Chapter 33
Hannalinde
Rosalore was an easy baby. From dawn to dusk, she folded herself into a compact bundle of chubby limbs and slept without waking, by which time Hannalinde’s breasts were tight and throbbing.
“She’s the quietest infant I’ve ever seen,” Carlijn said, peering into the cradle where Rosalore lay motionless in the afternoon light, her small fist curled against her cheek. “Is she in daysleep?”
“I don’t think so,” Hanna mused, stroking one soft baby cheek. “She doesn’t turn to stone. But she does seem to keep to a gargoyle sleep schedule.”
“I wonder if mine will do the same.” Carlijn touched her belly. “I hope so.”
Hanna grimaced. “You might rue that wish when you feel what it does to your bosom. Mine feel like two rocks on my chest.”
Carlijn giggled. “You may be right. Plus, I don’t have an eager mother-in-law to watch the baby while I sleep at night.”
Cléa had proved a great help with the baby, it was true, but the statement sobered them both. Carlijn did not have the support or acknowledgement of Lucan’s family, especially now that Lucan had fled town. She was on her own.
“I’m going out,” she announced, already lacing her boots, her growing stomach barely allowing it.
Hanna frowned. She hoped Carlijn wasn’t going to do anything reckless. “Do you want company? The maid can look after Rosalore while she sleeps.”
“No need. I just want to buy a few new ribbons at the market. The fresh air will be good for me. And maybe afterward I’ll visit my parents.”
Ah. Hannalinde’s heart ached with understanding. Her friend was finally ready to tell her parents the truth, that the engagement to the Meravenna merchant was now impossible. That they would have a half-gargoyle grandchild in just a few months. “Will you be staying with them?”
Carlijn gave her a wan smile. “With all likelihood. Don’t wait up for me.”
When Rikard drew his first breath of the evening, a warmth bloomed at the base of her skull, traveling down her spine and lodging in her chest. Of course, he had to hear complaints at the Nadir’s office first, and she had an appointment with the midwife to check her healing, but then the night would be theirs.
But before he left for work, he doted on Rosalore.
He held her in one massive arm and walked the house, singing made-up songs.
He changed her swaddling clothes when she soaked them.
When she fussed, he sat in the nursery roost with the infant on his chest and purred until she was content, and when Rosalore’s fist closed around his finger, the emotion that flooded through the bond was so vast and so tender that Hannalinde had to sit down.
When Rikard’s parents descended to claim their grandchild for the night, they brought special oil for Rosalore’s tiny emerging nubs, which were barely visible beneath the dark fuzz of her hair.
They brought soft cloths for cleaning the baby’s translucent wings, which had emerged from their wing cases but were still hardening, week-by-week, into the leathery membranes they’d become.
And they brought far too much keeper-cooked food for everyone, as though they didn’t have a kitchen at Rose House.
Cléa also brought plenty of unsolicited advice about feeding schedules, sleeping positions, and the importance of speaking to the child in the Old Tongue, which Hannalinde nodded along to while trying not to laugh at the faces Rikard pulled behind his mother’s back.
She was just grateful Rosalore had such enthusiastic grandparents on Rikard’s side since her own parents were gone.
Then Cléa and Roul whisked the baby away, leaving Rikard a few minutes to dote upon his wife in peace.
He brought her tea. He arranged her pillows.
He asked about the baby gown she’d started embroidering for Carlijn’s child and about her upcoming appointment with Aalis.
He sat on the edge of the bed and told her about what his evening held at the Nadir’s office, the petitions and complaints and the endless absurdity of gargoyle-human relations he’d have to field, and she enjoyed his confidences.
While he was at work, she visited Old Aalis, who pronounced her whole and healed, which was exactly the news she’d been hoping for.
Then she waited impatiently in bed for Rikard to return from the Nadir’s office, her pale hair fanned across the embroidered coverlet.
He’d barely touched her since the birth.
She hadn’t even touched herself in the six weeks it took for her body to stitch itself back together.
The stretch marks on her belly were still raw and vivid, the flesh deflated beneath them.
She wondered if Rikard still wanted her now that she was such a different shape and color.
He entered the bedroom quietly and froze when he saw her lying there awake, toying with her swollen, milky breasts through the fabric of her night shift.
He never took his eyes from her as she slowly drew her shift up to her waist. A bolt of unfettered lust slammed through the bond, sending a thrill deep into her core.
Apparently, she’d had no cause to doubt his desire.
“You don’t have to stay over there,” she said, slicking her fingers through the moisture that had gathered between her legs.
He pounced directly, bounding from the doorway to the bed, curving his body over her.
His black hair fell around them in a loose curtain.
“I’ve wanted to do this all night,” he grumbled, nosing into the side of her neck until he could lick the scar of her mating bite.
“I could feel you playing with yourself on my way home. I very nearly flew.”
His breath tickled her ear, and she laughed, wrapping her legs around his hips. Fearlessly, she rubbed against him, showing him in the mind bond how she’d say yes to anything he asked. How much she trusted him.
“I want you, too,” she whispered. “Carlijn’s away for the night and Rosalore is still with your parents, so we have the house to ourselves for a few hours.”
“I wish—” he began but cut himself off with a shake of his head, instead capturing her mouth in his in a heated kiss.
Her lips parted under his and she tasted the faint mineral tang of his hide. His tongue, slightly rougher than a human’s, traced the seam of her mouth as his claws dimpled the fabric.
She made a hungry little sound. His hand came up to cradle the back of her head, threading his fingers carefully through her hair as he deepened the kiss.
He kissed her urgently, like they might be interrupted at any minute, his breath ragged as his movements grew more and more frantic.
He wanted something. He needed it, and whatever it was, it couldn’t be satisfied by a mere kiss.
She pulled away, curious. “Wish what?”
“Wish I could be inside you.” His eyes fixed on hers, and the bond swelled with his regret that he couldn’t please her in certain ways.
Her chest tightened. He pleased her in so many ways. With fingers and tongue and toys, not to mention with his filthy, heated words. And she could give him so little pleasure in return.
“What about your tail?”
He stilled, his nostrils flaring. His jaw worked as he struggled to respond. The muscles in his neck corded. “Hanna. You don’t mean it.”
“You said you wanted to be inside me. It’s part of you.” Her thumb traced the edge of the scar that twisted his mouth. “Let me feel it.”
He relented, dragging his tail across the sheets and up the inside of her leg. The tapered tip was warm, smoother than the rest of his hide, almost silken where it brushed her ankle, explored the curve of her calf and the sensitive hollow behind her knee.
She hadn’t expected it to feel like this, so agile and confident. The tip traced circles on her inner thigh, and her legs fell open without being told.
“Are you sure?” Rikard’s tail brushed the seam of her sex, lingering. “Are you healed?”
“Yes. Please. Aalis said it’s fine. Keep going.”
His mouth found her throat. The sharp edges of his teeth grazed her pulse point, and she arched into the dual sensation of the wet heat of his tongue, the cool glide of his tail between her legs. A purr rose in his chest, thrumming against her nipples.
“Tell me if you’re too tender.” The tail’s tip pressed at her entrance, waiting for her to move. She canted her hips, and the first inch slipped inside.
Hanna’s head fell back at the new sensation. Everything felt so different now that the mate bond was a source of pleasure rather than fear. She could feel Rikard’s excitement, the way he exulted every time she made a noise or her inner muscles squeezed him.
His tail undulated in a way nothing else could replicate. It curled slightly inside her, finding the spot high on her front wall that made her gasp.
Pleasure burst across his features.
“You can feel it this way,” she breathed wonderingly, propping up on her elbows to look him in the eye. “Through the bond. You can feel both sides, too, just like I can.”
“Yes.”
“So if I come, you will, too?”
His purr deepened. He’d just realized, too.
His tail withdrew, then pressed deeper, teasing out a moan before plunging in and out.
The slick sound of it filled the quiet room.
Hanna’s fingers fisted in the sheets. Each thrust of his tail curled the tip against that aching place inside her, and the bond between them felt like a door thrown wide.
Her pleasure rushed into him and his into her. Not his body’s pleasure, but his mind’s. Like a hall of mirrors, their pleasure reflected and refracted, creating more and more.
She saw it on his face. The trembling in his jaw. The way his eyes had gone half-lidded, eyes burning like embers through his lashes.
“You’re close,” she whispered. “Let go.”
“No, you’re close,” he growled. “I can’t—I need you to—”
His tail thrust deeper, faster now, the rhythm matched to the desperate pitch of his breathing. He reached between them to find her clit, tracing dizzying circles around it. The dual pressure, inside and outside, built in layers she couldn’t separate anymore.
His wing tightened around them both, his forehead pressed to hers. His hips ground against the mattress in a helpless instinct.
Hanna’s world narrowed to a single point of heat where their bodies connected.
She focused on it, and it finally spilled over, her inner muscles rippling around his thick tail.
A rush of milk from her breasts soaked the sheets beneath her, and she didn’t have time to worry about the bed linens before she felt him come apart, too.
She felt him seize and burst.
Not his cock. It was still soft and dry and tucked away. But him. The core of him. The part that had been locked away for years behind frustration and shame. The orgasm hit him through the mate bond, her pleasure translated into his, and his whole body convulsed.
A ragged purr tore out of his chest that was almost a sob. His tail kept moving inside her, wringing every last pulse from her body until she sank into the pillows, spent and shaking, and he collapsed on top of her.
“Are you all right?” she whispered when she’d caught her breath. He didn’t answer at first, so she smoothed back his hair where it’d looped around his horns.
He didn’t answer with words at first. He pressed his mouth to her forehead and breathed her in, his shoulders still trembling with the aftershocks.
Then he kissed his way across her face, covering her with affection.
Down her throat and across her collarbones and chest, then lower, licking up the milk that still leaked from her breasts.
“Everything is right.”