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“I know.” His teeth grazed my shoulder again, and every nerve in my body lit up in anticipation. “Been feeling you tighten up for the last minute. You squeeze me every time I say something sweet. Your body gives you away, kitten. It’s honest even when your mouth is busy being funny.”

Being known that thoroughly should have terrified me. Instead, it undid me one notch further. My hand tightened over his where it worked my cock, not guiding, just holding on, and I pushed back to meet his thrusts with whatever coordination I had left, which was not much. Grace had never been my strong suit even fully sober and unpenetrated.

“Drift.” His name came out cracked down the middle. “I need—I’m going to—”

“I’ve got you.” His arm cinched me back against him, holding me flush, his hips driving deep and steady while his fist stroked me tight and slick. “Let go. Let me feel it. Let me have it.”

His mouth opened wide against the join of my neck and shoulder. I felt his hot breath, the press of teeth resting there without breaking skin. Waiting. The knowledge of what was coming, the promise of it, wound the coil in my belly past its limit.

“Mine,” he breathed against my skin. “Say it back.”

“Yours.” The word tore out of me, truer than anything I’d said in years. “I’m yours, I’m—”

The orgasm hit like a dam giving way. My whole body seized, pleasure detonating outward from my core, my cock pulsing in his fist as I spilled hot over his fingers and the sheets, and in the very center of that white-out moment, he bit down.

His teeth sank into the muscle of my shoulder, and pain flared, quick and clean, a bright sting that lasted maybe two heartbeats before it dissolved entirely into the pleasure still rolling through me. If anything, the bite sharpened everything, pushed the climax higher, wrung another helpless sound out of my throat. My body couldn’t tell the difference between the hurt and the ecstasy, and honestly, neither could I. The sensations braided together and burned through me until my vision sparked at the edges.

Behind me, Drift groaned against my skin, long and wrecked, his hips stuttering out of rhythm. His whole frame shook as he came, grinding deep, his teeth still set in my shoulder like he couldn’t bear to let go, his arm crushing me back against him while he pulsed inside me.

For a long moment, neither of us moved. The room held nothing but our ragged breathing and the lazy tick of the ceiling fan.

Then, slowly, carefully, he released his bite. His tongue swept over the mark, warm and soothing, and the last of the sting faded to a dull, pleasant throb, the ache of a bruise I’d actually asked for. What a novel concept. My collection finally had a piece I was proud of.

“Phineas.” His voice had gone soft and hoarse. He pressed his lips to the bite, then to my neck, then to the hinge of my jaw, working his way up like he was checking each stop for damage. “You okay? Talk to me.”

Taking inventory required a moment. My body felt boneless and heavy, wrung out and glowing. The bite pulsed faintly with my heartbeat, tender but not terrible, less painful than a flu shot and considerably more romantic.

“I’m trying to think of something clever to say,” I said finally, “but all my words got fucked out of me, so you’ll have to settle for honesty. I feel incredible. Slightly concussed by pleasure, but incredible.”

His exhale gusted warm against my ear, relief and laughter tangled together. Carefully, he eased out of me, and I made an undignified sound at the loss that I chose not to acknowledge. He reached somewhere off the edge of the bed, and then a soft cloth swept over my stomach, my thighs, between my cheeks, cleaning me up with the same unhurried attention he’d used to take me apart. The man had prepared a cloth. He had planned for aftercare. Somewhere, the ghost of my past relationship was taking notes and failing the class.

“Let me see it.” Rolling me gently onto my back, he propped himself over me and tilted my chin aside with two fingers. His gaze fixed on my shoulder, and something moved through his expression—pride and tenderness and a fierce, quiet satisfaction that made my pulse skip. His thumb traced the edge of the mark without touching its center. “It’s already settling into a scar. It’ll heal quick. Won’t hurt past today.”

“Can I see?” Craning my neck accomplished nothing except a mild cramp. “I can’t actually look at my own shoulder. Evolution really dropped the ball on that one.”

His mouth curved. Stretching past me, he grabbed his phone off the nightstand, snapped a photo, and turned the screen toward me.

The mark sat at the curve where my neck met my shoulder, a neat crescent of indentations, already pink and closing, no blood, no mess. It looked less like a wound and more like a signature. Something in my throat went tight looking at it.

“That’s me now,” I said quietly. “That’s on me forever.”

“That a good forever or a bad forever?” His voice stayed even, but his eyes searched my face with an alertness that told me the answer mattered enormously.

“Good.” My hand rose and covered the mark, feeling the faint heat of it under my palm. “The best one, actually. All my other permanent marks were assigned to me. This is the first one I picked out myself. It’s like the difference between a prison tattoo and a wedding ring.”

For a second, he just stared at me. Then he dropped his forehead against mine and breathed, in and out, slow, like he was steadying himself against something enormous.

“You keep doing that,” he murmured. “Saying things that wreck me.”

“It’s a gift. I contain multitudes. Most of them are anxiety, but a few are poetry.”

He kissed me, soft and deep and lingering, and then gathered me against him, my head on his shoulder, his fingers combing idly through my hair. Sunlight had crawled all the way across the floorboards and up the far wall. Somewhere in the house, a door opened and shut, and the puppy’s nails clattered down the hallway on some urgent puppy errand. Normal sounds. House sounds. The sounds of a life I was somehow, impossibly, inside of now.

“So we’re mated,” I said into the quiet. “Officially. Bitten and everything.”

“Officially.” His fingers kept moving through my hair, and I leaned into it like a cat. “How does it feel?”

I considered the question honestly, poking around inside myself for some new sensation, some cosmic hum, some spiritual paperwork stamped and filed. Nothing announced itself. My shoulder throbbed gently. My body ached in the best possible places. Otherwise, I felt exactly like myself, which was to say tired, hungry, and quietly astonished at my own life.