Chapter 35
Rikard
The stone cracked, and he was moving before his lungs had drawn a full breath.
Hanna was asleep, curled on her side next to him, one hand tucked beneath her cheek and the other resting on the coverlet near the spot where he’d lain frozen with no way to speak or move or do anything.
His hands found her shoulders, and he pressed her flat against the mattress.
She woke, blinking until her eyes focused on him, his bulk looming over her, his scarred face inches from hers, and the bond carried his fury to her in a hot, bright wave.
“You bled,” he said accusingly.
“Good evening to you too.”
“You bled, Hannalinde.”
“You didn’t see it,” she said defensively, confirming his fears.
He growled at her. “I could smell it. You climbed on top of me six weeks after nearly dying from blood loss, and you rode to the point of injury, and I couldn’t stop you or tell you to slow down.”
“Didn’t it feel good, though?”
“Yes, but I spent the entire day trapped in stone knowing you’d hurt yourself so I could feel good, and I couldn’t even hand you a cloth.” He stopped only because his lungs were too tight to continue.
She had the decency to look slightly chastened. Only slightly. The bond told him the rest: she was not sorry. She was amused and aroused and enjoying the sensation of being pinned to the mattress by her husband.
“It was a few drops,” she said airily. “I bled far more working on your wings.”
“That was too much already,” he grumbled.
“I didn’t mind either one. Worth the price.”
He growled again. Rather than flinching, she pressed up against him, and the softness of her body sent a jolt of arousal through him that momentarily scrambled his argument.
“One of us must remain intact,” he said, steadying himself with logic. “I am already broken. You are the whole one. The functional one. If you damage yourself because you were too eager to ride me like a faefucked horse, I will—”
“You’ll what?” She was smiling. Her fingers found his jaw and lovingly traced the scar that ran from his ear to his chin.
His growl faltered. “Stop that.”
“Stop what?” She blinked innocently, her other hand sliding up his arm so her thumb could press the sensitive inside of his elbow. “Stop touching my husband? Stop enjoying the feeling of his hands on me? You’ve pinned me to a bed, Rikard. You can’t expect me not to enjoy it.”
“I’m scolding you. You’re not supposed to like it.”
“Hm. It hasn’t worked. You’ll have to try again tomorrow.” She wrapped her legs around his hips, goading him.
He opened his mouth to respond even more snappishly, when his cock did something it had not done in five years. Something he’d forgotten it even could.
It twitched. Blood flowed into it in a hot, deliberate rush, reacting to her. To her hands on his skin. To her warmth beneath him. To the scent of her, which clung everywhere—roses and milk and, faintly, blood.
Blood and stone make magic.
The erection built with a speed that stole his breath. He felt it thickening between them, pressing against the valley of her legs, and the sensation was so devastating that he nearly rolled off her.
“Rikard?” She froze beneath him, her delight in the bond shifting to concern, then to curiosity as she felt his hard length against her. “You’re—?”
The air felt tight in his chest. “Yes. It seems so.”
She slid her hand between them, feeling for the unmistakable evidence. Then her hand flew to her mouth and the sound that escaped was not a gasp but a laugh, bright and startled.
“How…? Ohhh,” she breathed. “Rikard. My blood. This morning. It must have restored you in the same way it healed your wings.”
“Yes, but you still shouldn’t have done it,” he said stubbornly, even though he knew she could feel how he was flying inside now that this part of him was reawakened.
“You cannot be angry with me now.” She beamed up at him like the brightest star.
His beautiful, magical mate. His wife. The anger was gone.
It had never really been there, if he was honest. All he ever felt toward her was soft indulgence in anything she desired.
And it was desire that rose in him now, as he was very nearly lodged in the warmth of her body, the thing he most craved.
The growl in his chest turned into a purr.
“I can never be angry with you,” he said.
“You wanted me at my most bitter and broken. You saw the good in me, the beauty, when no one else did. The strength and honor, when I thought they were lost. You have restored me in every way, so I can deny you nothing.”
The bond was a river between them, wider than it had ever been, and what flowed through it from her side was so pure and sweet. He did not deserve her. His life would be spent earning her.
“I love you,” she said simply. She placed her hand over his heart. “I love the family we’ve built. And I hope we’ll have more children, whether they’re adopted or conceived in love.”
His miraculous, ridiculous erection pulsed against her, the most persuasive argument his body had ever made. He covered her hand with his, and the bond sang between them.
“More children,” he said thickly. The idea felt strange and enormous, like a door opening onto a room he’d walled off years ago. “You think that’s possible now?”
“There’s only one way to find out. Although, I beg you, don’t spill inside me until Rosalore is weaned.” She clutched her breasts with a woeful expression, but he could feel her good humor in his mind.
“A promise I can keep,” he said, and meant it.
He shifted his weight onto one forearm, mindful of his claws, curling them away from her skin the way he’d trained himself over months.
His other hand found her hip. She was ready, already wet where she pressed against him, the proof of it slicking against the underside of his cock.
She arched into him, the bond humming with her wanting, bright and unashamed.
“Slowly,” he said, to himself as much as to her. He pressed forward.
The first inch undid him.
He had braced for his body to fail him at the last second. He had not braced for the wet, eager clutch of her, the way she unfurled around him like a flower. He had not braced for the gleeful swoop in his stomach, so like plummeting from a height, only to catch an updraft and soar.
Then the bond filled with her pleasure, distracting him from his own. He felt her feel him.
It crashed back through the channel between their minds.
Her fullness, which was his hardness. Her tightness, which was the clasp of her body around him.
The small shocked pleasure when he sank deeper bloomed in her, then him, then her, then him, hers and his folded together until he could not find the seam between them.
He froze, buried, shaking.
“Oh,” Hanna breathed beneath him. Her eyes had gone wide and glassy. “Oh, Rikard. I feel us both. I feel you—”
“I know.” His voice came out as gravel. The purr had taken him over completely now, rolling out of his chest into hers where they joined, and he watched it travel up her throat and break apart into a shiver. “I know. Hold on to me.”
She did. He moved.
Every stroke doubled. When he drew back he felt the drag of her around him and the hollow ache of leaving her, both in the same breath.
When he sank home, her inhale was his exhale.
Sharing breath, they found a rhythm and the bond turned it into a loop, pleasure pouring out of him into her, returning to him changed, gathering and refusing to spend, climbing higher and higher, lifted by them both.
He felt her nearing her release. The tightening, the white edge of pleasure racing through the bond, threatening to push her over the edge.
And because he felt it, he tipped after her, and because he tipped, she rose higher still, the two of them caught in one cresting wave.
Her cry broke against his shoulder. His own answer was wordless, a sound he had never made in his life, torn out of him as the pleasure went through him twice over and showered him with stars behind his eyes.
He wrenched himself free at the last possible breath, spilling hot against the soft skin of her belly instead of inside her. He shuddered through it, forehead dropped to hers, the bond still ringing between them like a struck bell.
For long minutes, neither of them could find words.
“Why didn’t you tell me it could be like this?” Hanna managed finally, breathless.
“I did not know.” He spoke into her hair. “I have never had a mate.”
“I have, and it wasn’t like this.”
He gathered her against him and folded his wings over them both like a roof. He had spent five years certain he was a ruin, but Hanna had walked into his ruin and rebuilt it. “I have never had you.”
“Well, now you do,” she murmured, already half asleep.
He stroked her back and purred her down into dreams, sharing those with her, too.