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“Why? I like it.” Mouthing up my neck, his thumb circles slowly over my weeping cock. “I’m going to think about it for the rest of my life.”

I turn in his arms, not giving him room to pull his hand away, and kiss him. He opens for me right away, his hand still moving between us as I lick into his mouth and catch his lower lip between my teeth. I nip and pull until his tongue meets mine and the cold metal of his piercing brushes against it, sending another shiver through me. He gives me one last slow stroke before letting go, then catches my jaw and holds me back far enough to look at me.

“Not in here.”

“I need it. Now.” My voice comes out rougher than I expect. “Please... halcyon.”

The word leaves me before I can second-guess it. I’ve carried it around in my head long enough that hearing it between us feels different, softer somehow, more exposed than anything else I’ve called him.

“Halcyon, hm?” He rubs his thumb across my lower lip. “Such a sweet name for such a bad man. I love it.”

“That’s because I know you. I know that you’ll give me what I need.”

He laughs at that. “Patience, then, stormbird.” Reaching past me, he shuts off the water, and the heat disappears from my skin so quickly that the shaking comes back. His knuckles trail down my spine. “I can only bring peace when you’re patient. Let me first check that you’re nice and clean. Then I’m going to take you somewhere warm, and you’re going to stop shaking.”

“I was warm right where I was.” My teeth start chattering. “You’re the one who turned it off.”

“Mm. And now I get to warm you up my way.”

He towels me off in front of the fire, and I let him, standing there dazed and warm while he dries down my back and my legs before dropping the towel somewhere behind him.

“On your hands and knees, puppy.”

I go down without thinking. The last time we were here, we’d just married, and Ash had opened that bottle of champagne before ending up above me on this same rug. Now I settle onto my palms and knees, the fire warming one side of me while my head lowers and my back dips before he’s even touched me.

“Good.” His hands settle on my shoulders, his thumbs already moving. “Look at you. Straight down the first time I ask, and I didn’t hear a single argument.”

He works his thumbs into the base of my neck, pressing into muscle that’s been locked since the treeline, and I moan into the rug. He moves slowly down my back with both hands, finding every place I’ve been holding myself and pressing until it lets go, across my shoulder blades and all the way into the small of my back.

“You’re a mess, stormbird.”

“I know.” My breath catches when his thumbs find another knot. “I don’t think I’ve stopped bracing since I heard those footsteps behind me. Every time I thought I could breathe, there was another one somewhere.”

“Everything in you is knotted.” He digs his knuckle in just above my hip, making my whole leg twitch. “You’ll ache tomorrow.”

“I think I already do.”

His thumb stills against me. “When I opened that camera and saw you curled under those roots, so fucking close to the gate, then heard you asking me to stop...” His hand spreads over my hip. “I nearly lost my mind. You thought I’d left you in there.”

“For a minute.”

“I know.” His fingers tighten once. “That’s the part I can’t fucking stand.”

His hands start moving again, slower now, gliding up the backs of my thighs before his mouth finds the base of my spine. “There were three bastards hunting you, and you kept moving until there was nowhere left to go. You made them come find you every single time.” He kisses me higher. “I’ve watched hundreds of people run that forest. You kept your head when they were trying to take it from you.”

I press my face into my folded arms. I don’t know what to do with being told I did well. I don’t think I did, anyway. I ran because there wasn’t anything else to do. But nobody’s ever taken something I survived and talked about it like it belonged to me, like I’d done something worth being proud of. Onyx, maybe, a long time ago, but nobody since.

“I didn’t do anything.” My voice comes out muffled against my arms. “You keep saying it like I did. I ran because stopping meant dying. That’s the whole of it.”

“No. You did more than run.”

“There’s no more to me than that. I keep the thing behind me from catching the thing in front of me. That’s all I’ve ever done.”

When I don’t move, his hand slides to my waist and squeezes once. “Jade. Look at me.”

I turn my head on my arms, and he waits until I’m looking at him before continuing.

“You kept your head in the dark with no grid and three men on you. You made them work for every bit of ground. I’ve watched people survive, and it doesn’t look like what you did tonight. You did that. Not the thing behind you. You.”