I pull her trousers down. She lifts her hips to help and my own follow. I kneel between her legs and she props herself up on her elbows and watches me and I can see her pulse in her throat.
I press my lips to the inside of her knee.
She makes a sound. Small. Surprised. I work up her thigh. Slow. The heat of my lips against her skin, and I can feel goosebumps rise in the wake of my mouth, her body caught between the cold room and the heat rolling off my lips. She’s expecting me to go higher. I don't. Not yet.
I kiss the other knee. The other thigh. Take my time. Let the heat of my breath reach her before my mouth does. By the time I reach the crease of her hip she’s trembling and her skin is flushed and I can smell her arousal, sharp and warm, cutting through the tallow and stone smell of the room.
“Thyran.” My name in her voice, strained. “Please.”
I put my mouth on her.
Not patient. Not exploratory. I know her now. I know the sounds and the way her hips move and the place where my tongue makes her grab the furs with both hands. I find it and stay there and she arches off the bed. The heat of my tongue against her is different from my hands — hotter, wetter, more direct. I can feel her swelling under my mouth, feel the slicknessspreading, her body opening up in response to the heat the way cold things expand when you warm them.
I speak Jötunn against her skin. “Kälthu. Rauði kälthu.” My cold one. My burning cold one. And the vibration travels through her where my mouth is pressed and she makes a sound that goes through me like a blade. Her hips jerk and her thighs clamp against my head and she’s grinding against my mouth without realizing.
She comes. Hard. Her whole body locks. I feel it against my tongue — the pulse of her, the clench, the heat flooding through her. Her hands fisted in the furs, her back arched, a sound torn out of her that has no words in it.
I don't wait. I slide my hand between her thighs while she’s still shaking. One finger. She gasps. She’s soaked, swollen, her body still clenching from the orgasm, and the heat of my finger inside her makes her hips buck off the bed. I can feel how hot she is from the inside — not my heat, hers. Her own arousal burning, her body running warmer than it should, the way it started doing in the hall. Matching me.
“Hjärtakh,” I murmur. Her eyes are glazed. “Tell me.”
“More.” Her voice is wrecked. “I can feel — the heat of you — it’s —”
She doesn't finish. My finger curls inside her and whatever she was going to say turns into a sound. I find the place that makes her lose language and I work it, feeling her body clench around me, feeling the wet heat of her coat my hand.
A second finger. She bites her lip. I work her slowly. Stretching. Feeling her body give around my fingers, the tight resistance easing into something slick and yielding. The heat of her is different from the inside. Softer. Wetter. I can feel her pulse around my fingers, fast and hard. I curl them and she makes a sharp sound and her hips buck.
“There,” she says. Breathless. “Right there. Don't stop.”
I give her what she wants. My fingers moving inside her, my thumb pressing where she’s most sensitive. She’s getting closer. I can feel it in the way she tightens around my fingers, the way her breathing goes shallow, the way her thighs are shaking.
“Not yet,” I say. I slow my hand. She makes a sound of protest.
“Thyran, I swear?—”
“Not yet.”
A third finger. Careful. Slow. She breathes through it. Her hand finds my wrist and holds on. Not pulling me away. Anchoring herself. The stretch is significant and I watch her face — the moment of resistance, the breath she takes, and then the easing. Her body softening around me. Opening.
“I can feel every knuckle,” she says. Half-laughing, half-gasping. “The heat of your hands inside me is — it’s like being warmed from the inside out.”
“Good?”
“So good it’s making me stupid.”
I work her open. Patient where it matters. My other hand flat on her stomach, feeling her muscles flex and release. She’s ready when her body goes liquid around me and her hips start moving on their own, riding my hand, her slickness running down my wrist.
I withdraw my fingers. She whimpers at the loss. An actual whimper — desperate, involuntary — and the sound goes through me and my temperature spikes and the air in the room shimmers.
I position myself over her. My hands on either side of her head. She looks up at me and her hand comes up and rests on my jaw and stays there.
“Stay with me this time,” she says. “All the way.”
I push inside. Slow.
The first inch and her breath leaves her in a rush. The heat of me pouring into her, and she’s ready for it but it still makes her gasp. Not pain. I can see it in her face — it’s the sensation. The temperature of me flooding into a body that’s already running warm from my hands, from my mouth, and the addition of more heat inside her is pushing her somewhere her body doesn't have a map for.
I press deeper, my ridges registering against her, each one dragging across nerves that are swollen and oversensitive. Her eyes go wide. Her hand tightens on my jaw.
