Page 87

It's such a simple thing, but it lands in the middle of my chest and stays there, and I watch it do the same to Finn. His eyes go soft. For a second neither of them says anything at all. Then Finn huffs out a breath that isn't quite a laugh, presses one more kiss to Leith's forehead, and goes.

I turn into Leith, pressing my face into the warm curve where his neck meets his shoulder, breathing him in. Smoke and cedar and something underneath that's just Leith. I throw a leg over his thigh and get as close as it's possible to get.

"I dreamed about this, you know," he says.

I smile against his skin. "About us being lazy in the nest all morning?"

"That too." His hand moves slow up the length of my spine and back down. A long pause. "But I meant us. Together. From the first." His hand stills. "That day Finn and I walked out of your apartment."

I go still too. I pull back enough to look at him.

"You told Finn we couldn't," I say. I remember it. Not the words, I wasn't there for that part, but the aftermath. Two weeks of silence and me checking my phone like an idiot.

"I did." His jaw works. His eyes stay on mine, steady, but I can feel through the bond what it costs him to hold them there. "I wanted you that morning. Sitting in my lap, tracing my ink, licking sugar off Finn's fingers." His thumb strokes once across my cheekbone. "I wanted you so much it scared the hell out of me. I just didn’t think I could have you. So I killed it and told Finn it was a dead end. I told myself the same thing every day after."

My throat is tight. "Why?"

"You weren't our scent match. Piers wouldn't have it." He shakes his head slowly against the pillow. "But that's not the real reason. The real reason is—” He swallows and shifts his eyes to the ceiling. “The real reason is that I was afraid.”

I don't say anything. I just look at this enormous, silent, walled-up man who has apparently been carrying that around since the morning I called him Viking.

"And then you were in a hospital bed," he says, "and it turned out I didn't get a say. I lied to myself for weeks, pretending I didn't want you. Seeing you like that scared the hell out of me .” His hand slides into my hair. “I love you.”

I kiss him.

I can't not. I press my mouth to his and pour everything I've got into it, and I feel him take it, feel the careful hold he keeps on himself go soft at the edges. He kisses me back like we really do have all the time in the world. No teeth. No rush. Just his mouth moving slow against mine, one broad hand cradling the back of my skull like I'm something that could break.

That's what undoes me. Not the words, though the words nearly did. It's that Leith, who plunges in every single time, with me, with Finn, like the wanting is a thing to get through, is kissing me like the wanting is a thing to stay inside of.

I shift over him, sliding a knee to either side of his hips, and he lets me. He just watches me settle over him, dark eyes half-lidded, chest rising slow. His hands come to rest on my thighs, thumbs sweeping back and forth over the soft skin there. The blankets pool around us. We're both already bare from the night before.

"Look at you," he says quietly.

I roll my hips and feel him hard beneath me, already thick against my slickness, and I watch his eyes go darker and his jaw tense. But he doesn't grab. He doesn't flip me. He lies there and lets me set the pace, one hand drifting up to cup my breast, thumb circling my nipple until I gasp. His other hand slides slow up my side, tracing the dip of my waist, the curve of my ribs, so gentle it makes my heart stutter. This enormous man who does everything hard and fast, touching me like I'm something he can't quite believe he's allowed to hold.

I reach between us and take him in my hand, guide him to where I want him, and sink down slow. We both make a sound. The stretch is intense, a deep burn that borders on too much before it tips into perfect, and I take him inch by inch, my body opening around him, until I'm fully seated and there's no more of him left to take. I have to stop there, breathing, adjusting to the sheer fullness of it, the ache of being stretched wide. His hands find my hips and hold, not pushing, just holding, grounding me while my body learns the shape of him.

"Okay?" His low voice sends a shiver up my spine.

"Yeah." I brace my palms on his chest and start to move.

It's slow. Achingly slow. I ride him in long, unhurried rolls, and he moves with me, meeting each one, and neither of us is chasing anything. Every glide of him drags against something deep inside me that lights up and sings. We're just here, in it, his eyes locked on mine, his hands mapping the shape of me like he's memorizing it, thumbs sweeping over my hipbones, my thighs, the small of my back. Each pass of his fingers over my skin sends a fresh flutter through my chest. The bond is wide open between us and it's flooded with everything he doesn't say out loud, the wanting, the not-letting-himself, all of it crashing into me until my eyes sting and my throat goes tight with the weight of being loved this much, this quietly, for this long.

My hand splays flat over the black ink covering his chest. A raven's dark wings spread across his pec, the ink I traced that very first morning. I drag my fingers over it now the way I did then, following every line, and I feel his breath catch beneath my palm.

"You remember," he says. Not a question. He felt it come through.

"I never stopped thinking about it," I tell him. "This stupid, gorgeous bird. I traced it and thought, I hope I get to do this again." My voice cracks.

Something breaks loose in his face. It hits me all at once, how much of himself he's kept behind that wall, and how it's just gone now, and I have to blink hard against the sting. I bend down over him, still moving, still riding him in those slow deep rolls, and I put my mouth over the raven and kiss it, then drag my lips up his throat, his jaw, until I find his mouth. He kisses me back and it's not slow anymore, but it's deeper. His arms wrap fully around my back and crush me to his chest so there's no space left between us at all. I can feel his heart going hard against mine, and mine racing to match it.

He rolls his hips up into me and I moan into his mouth. He licks up the sounds as he rolls his hips again, and again, finding a rhythm from underneath, and I match it, and the whole thing builds like a tide coming in rather than a wave breaking. Every thrust drives him deeper, drags that thick length over the spot that makes my thighs tremble, and the pleasure starts stacking, coiling low in my belly, winding tighter with every slow roll. His hand slides down between us, thumb finding my clit, circling in time, and I feel everything gather and pull taut.

"Leith," I breathe against his lips.

"I've got you," he growls. "Let go."

I do. It rolls through me long and deep, not sharp, not sudden, just a slow devastating unspooling that starts where we're joined and spreads outward in waves, up my spine, down my thighs, until my whole body is shaking with it. My eyes flutter shut and my back bows and I clench around him hard, the pulses rippling through me one after another, wringing a broken cry out of me against his mouth. And through it all I feel him, in my body and in the bond at once, so I don't know where the pleasure ends and the love starts.