When he rises over me, I let go of the rest.
"Are you all right?" he asks. It's what he asked in the storage room. His arms cage me, all that mass held off me like it weighs nothing, and the blunt head of him presses against my entrance. I am so wet and so empty that I could weep with wanting.
"Better than all right." I hook my leg over his hip. "Go slow. But go."
He goes slow.
He pushes into me by inches, watching my face for any hint that I'm not all right. The stretch steals my breath. It's too much, then almost too much as I adjust to him. Then he's right at the edge of too much and never over it, because every time my breath catches, he stills and lets my body make room.
By the time his hips finally meet mine, we're both shaking. He's seated so deep I can feel him everywhere, fuller than I have ever been, and he makes a sound against my throat that is half growl, half gasp.
"Lissy." My name comes out rough. "You feel?—"
"I know." I can barely speak. "I know. Move."
He moves.
Whatever I thought I knew about this, about men, about beds, about my own body, is gone by his third stroke. His size drags against every part of me at once. There is no angle that isn't devastating, no thrust that doesn't reach somewhere no one else ever has. He reads me like he reads a battlefield, adjusting, learning, and using everything he learns.
I climb faster and higher than I ever have before.
I hear myself begging him not to stop in a voice I don't recognize. My dignity is gone now.
He doesn't stop.
I come beneath him, clenching around all that impossible fullness, and it doesn't end. He works me through it and past it and up again, until I'm shaking and swearing into his shoulder. Only then does he let himself go, driving deep and spilling into me with my name in his mouth.
After, we lie tangled in the furs, my head on his chest and his heart slowing beneath my ear. My whole body still hums. I feel wrung out, satisfied, and vaguely astonished at myself.
Nothing before has ever been like this. No one has ever been like this, and it isn't the size of him. Or not only that. It's that the strongest male I've ever known spent the entire night being careful with me.
And we just did that.
"You're thinking," he says into my hair.
"I'm recovering. There's a difference."
"Mm."
"Torgan." I prop my chin on his chest so he can see that I mean it. "That was the best night of my life. In case you're lying there wondering."
He looks at me for a long moment. His hand comes up and tucks a strand of hair behind my ear.
"I wasn't wondering," he says. Then, "But say it again anyway."
I laugh, and he pulls me closer.
"That was the best night of my life."
And for once, I believe there may be happiness for me.
19
TORGAN
“You’re still awake.”
Firelight catches Lissy as she props herself up to look down at me. I’ve never seen anything as beautiful as her right now, the tension gone from her shoulders, her expression completely relaxed.
