Her eyes find mine and hold.
"I'm much bigger than what you're used to." I press the head of my cock against her entrance and hold there, letting her feel the width. "If it hurts, you tell me and I'll stop."
Her hands grip my forearms. Her nails press half-moons into the muscle. "Please don't stop."
I push into her. One inch. She gasps and her fingers dig harder and I freeze because I need to know if the sound means pain or pleasure.
"More." She pulls at my arms. "Keep going."
I push deeper, slow, letting her body stretch around me. She's tight and wet and the heat of her clenches around my cock in pulses that make my arms shake with the effort of holding still. I watch her face for every shift, read every breath, wait for her body to tell me when.
Her grip on my arms loosens. Her hips tilt up toward mine, taking more of me, and when I bottom out inside her the groan that rips from my throat isn't a word in any language. Eight years. Eight years of my own hand and the memory of a woman who isn't here anymore, and now Ellie Frost underneath me, tight and warm and alive.
I pull back and push in again slowly and she moans loud enough that I feel it in my chest. I find a rhythm. Slow, deep strokes that let her feel every inch of me on the way out and the way back in. Her legs lock tighter around my waist. Her hips meet mine on every thrust.
"Fuck, Colt." She pulls me down and her forehead presses against my neck and I can feel tears against my skin, hot and silent. I know they aren't pain because her scent blooms open with a relief so deep it fills the room. Her pussy tightens around me with each stroke and the wet sound of us fills the quiet house.
I slide my arm under the small of her back and lift her hips, changing the angle, she cries out because now I'm hitting deep, the head of my cock pressing against a spot that makes her whole body lock up. My thumb finds her clit between us, circling in time with my thrusts, and her breath fractures.
"Come for me," I tell her. My voice drops low, more growl than words. "Let me feel this pussy grip my cock."
I roll my hips deeper, slower, grinding against her clit on every stroke. She gasps, I lean down and catch her nipple between my lips, suck hard enough that her back arches off the mattress. Her fingers rake through my hair, pulling me closer. I switch to the other breast, scrape my tusks across the swell of skin, and she moans my name like a curse.
Her legs shake around my waist. I can feel her getting close, the way her pussy flutters and tightens with every thrust, her breath coming in short broken sounds that aren't words anymore. I kiss her mouth, swallow the noise she makes, and her nails dig into my shoulders hard enough to sting.
She comes hard, arching off the bed, her pussy clenching around my cock in long rolling contractions that drag me over the edge with her. I bury myself deep and come inside her with my face pressed into her hair and a groan I've been holding for eight years.
I don't move for a long time. My arm heavy across her waist, my face in her hair, the scenting running on a loop I can't shut down. My nose pressed to the curve of her neck, breathing her in on every exhale, remembering how she smells in my bed, in my sheets, against my skin. Every molecule of her scent needs to embed here. My pillows, my blankets, the cotton under her shoulders.Mine.
"Nobody's ever done that before," she says. Her voice is quiet, raw. "Taken that much time. Derek used to—" She stops. Shakes her head. "It doesn't matter."
"It's okay, you can tell me."
"He made me feel like something on his to-do list." She presses her face against my chest. "Like I was there because it was convenient, not because he actually wanted me. You just spenttwenty minutes getting to know my body with your mouth. I didn't know that was something a person could want."
I press my lips to the top of her head and hold it there because I don't trust my voice.
She traces the scars on my knuckles with her fingertip. Old scars, faded grey against green. She touches each one without asking what they are. Her finger finds the scar that crosses my left ring finger and she stops there.
"Sarah has a mark on her neck," she says. "From Knox. I've seen it." Her thumb circles the scar on my knuckle. "What is that? The bite."
"It's a claiming bite, a bond," I say. "It's permanent. An orc thing."
She waits. I can feel her holding the next question between her lips, giving me room to say more or not. I don't. Not tonight.
She presses her lips to my scarred knuckles, closes her eyes and doesn't push.
We're quiet for a while. Her head on my chest, her fingers still resting on the scar.
"Maren's pregnancy with Lily went hard," I say. I don't plan say it. The words come out the same way they always do when I talk about her, flat and steady because that's the only way I can get through it. "Her body didn't recover right. The doctors told her another pregnancy could kill her. She said she'd read the statistics and decided to ignore them."
Ellie's hand goes still on my chest.
"She got pregnant again and hemorrhaged at thirty-six weeks. I lost her and the baby in the same hour." My throat tightens but I keep going because Ellie is lying in the bed where Maren usedto sleep and she deserves to hear this from me, not secondhand, not some sanitized version. "The bite meant I felt it happen. I felt her heartbeat inside mine for years after I claimed her and then I felt it stop. The nurses told me to let go of her hand but I held on for another twenty minutes because I couldn't figure out how to open my fingers."
Ellie's tears are hot against my chest. She doesn't say she's sorry. She doesn't say anything. She presses closer and holds on, and that's all I need in the moment.
Her breathing slows and evens out, the tension leaving her shoulders first, then her hands, then the fine muscles along her jaw. She falls asleep in my bed with her hair across my pillow and my arm around her waist, the lamp throwing gold across her face.
