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He kissed her inner thigh once more, tasting her on his lips, and moved up her body. She pulled him into a kiss and moaned into his mouth when she tasted herself on his tongue. Her legs wrapped around him, heels pressing against the small of his back, and he could feel the heat of her against him where he was hard and aching.

He positioned himself at her entrance and paused. Foreheads touching. Breath mingling. Her eyes open, looking into his from inches away. The gold in them was vivid, alive.

"I love you," he said. He'd never said it before. Not to her, not to anyone. The words felt new in his mouth, strange and enormous and truer than anything he'd ever spoken. Yes, they were getting married, but they had never said the words to each other. Not yet.

Her eyes went bright. Not tears exactly. Something beyond them. "I love you too. Now get inside me before I lose my mind."

He pushed into her slowly. One long, continuous stroke that let them both feel every inch, every degree of stretch and heat, the gradual joining of two bodies that knew each other's rhythms but had never taken this particular road at this particular speed. By the time he was fully seated, her breath had gone shallow, her nails pressing half-moons into his shoulders, and he held still, savoring the feel of her surrounding him, tight and hot and trembling.

He moved. Slow, deep rolls of his hips that pressed him into her fully with each stroke and withdrew almost completely before sliding home again. No urgency. No desperation. Just the steady, deliberate rhythm of a man making love to the woman he was going to spend his life with, taking his time because for once there was no crisis driving them together, no adrenaline, no fear. Just this. Just them.

She matched his rhythm. Her hips rose to meet each stroke, her body undulating against his, her hands moving across his back in long, slow lines that mapped the muscles shifting under his skin. She hooked one leg higher on his waist, changing the angle, and the next stroke hit deep enough that they both groaned, the sound tangling between their mouths.

"Right there," she breathed. "Stay right there."

He stayed. Deep, grinding strokes that kept him pressed against the spot that made her walls flutter around him. Her head tipped back, throat exposed, and he kissed the bite mark on her neck, the thin scar where he'd claimed her, and felt her pulse against his lips, fast and strong.

The pressure built between them like a tide. Deeper, slower, rolling in from a distance. He could feel it in her body, the incremental tightening, the way her breathing grew ragged, the small involuntary sounds she made with each stroke that grew louder as the wave gathered.

He felt it in himself too. The coiling heat spread through his hips, his thighs. The tightening in his groin that built with each slow, deep thrust. The effort of maintaining the pace, of not surrendering to the primal demand to go harder, faster, more. This was the restraint that mattered. Not the leashed control of a man afraid to let go, but the deliberate choice to stay present, stay slow, stay with her stroke for stroke.

"Together," she said, her voice barely above a whisper, her fingers lacing through his, pinning their joined hands to the mattress beside her head. "Like last time. Together."

He adjusted his angle. Pressed closer, his body flush against hers, the friction of his pelvis against her clit with each grinding stroke. She gasped and her grip on his hands tightened. He watched her face, the way her lips parted, the crease between her brows deepening as the pleasure built past the point of control, and he let his own restraint thin, let the wave take him to the same ledge she was climbing toward.

"Now," she whispered. "Criss, now."

She came first, by a breath. He felt it in the sudden, rhythmic clenching of her body around him, the way her back arched and her hands crushed his and her mouth opened on a sound that was silent at first and then not silent at all, a long, shuddering cry that resonated through his chest. The sensation of her orgasm rippling around him tipped him over. He drove deep one final time and came with a groan that he buried in the curve of her neck, his body pulsing inside her while hers still gripped and released, the two rhythms syncing into something that felt like a single heartbeat echoing through both of them.

The wave took a long time to pass. They held each other through the aftershocks, bodies trembling, breathing ragged, hands still intertwined on the pillow. He could feel her everywhere. Not through the bond. Through his skin, his nerve endings, the simple human reality of being tangled with someone who'd chosen to stay.

She laughed. Quiet, shaky, pressed against his shoulder. "I left a dig site for this."

"Was it worth the commute?"

"I'll put it in my field report." She untangled one hand and traced the line of his jaw with her fingertip. His stubble rasped against her skin. "First time in my career I've abandoned an active excavation for a man."

"I'm honored."

"You should be. Those inscriptions aren't going anywhere, but the look on your face when I walked in was a limited-time offer."

He rolled onto his back and pulled her with him, settling her against his side, her head on his chest, her leg thrown over his hip in the proprietary sprawl he'd grown addicted to. The morning light had moved across the bedroom, painting a warm stripe across the foot of the bed. The cabin smelled like them. Cedar and green botanicals and sex and the clean pine from the open window.

Her fingers traced idle patterns on his chest. The spirals and crescents of her work, the language she dreamed in, written on his skin.

"Criss."

"Hmm."

"I want this every morning."

"The sex or the sleeping in?"

"Both. And the terrible coffee. And arguing about who used all the hot water." She pressed a kiss to his chest, right over his heart. "I want the ordinary stuff. Not just the crisis and the drama and the fate of it all. I want Tuesday mornings and burned toast and fighting about whose turn it is to check the ward markers."

"I burn the toast on purpose. You should know that going in."

"I already knew that." She lifted her head and looked at him. Hazel eyes, gold flecks, the particular glow of a woman who was exactly where she wanted to be. "I'm going to be a good wife, Criss. Not a traditional one. Not a quiet one. But a good one."