Page 16

"I'm okay," she says, her voice a low, guttural rasp.

I stay still for a moment longer, letting her body clench around me, feeling the internal ripples of her muscles gripping me tight. The Jalshagar markings burn brighter across my chest, turning a luminous, molten gold.

Claire notices. Her hand moves between us, pressing firmly over one of the glowing lines, and the bond opens wide. What passes between us is no longer thought; it is pure, unadulterated sensation.

Her trust. My restraint. Her desperate need to be filled. My terror of how much I want to lose myself in her.

I let the last of the distance go.

I begin to move, a slow, deep slide that draws a sharp, high cry from her throat. The change is immediate. Claire wraps her legs as far as she can around me, pulling me closer, and the bond flashes with enough force that I feel her pleasure as distinctly as my own. It is a feedback loop of ecstasy—the feeling of my own skin sliding against hers, combined with the psychic echo of how it feels for her.

I have never experienced anything like it. Neither has she.

"You felt that," she gasps, her eyes wide with astonishment.

"Yes," I groan, picking up the pace.

"Was that me... or you?"

"I don't know," I rasp, my movements becoming more urgent, more primal.

That makes her laugh breathlessly, a sound that is quickly stolen by a moan as I hit the sweet spot deep inside her. We find a rhythm without speaking, the world reducing itself to fragments: the heat of the stone wall, the scratch of fabric, the way her fingers dig into my shoulders, and the wet, rhythmic sound of our bodies colliding.

I learn everything procedure refused to name. I learn the way her inner walls pulse around me when she’s close to the edge. I learn how she arches her back, offering herself up, her breasts brushing my chest with every thrust. I learn the specific, desperate sound she makes when the bond carries my pleasure back into her, amplifying it until she is shaking.

Claire's injured knee remains braced, and whenever she shifts, I adjust my angle without breaking the rhythm, my movements becoming harder, deeper. She doesn't comment on the care; she only reaches up to touch the markings on my chest.

They are almost luminous now, pulsing in time with our movements.

"Beautiful," she whispers.

The word strikes me harder than the physical pleasure. I almost falter, but she slides her hand to the side of my neck, pulling my face down to hers.

"I mean it."

Nobody has ever called these markings beautiful. They are tools, weapons, or curses. But under Claire's touch, they feel like a bridge.

Something inside me gives way. The restraint I have spent nineteen years cultivating snaps. I lower my forehead to hers and drive into her with a new, desperate intensity. The encounter shifts from a careful dance to a raw, starving need.

Physical closeness is simple; being seen is the hard part. Claire's expression is completely open—no sarcasm, no calculation. Only a raw, naked wanting.

I feel the thought leave me through the bond before I can contain it: I cannot lose this.

Her face changes. "What was that?"

I try to deny it, but the bond makes it impossible.

"Nothing useful," I grunt, my breath coming in ragged gasps.

"Darius." She touches my cheek, her eyes searching mine. "Look at me."

I do. The warmth between us is overwhelming. She knows. She knows that wanting her makes me vulnerable, that it makes the world capable of taking something specific from me.

She doesn't offer a platitude. She just pulls me closer and says, "I'm here."

I can work with the present.

The rhythm between us accelerates, the restraint finally gone. Claire's breathing becomes a series of short, sharp gasps, and the bond carries her rising intensity back through me until every nerve ending is screaming.