Page 16 of My Tiny Human Wife

Every battle of my life, I have spent its eve alone. A warrior is taught to hollow himself out before the fighting, to set down everything tender so that nothing soft remains for fear to seize hold of. I obeyed that teaching for every year I have served. Tonight I break it on purpose, and I make my way to the one small room in this tower the war is not allowed to enter, and I find her already waiting for me, as though she knew I would at last learn the thing she has been teaching me since the snow: that a man does not fight better for having nothing left to lose. He fights better for knowing precisely what he is fighting for.

She sits on the edge of the cot, and she lifts her face when I fold myself through her doorway, and we do not reach for words. We spent them all today, on plans and armies and truths vast enough to crack a planet. What remains between us tonight has no need of language.

"You came," she says.

"I will always come." I lower myself to my knees on the cold floor, which brings my eyes level with hers, and I cup her face in both my hands the way one cradles the single thing he cannot bear to break. "Wherever you are, Avery, that is the only direction I know how to move."

I kiss her, and where the first time was a wall giving way, this is slower and far more deliberate—a man committing every detail to memory because he has learned not to trust the morning. I learn the soft give of her lower lip, the small sound she makes when I do, the way her hands rise to fist in the loose fall of my hair as though anchoring herself to me. I have been kissed before, in the careless way of soldiers passing through a life. Never before have I been kissed as though I were a thing someone wished to keep.

I undress her the way I would disarm something precious and dangerous, slowly, reading her face for every permission before I take it. Her jacket falls away, then the thermal layer beneath, and I pause to press my mouth to the hollow of her throat where her pulse beats frantic and sweet. She arches into the touch, and the tremor of it runs through her, the anticipation gathering in the way her fingers curl against my shoulders. I work the clasp of her trousers loose and draw them down her legs, my knuckles brushing the sensitive skin of her inner thighs, and she shivers.

When the final layer is gone and she sits bared before me in the low amber light, I do not rush. My whole existence has been spent moving quickly, striking before the enemy could strike first, and I refuse to spend this the same way. I set my mouth to the pulse beating in her throat and travel down—the ridge of a collarbone, the soft rise of her breast where I take my time circling her nipple with my tongue until it peaks hard and she gasps, the flat plane of her belly that jumps beneath my lips—learning the entire geography of her by touch and taste, marking every place that makes her breath break, every spot that draws her fingers tight in my hair.

"You are always so careful with me," she whispers, with something close to complaint in it. "You do not have to be careful tonight. I will not break."

"I know that you will not." I lift my head to hold her eyes. "I am not slow because I believe you fragile. I am slow because I have finally been given a thing worth slowness, and I intend to take the whole of the night with it."

She makes a sound at that, half laugh and half something rawer, and then she is drawing me up onto the cot with her, and the frame groans under our combined weight the way it did the first time, and neither of us spares it a thought. She pushes at my shoulder until I understand what she is asking, and I let her put me onto my back—a surrender of position I would permit no other soul alive—and she settles over me and takes her own unhurried turn.

Her hands trace the bronze scales banding my throat and chest, the old scars, the places nothing but a blade has ever touched. Where her fingers pass, my body answers in ways I have never allowed it to. She finds the place where my scales thin beneath my jaw and presses her mouth there, and the sensation is electric, a current that arcs straight down my spine and settles low in my gut. When her teeth graze the sensitive ridge at my collarbone, I cannot stop the rough sound that escapes me.

"Good," she murmurs against my skin. "I want to know what sounds you make."

I feel her smile against my chest, and then her mouth is moving lower, over the hard plane of my stomach, and I grip the cot's frame hard enough that the metal groans. She traces the waistband of my trousers with her fingers, slow and deliberate, and my entire body tightens in anticipation. I am already fully hard, the length of my cock straining against the fabric, and she has not even touched me there yet.

"Avery—" I breathe, and the sound is stripped of all command.

"Shh." She works the fastenings open and draws the garment down, and the air hits my heated skin. And then her hand closes around me, and I have to force myself not to buck off the cot. Her fingers are small around my girth, barely able to circle it, and the contrast—her delicate touch against the thick, aching length of me—sends a shudder through my entire frame.

She strokes me once, twice, learning the shape and weight of me in her palm, and I have already begun to leak at the tip, the slick evidence of my need glistening where it catches the low light. She looks down at what she holds, and her eyes darken with hunger.

"Torvak." My name on her lips is a benediction. "I want to taste you."

I cannot form an answer. I only nod, and then she is bending low, and the first touch of her tongue against the head of my cock steals every coherent thought from my mind. She licks a long, slow stripe from base to tip, and I groan, my hips rising helplessly to meet her. She takes the head of me into her mouth, and the heat of her, the wet silk of her tongue circling the sensitive ridge, is almost more than I can bear.

I have been with others, in the careless way of soldiers passing through a life. Never—never—has any woman looked at me the way she does, as though the sight of me undone is something precious. She works her mouth down my length, taking as much of me as she can, and the tight suction of her lips and the clever stroke of her tongue undo the last of my restraint. I fist my hands in the blanket to keep from reaching for her, from driving deeper into the heat of her mouth.

"Avery—" The name is torn from me, ragged and desperate. "I cannot—if you continue⁠—"

She lifts her head, and her lips are slick and swollen, her eyes heavy-lidded. "I want you to come undone," she tells me. "I want to taste all of you, Torvak. Let me."

She takes me into her mouth again, deeper this time, and the rhythm she sets is relentless. Her hand strokes the base of me in time with her mouth, and the pleasure mounts in waves, cresting higher with each pass of her tongue. When she hums around me, the vibration of it sends a spike of sensation straight through me, and I feel the climax building, coiling tight at the base of my spine.

"Now," I manage, but she does not pull away. She takes me deeper, and I cannot hold back any longer. I come in her mouth, the release tearing through me in hot, shuddering pulses, and she takes every drop of it, swallowing around me until I am spent and trembling, my hand cradling the back of her head as though she is the most precious thing in the galaxy.

She rises over me, and the sight of her—her swollen lips, the satisfaction in her eyes—undoes me further. She wipes her mouth with the back of her hand and smiles down at me, and I know that I am completely, irrevocably hers.

I cannot let the night end without giving her the same. I reach for her, and she lets me draw her down beside me, lets me lay her back against the thin mattress. I am still sensitive, still recovering, but the hunger is already rising again, the need to taste her, to feel her come apart beneath my hands.

I kiss her; she tastes of me, and the intimacy of it is staggering. I move down her body, retracing the path I took earlier, and when I reach the junction of her thighs she is already wet for me, the evidence of her desire glistening. I lower my head, and the first touch of my tongue against her clit makes her cry out—a sharp, breathless sound that is the most beautiful thing I have ever heard.

I am patient. I have learned patience in this, if nowhere else. I circle her clit with my tongue, learning the rhythm that makes her hips rise to meet me, the pressure that drags the most desperate sounds from her throat. She is slick and hot against my mouth, and I taste her need, the salt and sweetness of her. I slide one finger into her, then two, and she clenches around me, her inner walls squeezing in rhythm as I work her toward release.

"Torvak—please—" She is gasping, her hands fisted in my hair, pulling me closer. "Please, I need⁠—"

I know what she needs. I curl my fingers against that spot inside her, the one that makes her entire body arch off the cot, and I work my tongue against her clit in relentless circles until she is crying out, her release crashing through her in waves that ripple through her entire body. I feel her come, taste it, and I do not stop until she is spent and trembling beneath me.

When she finally relaxes, limp and breathless, I rise over her. My cock is hard again, thick and aching, and she looks down at it and then back up at me with a hunger that matches my own.