"Tell me to stop and I stop."
"Don't you dare."
He drops his forehead to mine. Gentle. So impossibly, devastatingly gentle. The tusk grazes my cheek and leaves a line of fire across my skin. His mouth finds the hinge of my jaw and his lips are softer than they have any right to be, warm and deliberate, mapping the territory below my ear with a cartographer's precision.
My back arches. The movement presses me up against him and the size difference steals my breath in a way that has nothing to do with weight. He's a continent. I'm a boat.
His hand slides down my side. Slow. Cataloguing every curve with his palm like he's memorizing topography for a tactical map he'll need later. His fingers find the hem of my dress and pause.
"Yes," I say.
Fabric whispers. Cool air. His rough palm on bare skin. I gasp and he freezes instantly, a full combat stop, every muscle locked.
"That was a good sound," I manage. "Keep going."
He is so careful. So unbearably, painstakingly careful. His hands worship every inch they find and the thoroughnessborders on religious. Each touch weighted and deliberate. He shifts his hips and the bed frame groans, one leg buckling outward, the corner of the mattress dropping six inches.
I pull his ruined shirt off his shoulders. The scars underneath are a landscape. I trace them with both hands and his arms shake harder.
"You're so small," he rasps against my throat.
"You're so big."
"I'm serious."
"So am I."
His forehead drops to my collarbone. His breath scorches my skin. When he moves, it's with a restrained power.
The bed loses a third bolt.
A fourth.
The headboard splits clean down the middle with a sound like a tree falling, and the whole frame settles crookedly onto the floor, and he laughs against my neck. A real laugh. Deep and startled and human in a way that undoes me more completely than anything else.
"Structural failure," he murmurs.
"Shut up."
He doesn't shut up. He says my name again. And again. And again. Each time different. Each time heavier. Until the word doesn't mean a flower anymore. Until it means something only he knows, in a language I am rapidly learning.
The lamp gives up around midnight. The bulb pops. Darkness. Just breathing and warmth and his heartbeat slamming against mine like a fist on a drum.
I fall asleep inside a cage of arms that could crush stone and choose instead to hold me like I'm the last good thing.
Dawn arrivesgray and ruthless through the curtainless window.
I'm warm. Absurdly warm. Pinned beneath one massive arm draped across my ribs, his breath slow and deep against the back of my neck. The destroyed bed sits at a fifteen-degree angle. Sheets on the floor. Pillows gone. Thorns scattered across the nightstand like shed quills.
His hand twitches on my stomach. Even asleep, his fingers curl protectively around my hip.
Three seconds of perfect silence.
Then someone hits our door like they're trying to breach it with a battering ram.
"FIRE! THERE'S A FIRE SPRITE LOOSE IN THE KITCHENS! EVERYONE OUT! IT'S EATING THE WEDDING CAKE!"
CHAPTER 10
