13. Chapter 13 #2
There was no word for it in any language he spoke.
The slick devastating heat of his mate closing around him, drawing him in, welcoming him with a biological enthusiasm that was the last irrefutable proof that this body had been made for his.
He was so wet and so ready that Valdyr slid deep in one long steady stroke, and the sound Lorne made was not a moan or a cry but something in between, that started in his chest and climbed and broke. A sound of arrival.
Valdyr's forehead dropped to his. His breath came in pieces. The perfection of it nearly finished him then and there, and he had to hold absolutely still, hips flush, hands braced either side of Lorne's head, breathing through the demand to move.
"Oh," Lorne breathed. The syllable contained a great deal. His hands came up and traced the lines of Valdyr's face, the jaw, the cheekbone, the base of a horn. "Oh, you're..."
"If you say extraordinary again I'll lose what's left of me."
A laugh, broken and bright. "I didn't know it would feel like..."
"Like what?"
"Like coming home."
That undid him.
Valdyr moved. He drew back and pressed in again, long and deep and controlled, and again, finding a rhythm, and the rhythm stayed unhurried despite everything, because this was Lorne's first time and Valdyr was going to make it right.
He caught both of Lorne's wrists in one hand and pinned them above his head, and Lorne gasped at the restraint and his scent surged and his body clenched around him and the bond flared white.
"Don't hide," Valdyr said against his ear, every thrust punctuating it. "Don't bite your hand. Don't muffle it. I want to hear you."
Lorne moaned, loudly, without apology, the sound pouring out of him the way his scent poured out of him. Free. Valdyr drank it in and drove harder and Lorne moved with him, their breathing syncing, their scents blending in the warm air until there was no line left between them.
Valdyr's other hand found his hip and gripped, and the change of angle made Lorne cry out sharp and high, his hands straining in Valdyr's grip.
"You're gorgeous," Valdyr told him, mouth against his throat. "Look at you. Taking me perfectly. Like you were made for it. Made for me."
"Valdyr, I'm going to, again, I'm..."
"Come for me. Let me feel it."
His body obeyed. He came with a sound that was Valdyr's name and a sob together, clenching in waves, arching, hands straining, and the feel of it dragged Valdyr over after him.
He came inside him with a groan wrenched up from somewhere deep, hips driving, vision dissolving into static as it rolled through him with a force that rearranged what he had previously understood the word to mean.
And the bond went taut and held and did not let go, and the sensation of it was not only physical.
Something was being set down between them that would still be there in thirty years.
It took a long time to come back.
When the static cleared he found he had let go of Lorne's wrists without noticing. One hand had gone to the back of his head, the other rested on his hip, still holding on. Lorne was breathing in long shuddering exhales, limp underneath him, his face flushed and slack and entirely content.
His eyes opened and found Valdyr's face.
Valdyr had seen a great many things in forty-five years. Sunrise over the eastern mountains. The first green after a winter campaign. The faces of men told they would live when they had been certain they would not.
He had never seen anything like the way Lorne looked at him then.
Lorne smiled.
It was the garden smile. The real one, unguarded, warm enough to be almost painful to look at, and it was aimed at him with the full weight of everything Lorne was.
Valdyr took his jaw in one hand and kissed him thoroughly and slowly, with the gentleness that lived under the rest of him and that no other living soul had ever been shown.
Lorne's fingers traced his jaw. His horns. The line of his brow. Mapping him by candlelight.
"Stay," he whispered. "Stay with me."
"I'm not going anywhere. I told you."
"I know. I want to hear it again."
"I'm not going anywhere."
The candle burned down. The shelter was warm with the heat of them and the mingled scent of them, blended now at a deeper level than before, their chemistry beginning to shift the way it only shifted when bonded mates came together.
A conversation happening well below anything either of them could hear.
Lorne settled against his chest, still trembling, because the heat would cycle again and crest again and demand again. But for now, in the space between the waves, he was calm.
Valdyr pulled the heavy blanket over them, the one he had brought from the castle that smelled of rosemary and lavender and every night they had spent not doing this. He gathered him in and put his face in the silver hair and breathed.
Outside, the forest was dark and still. The grey mare was tied to her tree with Soot beside her. The castle was miles off. The king was miles off.