Chapter 21 #3
I seat myself fully. Her body stretches to take all of me, and the sound she makes, low and broken and entirely unguarded, snaps the last civilized thread I had left.
“Riona.” Her name comes out like something I’ve been holding underwater. “Tell me.”
“Full.” Her voice is wrecked, wondering. “So full. Like you’re touching something that’s never been touched.”
That undoes me.
I withdraw slowly—watching her eyes go wide at the drag of it, watching her realize what this is going to feel like—and drive back in. The sound she makes is pure pleasure and I want to draw it out of her for hours.
I set a rhythm. Deep. Deliberate. Unhurried, because I want her to feel every inch of every stroke and understand exactly what she’s accepted.
Her legs wrap around my waist, heels digging into my lower back, pulling me deeper.
I brace on my forearms and give her more of my weight, caging her, and feel her arch up to meet each thrust like she’s been doing this her whole life.
“Is this what you wanted?” I ask against her throat, my voice barely recognizable. “When you kept the coat? When you came to the gathering and wore that dress and let every orc there see you were mine?”
“Yes.” Her nails drag down my shoulders. “Wanted this. Wanted you. Every time you touched me, I wanted more—wanted all of it. Wanted to know what you were holding back.”
I reward her honesty. I stop holding back.
The rhythm I find now is harder, deeper, the bed frame protesting with each thrust. Her cries pitch higher, and I feel her tightening around me, her body coiling toward release, and I chase it—I chase her, relentless, the last of my careful control burned away entirely.
This is not the measured warrior. This is eight years of wanting, finally answered.
My tusks graze her throat and she tilts her head back, baring herself completely. The trust in that gesture—her pulse jumping against my lips, her whole throat offered—undoes something primal and permanent in me.
“Mine,” I growl against her skin. My tusks find the curve of her neck and shoulder—the traditional claiming place—and I feel something ancient and certain settle in my chest. This. Here. Her.
“Yes.” No hesitation. Not even a breath of pause. “Do it. I want them to see.”
I close my mouth over that spot—not a bite, but pressure and heat and suction, my tusks framing her tender skin, my tongue working against her pulse until I feel her shatter.
She comes apart beneath me, crying my name, her body clenching around me so hard I lose my rhythm entirely, and I work her through every shudder, every aftershock, unwilling to give her a moment’s rest.
When she finally goes limp, I lift my head. The mark on her throat is vivid—already deepening, shaped by my mouth, unmistakable. Mine.
“Again,” I tell her.
“I can’t—”
“You can.” I shift my angle and feel her gasp, her hips jerking toward me despite herself. I reach between us, my thumb finding her pearl, and watch her eyes go wide at the contact. “One more. Give me one more.”
“Vraag—” My name is half plea, half prayer.
“I have you.” I keep my touch light—circling, coaxing—while I move inside her, and feel the moment her body stops arguing and gives in. “That’s it. Take it.”
She comes again with a sound that I will hear in my bones for the rest of my life. And this time I follow her over.
I thrust deep and hold, buried completely, and let go of everything—eight years of restraint, eight years of making myself smaller, eight years of careful distance—all of it obliterated in the space of a single moment.
I spill inside her, shaking, my face pressed to her throat, her name the only coherent thing left in my head.
For a long time, neither of us moves.
I become aware of the room gradually. The quiet. Her heartbeat slowing against my chest. The warmth of her skin under my hands.
I shift carefully, keeping her close, and feel her exhale—long and soft and utterly satisfied. She tucks her face against my throat and her fingers curl into my chest, and I understand without words that she is not going anywhere.
“Still with me?” I ask softly.
She smiles against my skin. “Right here.”
A long moment passes. Her breathing evens. Her fingers stay curled against my chest.
“Vraag.”
“Yes.”
“I love you.”
I go still beneath her hands. The words land the way true things do, not as surprise, but as recognition. As if some part of me has been waiting for them to be spoken aloud, and can now finally set down the waiting.
“I love you,” I say. “I have chosen you. I will continue choosing you, in all the ways that matter.”
She exhales, soft and complete.
“That’s exactly how I hoped you’d say it.”
“It is the only way I would.”
The certainty in it settles into me like something coming home. This was not hunger. Not impulse. Not a moment seized in the dark. This was a choice made in full light, carried through with trust, and met with everything I am.
I press a kiss to her hair and hold her close, already knowing that whatever comes next—the world outside, the work ahead, the life we’re building—I am ready for all of it.