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“Sterre,” he murmured without opening his eyes.

His voice was rough and sleep-drenched, curving the word into something nearly sensuous. Arousal raced through me. I clenched my legs as my own scent slowly surrounded us. Callum’s hand on my hip tightened, squeezing until I whined and squirmed against him. He chuckled, nearly soundless, and then let his touch skate across my butt and around my thigh before delving into the space between them. He hummed—the sound entirely male satisfaction—as slick drenched his hand, betraying the depth of my need more effectively than any amount of perfuming.

“Callum.” It was a whine, and I wasn’t even ashamed to admit that this time. Need cut through me, as deep as the heat haze but entirely different from it, too. This felt almost like an emotional need just as much as a physical. I needed him wrapped around me, covering me with his scent and holding me down with the weight of his body.

His breath caught, and I knew he felt the depth of my arousal in our soul bond.

Even still, his touch didn’t become more than that light taunting as it skimmed across my core and then down my thighs. His fingers coasted over some of the scars, and I sighed. I pushed up until I could see his face so I could decide just how much he intended to tease me this morning. He’d done it yesterday, too. Teased me until I’d begged him for his touch and his mouth. His smirk told me he remembered.

Before I could say anything about it, though, I got distracted by the indigo tattoo now sprawling across his throat, the same as so many others I’d seen since getting here. I couldn’t resist tracing the flowing lines of ink. His skin was smooth, not at all irritated. It didn’t even look like it even itched the way mine currently did. I ran my fingers across the lotus now centered in the hollow of his throat and blooming up along the column of his throat. The points of the crossed, downturned arrows nearly reached his collarbones. His eyes fluttered, and his pulse beat faster where I could see it tucked under his jawline. The floral and vine motif that surrounded the flower spread along his collarbones and up underneath his jaw, stopping just shy of curling onto his face.

The entire tattoo was stunning, even more so than the times I’d seen it on other men. I hadn’t been this close, hadn’t gotten to see all the small lines and bits of detail. Hadn’t had the emotional attachment I did now. It was perfectly proportional for his body, like it had been made for his and then adapted for all the others, mine included.

His fingers stilled just above my clit, and I whined. His eyes finally opened, and they swirled like molten ore again, moving with his own arousal.

“I’ve wanted to be able to do this for weeks,” he admitted.

“Do what?” Breathlessly, I tried to tilt my hips to try and increase the pressure of his touch on my clit.

“Lay here with you, feel you against me when there are no reasons to rise from the bed for hours yet.” He circled my wrist and pulled my hand away from his marriage tattoo, pressing a kiss to the center of my palm. “To soak in your scent while knowing without a shadow of a doubt that you’re mine in all the ways that matter to me.”

I smiled, something soft and warm that still felt a bit foreign. He kissed my palm against and then my wrist, scent marking me.

“I’d felt it on Magefall, this desire to have you like this,” he admitted, letting his eyes drift shut. Need raced down my spine, and I shivered. “All the texts about the Grand Rite discuss it, that immediate understanding that you’ve found the one Freia has chosen for you, but not everyone experiences it. I wasn’t sure I would. I had been half-convinced I had made the expensive trip just to disappoint everyone excited by my participation.” He hummed and kissed my wrist again. “But then I saw you.”

The words were full of so much emotion, they stole my breath.

“You were covered in mud and blood, your cloak was wrapped around your legs, and your hair was a mess. It wasn’t at all the put together image the texts described. And yet… I knew the moment I saw you that you were mine. I knew it the way my mother would know when the harvest years would be slim or a new merchant in Embercrest would create problems.”

Now emotion clogged my throat, warm and weighty.

“And now…” He opened his eyes and pulled me into him, his hold firm on my wrist. “Now you are mine, and I am yours, and I am content.”

Instead of kissing me, though, he nipped my bottom lip and let his hand drop from my center. Slick coated my thighs as I groaned in frustration.

“Callum.” It was a whine, and I didn’t care.

He smirked, and I narrowed my eyes.

He wanted to drive me wild with need?

Well, I could play that game, too.

I twisted until our fingers were laced, our palms pressed flat, and then straddled his legs. He lightly traced the scars on my thighs, connecting them and drawing shapes among them. I perfumed, vanilla and oranges cascading out from me, and he grunted. As if in response, his own pine and wisteria wove through it, blending and merging with it. I breathed the heady mixture. Gods, I needed him inside me.

Forget trying to one up him and his teasing today.

I dropped his hand in favor of palming his dick, stroking it from root to tip and back. He groaned and pushed up into me. Then I circled his knot the best I could, tight enough his hips actually came off the bed.

“Sweet Yasmin,” he cursed.

A newfound jealousy surged through me. I brought my hand back to the root of his dick and squeezed, tight enough he gasped. His hold on my leg tightened.

“I don’t care if she’s a goddess,” I said. “I don’t want to hear another woman’s name out of your mouth when I’m touching you like this.”

He smirked, and amusement flashed across the bond.

“What if I prayed to⁠—”