44. Chapter 44 #2
I skated my fingers over it before grabbing it at the base and pumping once, twice. His hips bucked into my hand, the tip already beading with his arousal.
“Luna,” he groaned again. “Stop that, or you won’t get what you want.”
We both let out little laughs, his following mine. “I just thought it was fair since you’ve already touched so much of me.”
“I can never touch enough of you, moonlight. Ever.” As his hand slid down my stomach, a trail of fire followed. I expected him to start touching me, but instead he grasped both hips and pulled, carefully sliding me down the bed. I relaxed back onto the mattress.
“Exactly where I want you,” he whispered, coaxing my legs open with one hand. His deft fingers found soft flesh and caressed circles before dipping into my heat. My eyes almost rolled back from the sheer pleasure of it.
“Can I beg for at least one thing?” he asked, nuzzling into my neck.
I felt myself smiling broadly. And for once, I didn’t care how vulnerable that might make me appear. “Yes.”
“Let me taste you again, please.”
“Since you asked so nicely,” I said, my voice a little breathless, which rather ruined the prim effect I’d been going for.
He was under the furs before my next breath.
I wanted to giggle at his obvious enthusiasm, but what came out of me was a moan as his lips found my clit and sucked. His fingers joined in next, stroking in and out, driving me closer and closer with each movement.
I threw the furs off to get a better look. My knees began to shake, but two ropes of shadow appeared to hold me there. His eyes were pools of shadows staring back at me.
“I’m going to make you fuck my tongue until you fall apart.” He lazed one lingering lick. “Then I’m going to bury myself inside you and do it again. And again. Until you say you’ve had enough.”
Oh dear gods.
He didn’t wait for my answer. He leaned back down, fingers finding my folds, and started thrusting his tongue into me like it was his cock.
Like the first time he’d touched me, there was no build up.
I simply shattered, entire body quivering with the intensity of it.
He continued to work me until I came back down from the heavens, sweat beading my brow.
He moved up onto the bed into a kneeling position, giving me my first good view of him.
“One small change to your plan,” I said, sitting up. “It’s my turn.”
“Luna…” he warned.
“Just a little.” I was already leaning over.
He didn’t protest as I licked a slow stripe from the base to the tip. His entire body shuddered at the contact.
“Oh, fuck,” he rasped, voice deeper than I’d ever heard it.
All that did was encourage me. I gripped the shaft with one hand and sucked. The salty tang of him filled my senses. I felt him throb against my lips before he pulled away abruptly. “Too good,” he practically whined.
I leaned back, relaxing onto a pillow, feeling a little smug.
“Time to make good on my promise,” he said, moving back to kneel between my legs. “Before, I was drowning in my need for you. But I’ve been by your side, breathing you in for the past day and night. This is the most stable I’ve ever felt.”
“Then show me,” I murmured, using my hands to encourage him to come closer. “I need to feel you.”
He came down to hover over me, bracing himself on his elbows. Starting at my collarbone, he drew a path with his lips, moving slowly toward my ear. He sucked the sensitive tip into his mouth before whispering, “I love you, Lunette. I always will.”
As my heart and mind turned that over, he began the unhurried, careful thrust that would bring our bodies together for the first time. Since I hadn’t been with anyone in years, the feeling left me breathless.
Did I love him? I waited for the familiar urge to talk myself out of it—to find a reason to make myself smaller, more careful, less.
But I wasn’t the woman who’d chosen safety over truth, who’d confused the meaningless comfort of being needed for something real. I knew now that what I had before was emptiness. And what I had with him now was nothing like it.
Owain loved me. Not any of the careful shapes I’d forced myself to fit into for other people. Just me.
I was done with safe.
The answer, when I let myself look at it without fear, was painfully simple. It had probably been simple for a while.
“I love you too,” I said just as he buried himself to the hilt.
The store of magic that lived around my heart burst out in one great wave. It felt like a door I’d been leaning against for months had simply opened. Like my very connection to everything around me and my position within it had been abruptly and completely rewritten.
I could feel Owain.
A vague sense of where he was and how he felt now occupied a corner of my mind. For a moment, we both held our breaths, the quiet amplifying our shared stillness.
I pulled back just far enough to look at him. Shadows now moved across his skin like restless, living tattoos. His expression confirmed it. He’d felt it too.
Except he didn’t look as surprised as I felt…
Something that wasn’t quite hurt and wasn’t quite relief flickered through me. He had known. But he’d waited until I’d come to the realization myself.
I wasn’t sure if I wanted to kiss him or throw something at him. So I laughed.
He made a sound deep in his throat that might’ve been my name. Neither of us could speak.
I reached up and touched his face. He turned into my hand and kissed it as if it were the most natural thing he’d ever done. When our lips finally met, it felt like an acknowledgment of a long-standing truth, rather than the start of something new.
The wonder I’d seen written in his expression gradually gave way to something hungrier and more certain.
I felt its echo travel through the new connection to him before he started moving carefully again.
The barrage of new sensations—how happy and content he felt—hit me all at once, leaving me momentarily overwhelmed.
He stopped. His eyes were still filled with shadows, but I could see and sense the concern behind them.
“Still with me?” he asked quietly.
The fact that he’d asked—the man who could’ve demanded anything from me in that moment and I would’ve given it—undid me more completely than everything before it.
“More than ever,” I confirmed, certain though I sounded a little breathless.
I wrapped my arms around him and pulled him closer, and when we kissed again, it had none of the carefulness of before. It had heat and intention.
I was done being careful. And he was done being patient.
He thrust into me with renewed passion, grinding the muscles I’d been ogling that morning on the balcony into the perfect spot until I started to come apart again.
“Look at me, Luna. Show me how I make you feel.”
Held firm within his arms, the wave came over me with such blinding intensity that I lost all sense of the world. The echo of everything he felt as I fell apart in his arms crashed through me, doubling the intensity until I couldn't tell where my sensation ended and his began.
The sweet nothings he murmured into my ear guided me back as I came down from the peak. “So perfect, my moonlight.” He nudged his nose against mine in a playful bunny kiss then whispered, “But I need you to do that again.”
“Need, huh?” I teased, cheeks hot with pleasure.
“Always.” His magic slipped beneath me as he kneeled again.
One second I was flat on the bed, the next my lower back tilted upward, my body angled up to meet him. My hips settled onto the angled conjured pillow, and he lined himself up. “I want to watch every inch go in. Wrap your legs around me so I can worship you properly.”
His first thrust was painfully slow, but then he set a steady pace that made the entire heavy oak bedframe shake. I wanted to laugh at what everyone outside the room must think—it was the middle of the day, after all, but I was so lost in his touch that it stopped mattering.
He reached down from where he kneeled above me and pressed his palm into my mound with steady thrusts.
Gods, I was going to come again. A flash of wild satisfaction that wasn't mine and yet somehow was broke through our bond.
I could feel him throbbing within me too, but he was holding himself back.
“Join me, Owain. Just like this. Keep going.”