Rhain had stopped guiding the moment.
Now he was inside it with me.
“The knot,” he managed, his voice breaking around the warning.
He drove in once more and let it come.
The change was immediate and devastating, his body swelling where we were joined, thick and hot and relentless, pressing me wider as the knot caught inside me. His whole body went rigid over mine, and when he came, the bond carried the first broken sound out of him straight into my chest.
Heat spilled into me in pulses that matched the hard, involuntary rhythm of his body.
The knot held. There was no retreat from him and no space for the pleasure to loosen into. The wave that should have ended gathered again instead. Slower this time. Deeper. Dragged from somewhere lower than breath, lower than thought, until I was coming around the knot in long, helpless pulls that made the mark burn bright beneath my skin.
Rhain shuddered above me, breathing like the bond had reached into him and taken the last of his language too.
The knot locked us together, and for a moment neither of us moved. Still, every breath changed the pressure, and every small shift of muscle sent sparks through places already too raw to bear more and too hungry to refuse it.
Rhain lifted his head from my throat just enough for me to see his eyes go darker, sharper, and curious.
“Oh,” he breathed, and moved the smallest amount.
The slow roll of his hips pressed the knot deeper, and sensation snapped through the bond so fast we both went still. My fingers dug into his back. His breath broke against my mouth.
He did it again, slower this time, testing the angle, learning the shape of what the bond gave back. The knot dragged against the deepest part of me, and the answering shock landed in both of us at once.
A groan caught in Rhain’s throat, rough enough to sound pulled from him.
He braced himself above me on his forearms, mouth returning to the mark at the right of my throat as his hips moved in another slow roll.The pressure bloomed outward, hot and electric, and when his teeth grazed the bite, everything went so bright my body clenched around him.
He stopped breathing. Then, very softly, against my skin, he said, “That.”
He laughed against my skin. Soft. Disbelieving. Happy.
“Oh,” he said.
I turned my head enough to see him, as air came in shallow, uneven pulls.
“Are you,” I managed, then had to stop when my breath stuttered, “pleased with yourself?”
His smile spread against my throat. “Very.”
He rolled his hips again, and pleasure gathered fast, breaking over me before I had found my breath from the last wave. Smaller this time. Wetter.
He kissed me through it, slow and smiling, as if the smile had nowhere else to go but into my mouth.
He stayed braced above me, breathing me through the long aftermath while my body kept trembling around him in small, helpless pulses. His eyes stayed on my face as the bond settled, broad and warm.
The mark at the right of my throat hummed beneath his mouth.
“My mate.”
His words landed in me differently now. “Yours,” I answered.
His breath left him, careful and not quite steady.
I touched his face and Rhain went still beneath my hand. Not guarded. Held.
I was still panting when I said, “This was the least patient version of patient I have ever seen.”
