Chapter 12 #2
I grip her hips and position her over me. The head of my cock presses against her entrance, her pussy slick and swollen and ready, and I hold there, letting her set the pace.
She sinks onto me. Not all at once—inch by inch, her hands braced on my shoulders, her breath coming in short pulls against my neck.
Her pussy stretches around my cock, tight, wet and gripping every inch, and my fingers dig into her hips hard enough to bruise.
When she takes all of me, I drop my forehead to her shoulder and the sound that tears out of me isn't a word in any language.
"Fuck, Ellie." I grip her hips tighter. "You feel so fucking good."
She rolls her hips. Slow grinding circles that drag my cock against her inner walls, and my hands slide up her back under the cut.
She finds a rhythm, rising and sinking, and I thrust up to meet her on every stroke.
The armchair rocks beneath us. My mouth finds her breast, teeth grazing her nipple, she moans and grips the back of the chair above my head and rides me harder.
The wet sound of her pussy taking my cock fills the quiet stacks and the orc in me goes feral, a low continuous growl rumbling through my chest into hers with every thrust.
My hips take over, driving up harder than she's coming down. The patience I showed the first time, the restraint from the second, burns off. She gasps at the shift, grips the chair tighter, and matches me thrust for thrust.
Mine. Mine. Mine.
My mouth drags from her breast up her throat to the junction of her neck and shoulder, the claiming place, and my teeth press against her skin before I wrench back.
I told her no. I told her I wasn't ready.
She shifts her hips and takes me deeper and my mouth goes right back to the same spot. Her pulse hammers under my lips. Every instinct I have screams bite. I pull away again, hands gripping her hips so hard she'll wear the bruises for days, but I don't have the restraint left to ease up.
It builds. Not the orgasm—that coils low in my gut—but the pull in my chest. The hollow space behind my ribs where a heartbeat lived for years and then didn't.
She sees where my mouth keeps going. She tilts her head, baring the junction of her neck and shoulder, and holds my gaze without a word.
The fear hasn't moved. Eight years of it, heavy and real and earned.
But underneath, something bigger pushes through: the fear of what happens if I don't. If she walks through this life unclaimed and I lose her the way humans lose people, slowly or all at once, with no warning and no bond to tell me she's still breathing.
I thrust deep into her and bite.
My teeth sink into the junction of her neck and shoulder and the bond detonates.
Her heartbeat slams into my chest—a second pulse, fast and strong, layering beneath mine.
It floods the hollow space behind my ribs, the space where Maren's heartbeat lived.
It doesn't fill the scar. It settles beside it.
A new rhythm next to an old wound, and the two sit together, and I can finally breathe.
Ellie cries out. Her pussy clamps around my cock and she comes—hard, shaking, her nails raking down my back—and through the bond I feel it.
Not the orgasm. The love. Months of it, held so careful and quiet and steady that I almost missed it because she never demanded I see it.
She let me get there on my own time. Underneath: the certainty that she chose this.
Me and Lily and every broken piece I brought to the table, and none of it scared her off.
The bond hits her back. She gasps, her pussy still pulsing around me, and I feel the moment she finds the scar. The hollow where Maren's heartbeat used to live. The weight of what permanent means when the man she just bonded to already lost someone through this exact connection.
Fear flickers through the bond. Not regret. The enormity of it.
Her hands come to my face. She holds my gaze. The fear doesn't leave. It sits right next to the love, and she doesn't look away from either.
I come inside her with her heartbeat hammering beneath mine, her blood on my mouth, her name breaking apart on my tongue. I bury myself deep and hold there, pulsing, emptying into her while the bond hums between us like a second heartbeat.
After. She curls into my chest in the armchair, my cut draped over her, the claiming mark settling into the skin at her neck. I press my lips to it. The mark sits warm, already scarring.
"I love you."
"I love you back."
"That's not how the phrase goes."
She shifts in my lap and tips her face up. "I'm a librarian. I can rephrase it however I want."
I drive us home. My house, and hers, soon.
Lily sits on the front porch. Sarah's car idles in the driveway. She brought Lily back after I texted, two words: she said yes. Sarah waves and pulls away. Lily stands on the top step with her arms crossed and the porch light behind her.
Her eyes go straight to the mark on Ellie's neck, pink and raised above the collar, then to me.
"Is this real?" She's looking at Ellie, not at me.
Ellie climbs the porch steps. "Yes, Lil, it's real. Is that okay?"
Lily's arms drop. Her chin crumples and she crashes into Ellie hard enough to rock her back a step, face buried in the leather, shoulders shaking. Ellie holds her. Her hand goes to Lily's hair.
I put my arms around both of them. Lily presses between us, twelve years old, shaking with the effort of not crying and losing the fight, and the grief in my chest shifts. Not gone. The scar holds its place. But it moves. I can carry it and still walk forward.
We go inside, the three of us on the couch, Lily between us with her head on Ellie's shoulder, my arm around them both. She picks up a book from the stack Ellie left on the coffee table weeks ago, one she hasn't cracked yet, and opens it.
She reads out loud. Her voice comes quiet and unsteady, the way it used to sound when she read to me at eight before she decided reading belonged to her alone. Ellie leans into me.
Through the bond, Ellie's heartbeat pulses beneath mine. Steady, warm, and present.
The house doesn't feel empty anymore.