I had to put a hand against the wall to stay upright.
Rhain looked up at me. The expression on his face had no business existing below me while he knelt. His control was still there, harnessed to a different task.
He rose slowly, and I leaned into him, my mouth moving over his shoulder, along the line of his collarbone, until I found the bite I had left on him in the chamber.
His skin was hot beneath my lips. The wound had tightened, swollen at the edges, marked in a way no formal witness could improve upon. Mine. The bond pulled taut when my tongue dragged over it.
Rhain’s breath broke against my hair. “Faen,” he said softly.
A rough laugh slipped out of me, and I did it again, slower this time, just to feel the court-trained man above me come apart slowly, joint by joint. His pleasure came back through the bond and folded into mine, his and then mine and then his again, until the difference stopped meaning anything.
“Do you know how many times I had to leave a room instead of touching you?”
His eyes opened, dark and slitted. “I was about to ask you the same thing, kjære.”
The bond drew taut between us, throat to shoulder, claim to claim, until the space between our bodies felt less like distance than a gap about to close.
I again pressed my mouth to the bite I had given him. “Mine,” I said.
His breath caught, then left him unevenly. “Yes.”
The word had barely reached me before his body answered it. His thigh slid between mine, his hands finding the back of my head as he drew me closer.
His mouth returned to my throat with more care this time, lips first, then the edge of his teeth, each touch measured enough to tell me he knew exactly what he was doing now.
He knew what the mark did and he was learning how to ration it.
The heat broke under my skin slowly, no longer a strike but a banked fire spreading outward, gathering strength everywhere he refused to hurry. He lifted his head before another sound could escape me, his breath warm against the bite, his eyes bright with the satisfaction of discovering a language my body spoke fluently.
He guided me back onto the bed, still careful in a way that had stopped feeling merciful. His mouth moved down my throat to the hollow above my collarbone, then lower, and when he drew my nipple into his mouth, whatever remained of my consonants deserted me.
He worked slowly, with an attention that made patience feel indecent. His tongue pressed flat, then circled, and when his teeth grazed with precision, my whole body answered in hot shivers.
Then his hand slid between my thighs. He touched me like he already knew what he would find and still wanted the pleasure of proving it, his fingers moving through the slick heat of me before pressing inside with the same devastating care he had used everywhere else.
Slow and certain. Enough to pull everything tight beneath both marks and turn my breath useless.
“Faen,” Rhain breathed against my breast. “Already.”
Heat pooled under my ribs. “Rhain.”
“Mm.”
“In me.”
His mouth lifted from my breast, but not quickly. He kissed the damp, aching peak he had left behind, then the skin beneath it, then lower, each touch pulling a new thread of heat through the bond while his hand stayed between my thighs.
“I am taking my time,” he said.
His thumb brushed my clit, light enough to make the point and not nearly enough to solve the problem.
“You are owed attention.”
The words moved over my skin as he did, his mouth traveling down the center of me with infuriating care. Breastbone. Ribs. The soft placebelow. Lower still, until his hands opened my thighs and his mouth settled over me.
I had thought I knew what slow meant.
Wrong.
