His soft, short moans were always the tell.
But it was the last thing that really got him.
The thing he could never hold back over. The thing that made him lose his rhythm and fuck into her hard and frantic, fearful of doing something bloodthirsty at the point of total pleasure, she knew. But of course she also knew how to make it right. She saw how to stay all his fears.
“It’s all right now,” she said. “You don’t have to be scared.”
Then she bared her throat and let him bite.
And in response he let go, gratefully, into nothing but bliss.
Chapter Twenty-Six
It was strange to wake up in bed next to him. Especially when he didn’t have to wake up at all. He was just staring at her, through the dim light cast by one magical flame. Face propped up on one hand, covers barely around his half-undressed body. Expression all love, and faint disbelief, and the sweetest hint of total contentment. Like he couldn’t believe she’d let him do that and then come back with him to his room. But was very glad she had.
And she was glad, too.
She even tried to tell him, by touching her hand to the side of his face. A little caress that somehow ended up sliding down, down over his collarbone and past the sheets, and oh, he wasn’t really wearing much at all. His chest was bare, and then further down, she could see—
“Lil,” he blurted out, half shocked.
One hand catching hers, before it could go any further.
It made her face heat. “Sorry. Sorry. I just thought... I don’t know. That this was okay now. I mean, it would have been okay before. But of course I understand that doesn’t just give me permission to do what I like, you know? So if I overstep or go too fast—” she babbled, even without really knowing what she was babbling for.
“Fast? We just waited thirty years for that.”
“I know but not really. Kind of. Honestly, I would understand.”
“Love, there is nothing to. The speed is not the issue at all.”
“Then what is?”
He rubbed the nape of his neck. Went to say something, then didn’t. Looked away and then back. “Well, I was sort of hoping if you were willing to do those things with me again, that it could be a little more... or a little less... I mean not quite so...” he tried to say. But it was only when he saw her encouraging and wholly confused expression that he managed to blurt the rest out. “I just want to make love to you.”
After which she had to laugh.
Partly with bafflement, but still.
“And do you not think that it felt that way?”
“I think it made my heart almost burst out my chest.”
“Then it seems like it was as it should be.”
“But was it for you?”
He thinks he was too rough and rude, her mind informed her. And in truth, she understood. He’d just spent months being everything but the sweet man he wanted to be with her. Of course he doubted what he had just done. Of course he craved something more, something gentler, something softer.
It was just that he didn’t need to.
“I have never in my life felt so loved as I do at this moment. In fact, I know now that my life has been spent longing for some missing thing, because it knew that you were not in it. That there was no you to love me this way, to make me feel good like this, to know me so effortlessly. I think I shut myself off to desire because I knew what really inspiring it is like. And it was always you, only you. You wake me up, you make feel beloved, and to a such a degree you could do it with anything. Fuck me, and it will stillfill my heart more than anyone else’s softest touch,” she said, as plainly as he had always done for her, when telling her the most remarkable things.
And she could tell it had almost the same effect.
His expression was the mirror of hers, every time he’d done it. Eyes like moons, the light in them lost to feelings. Unable to stop staring, not knowing how to speak. Though he managed a lot faster than she had done.
“Did I say I loved you, in the library?” he asked, in a voice hoarse with enough emotion that she knew why he did. She knew what was coming.
