"Are you sure?"
"Yes."
He moved a fraction deeper, and she winced again, and he stopped again, and her hands came up and gripped his shoulders.
"Don't stop every time I make a face. I can't help it, but I don't want you to stop."
He took a long breath.
He was going to have to override the part of himself that was screaming at him to back off every time Arezoo showed any sign of discomfort. She'd told him what she wanted. He needed to listen to her and not to his own panic.
He pressed deeper.
She drew in a sharp breath, but her hands on his shoulders tightened rather than pushed, and her chin tipped up.
Ruvon kept going, inch by careful inch, watching Arezoo's face the whole time. When he was fully seated inside of her, he stilled.
Her body was tense under his, and her eyes were squeezed shut. There were tears on her lashes.
"Sweetheart," he whispered, and bent to kiss them away.
He kissed the tears off both eyes, and then her cheeks, and then the corner of her mouth.
"Do you want me to withdraw?"
"No way. Just give me a moment."
"Take as long as you need."
His fangs were itching, and his body was responding to the tight heat of her around him by demanding to move, to bite, and it was taking every scrap of his concentration to keep them where they were, half-extended and no further.
He couldn't fully retract them, not now, not with how aroused he was, but he could keep them from fully elongating, and he could keep them out of her neck until the right moment.
The problem was that holding them back required attention he needed for her.
He breathed through it.
He'd held himself back for so long. He could hold a little longer.
Under him, Arezoo's breathing slowed. He felt her inner muscles, which had tightened around him in a desperate clench, begin to soften. Her hands on his shoulders relaxed. She moved her hips, just barely, the smallest experimental shift, and she didn't wince this time.
"Okay," she whispered. "I'm okay. You can move."
He pulled back, just a little, and pushed in just a little, the smallest possible motion he could manage. She made a soft sound that wasn't pain.
He did it again.
And again.
She was so tight that even the shallow pumps were almost more than he could bear, and he held himself to them anyway, because she was still adjusting and because she was human and fragile and because he'd promised himself that he was going to give her pleasure on her wedding night.
After a few more slow, shallow thrusts, her arms tightened around him, and she pulled him down.
"More," she whispered.
He gave her more. Not much, just a fraction less shallow, a fraction faster.
"More."
