to fix something with their bodies that was broken in their hearts. This was different. This was a choice. A promise. A beginning.
“Yes,” she whispered against his mouth.
“To which part?”
“All of it. The dinners with your family. The long-distance arrangement. The four AM baking.” She kissed him again, softer. “I love you, Alessandro. I should have said it before. I was scared.”
He held her close. “I love you too. I was scared as well.”
“We’ll be scared together from now on?”
“Deal.”
Her joy mirrored his own. They would fight and frustrate each other and occasionally fall back into old patterns. But they would also try.
“Take me to bed,” Marina said.
“Are you sure? After everything tonight…”
“I’m sure.” Her eyes held his. “This time, I want to choose you. Not because we’re desperate or sad or trying to fix something. Because I love you and I want you and the bond isn’t a trap anymore.”
Alessandro didn’t need to be asked twice.
He carried her to bed. Not rushed, not desperate. Slow. Savoring each step.
When he laid her down among the pillows, Alessandro took a moment just to look. Marina in moonlight, hair spread across white sheets, eyes dark and certain.
“You’re staring again,” she said softly.
“I’m memorizing.” He settled beside her, propping himself on one elbow. “Every time we’ve done this before, there was something else happening. Desperation. Fear. Trying to fix things.” His hand traced her collarbone. “Tonight, I just want to be here. With you. No agenda except this.”
“This?”
“Choosing you. Over and over. In every moment.”
Her breath caught, and her joy rushed into him, clean and warm, no longer muted.
“Then choose me,” she whispered.
He kissed her slowly. Thoroughly. Learning the shape of her mouth all over again, like this was their first time. In some ways, it was.
Marina’s hands found his shirt, started working the buttons with careful deliberation. “Can I?”
“You never have to ask.”
“I want to ask. I want you to say yes.” She met his eyes. “I want every touch to be a choice we both make.”
His breath left him unevenly. “Yes. God, yes.”
She undressed him slowly, pausing to press her mouth to each new stretch of skin. His collarbone. His sternum. The scar over his ribs, the one he’d always deflected with a later. This time, when her fingers found it, he didn’t deflect.
“First shift,” he said quietly. “I was sixteen. The night my grandfather died. I didn’t know how to stop it, and a dragon doesn’t fit inside a boy who isn’t ready for it.
” His hand covered hers over the old, raised line.
“I never showed anyone. It felt like proof I couldn’t control the one thing that mattered most.”
“Thank you for showing me.” She pressed her mouth to the scar, soft.
Each touch was a question, and he answered with breath and sound and the heat that hummed between them.
When she reached the scales that flickered along his forearms, always present now, no longer hidden, Marina traced them with gentle fingers.
“These are beautiful,” she said.
“You’ve said that before.”
“I’ll say it every time. Until you believe me.” She pressed a kiss to the iridescent scales. “You’re beautiful. All of you. Dragon and man. I choose all of you.”
His control wavered, not breaking, but softening. Heat radiated from his skin, and more scales appeared, spreading up his arms in delicate patterns. Marina touched each one with wonder.
“Your turn,” he said roughly, pulling her sweater over her head. It caught on her earring, a small silver hook, and they both stopped, laughing, while she untangled herself. The sweater landed somewhere behind the headboard. Neither of them checked.
She didn’t cover herself. Didn’t look away. Just let him see her, the way she hadn’t quite been able to before. He already knew what her fear tasted like. He might as well know the rest.
Alessandro took his time. Every curve, every freckle, the soft place below her navel that made her breath catch when he kissed it. He kissed her breasts, tongue tracing slow circles that made her fingers grip the sheets. Kissed down her stomach, his breath warm against the fine hairs on her skin.
When he reached the waistband of her sleep pants, he paused. “Can I?”
“Yes.” Her fingers tangled in his hair. “Please.”
He stripped away the remaining clothes, then settled between her thighs. The first taste of her made him groan, salt and sweetness and everything he’d been craving. Her pleasure spiked through him as his tongue found her clit.
“Alessandro—” His name in her voice, breathless.
He looked up, meeting her eyes while his mouth worked her higher. The eye contact made everything more intense, watching her watch him, feeling her pleasure while seeing it written on her face.
“I love you,” he said against her skin.
“I love you too… oh god…”
He slid two fingers inside her, curling them while his tongue kept its rhythm.
The dual sensation had her gasping, hips rolling against his mouth.
She was climbing, pleasure building in long, certain strokes, and underneath it the trust that he would keep going, that he wouldn’t stop, that his patience was not a performance.
“Come for me,” he murmured against her skin. “I want to feel you.”
She did. A long, rolling crest that pulled a sound out of her she didn’t try to muffle. He felt it from both sides through the bond: the satisfaction of her undoing and the undoing itself, doubled, until his hands were shaking against her thighs.
When he kissed his way back up her body, Marina pulled him into a deep kiss, tasting herself on his lips. Then she pressed a hand to his chest and pushed, gently, deliberately.
“Lie back,” she said.
His eyebrows rose. But he went, settling against the pillows, watching her with dark, trusting eyes. Marina straddled him, and the shift in power sent a thrill through them both.
“I want to see you,” she said, settling her weight over him, feeling him hard against her. “I want to set the pace. I want…”
“Anything.” His hands rested on her thighs, not gripping. Offering. “Whatever you want.”
“I choose you,” Marina said, looking down at him.
“Not because I’m trapped. Not because magic says I should.
Because you terrorized a health inspector for me.
Because you can’t unhook a bra but you can renegotiate a flour contract in your sleep.
Because you’re learning to ask before you act. Because I love you.”
He had to swallow before he could speak. “I choose you too. I had a whole speech.” He huffed something that might have been a laugh. “I wrote it down. It was three pages. None of it works now.”
“Then don’t.”
“You stayed,” he managed. “I’m picking that one. You stayed. I choose you, Marina.”
She reached between them, took him in her hand (he sucked in a breath, his hips lifting involuntarily) and sank down slowly.
Watched his face the entire time: his eyes going unfocused, his lips parting, his fingers pressing into her thighs hard enough to leave marks neither of them would regret.
His pleasure bled into hers through the open bond until the boundary between them thinned to nothing.
When she’d taken all of him, they both exhaled like they’d been holding their breath for weeks.
“Okay?” she asked.
“Perfect.” His hands tightened on her hips. “God, Marina…”
She rolled her hips, slow, deliberate, and they both gasped. Nothing desperate. Nothing rushed. Just presence. Just choosing each other with every movement.
She set the rhythm, bracing her hands on his chest, his scales warm and humming beneath her palms. The bond sang wide open between them, not a wall of sensation crashing over her, but something she moved through willingly, like wading into warm water.
“You’re so…” His voice broke. “I can feel how much you…”
“Good.” She leaned down, kissed him. “Feel all of it. I’m not hiding anything.”
He didn’t close his eyes. Neither did she. They watched each other as Marina rode him, slow and deep. His hands explored her: her waist, her breasts, the curve of her spine.
“More,” she breathed, shifting her angle, and his hips rose to meet hers. The new depth made them both moan. His thumb found her clit, circling in time with her rhythm, and she felt his focus narrow to that single point of contact, his total attention on her pleasure.
Marina’s pace quickened. Her thighs burned. His hands steadied her hips, matching her rhythm from below, and the shared sensation spiraled tighter, hers feeding his, his amplifying hers, a current running between them with nowhere to go but up.
“Together,” she gasped. “Alessandro…”
“I’m here. I’m right here.”
She came first—hard, sudden, her whole body seizing around him. He made a wrecked sound and followed, hips jerking up into hers, his hands gripping hard enough to bruise. The bond caught the aftershocks and threw them back and forth until she couldn’t tell whose trembling was whose.
The bond went quiet. Not empty—just still, the way a room goes still after good music ends.
When the world slowly returned, they were both shaking. Marina folded forward against his chest, and his arms came up around her.
“Hi,” she said, a bit dazed.
“Hi yourself.”
“That was…”
“Different.”
“Better.” She pressed a kiss over his heart. “That felt like choosing each other. Just… us.”
“Every moment,” he agreed.
They lay tangled together, neither wanting to move. Outside, the full moon hung low over the ocean. Inside, his heartbeat was slowing under her ear.
“Four hours until the alarm,” Marina murmured eventually.
“Worth it.”
“Definitely worth it.” She traced lazy patterns on his chest. “We should probably sleep though.”
“Probably.”
Neither of them moved.
Finally, laughing, Marina shifted off him. He made a sound of protest, but she just curled into his side, fitting perfectly against him.
“I love you,” she said.
“I love you too.”
His arm was going to fall asleep under her neck. He didn’t move it.
Alessandro stared at the ceiling and marveled at how much his life had changed.
A month ago, he’d been alone in his Manhattan penthouse, convinced he could solve everything himself. Now he was lying in a bed that smelled like vanilla and sea salt, with a selkie curled against his chest and a bond humming contentedly between them.
He’d lost his family’s curse. Gained a family of his own.
Not a bad trade.
“So what do we do now?” he asked.
Marina lifted her head, hair tangled, eyes soft. “I have to be up in four hours to make bread.”
Alessandro groaned. “You’re joking.”
“The bakery doesn’t run itself. And someone has to start the ovens.” She grinned. “Though I suppose I could delegate that task. I hear I have a new business partner.”
“Business partner?”
“You negotiated my supplier contracts last week. Fixed my accounting system. Terrorized the health inspector into admitting his citations were fabricated.” She propped herself up on one elbow. “Face it, dragon. You’re part of the bakery now.”
“I was trying to help.”
“I know. And I’m saying thank you.” She kissed his nose, an absurdly tender gesture. “You can help with the ovens. I’ll even teach you how not to burn yourself.”
“I am fireproof.”
“You burned yourself on my oven the second day you were here.”
“That was different. I was distracted by your…” He gestured vaguely at all of her.
“Smooth recovery.” But she was laughing, and everything was warm, and outside the window the full moon was beginning its descent toward dawn.
They had four hours until the alarm went off. Four hours until the bakery opened and the town descended to celebrate and the real work of building a life together began.
Alessandro pulled Marina closer, breathing in the scent of her, feeling her heartbeat sync with his.
“Set it for five,” he said into her hair. “I’ll start the ovens.”
She made a sleepy, considering sound and didn’t argue.