7.4

“Yes,” she answered simply, refusing to bring the rest of her insecurities into the bed with them. “Most especially since I find you the handsomest man I have ever met.”

He gave a sort of derisive snort, and Orma suddenly found it much easier to prop up against his chest to look at him. “You do not believe me?”

His expression gentled, and he cupped her cheek and looked at her so tenderly she felt those little flutters spark to life once more. “I believe you,” he soothed. “I simply think when we venture out into the world, you will not give away such praise so readily.”

Orma frowned. “I said it, and I meant it,” she groused, worried this would descend into a quarrel, and that was the last thing she wanted. He thought her beautiful, she thought him handsome. It did not matter if there was anyone else more so. They’d been made for each other, and they found one another pleasing, and that settled the matter.

“Of course,” Athan allowed, his hand moving from her cheek to her shoulder. Then down her back. He skimmed his fingers where her wings met skin, down her spine to her lower back. “Still bothered?” he asked, his voice lower than it had been before.

She bit her lip, and nodded, gratified her assumption had been right and her interest could not be so easily diminished.

Athan hummed, and his other hand came to meet the other, embracing her at first, then coming to her waist. She did not understand his intent at first, but then she flushed all over as he helped her sit.

On top of him.

There was no mistaking the greedy look in his eye as he watched her, his attention lingering on her too-small breasts as if they were the most interesting thing in the world at the moment. Which was silly, but also true, and baffling how endearing she found it.

His hands moved of their own accord, down her from her waist to her hips. Rubbing at the scars, massaging a little harder when he felt the twist of tissue. It felt... good. Attentive. Sent little sparks through her limbs, settling down low.

She liked the view of him this way. Liked the way his chest felt beneath her hands as she smoothed her palms against his skin. He was warm, and it drew her nearer. To lean over him and, yes, grow briefly distracted by how it made her feel to rub against him so. He smelled lightly of the soap he’d used to wash before bed, and whatever else made up him.

His hands moved from her hips down her thighs, squeezing into the softness he found there. “I should like to touch you again.” It flustered her for him to speak of that, for his admissions to be easy, while hers felt like a very great struggle when he coaxed them from her.

She swallowed, not wanting to be the silent observer. The sickly creature that sat to the sides of the fetes, watching the others as they danced.

Perhaps she could not dance with her mate, but she could do this. Have this. Love and be loved.

“I would like that,” she whispered, and maybe it did not cost her as much as she thought to tell him so.

She shifted, and she wished she could say it was because she was trying to grant him easier access, but her hip gave a twinge of warning about how she was settled on top of him. She tried to keep her movements subtle, and most certainly keep the discomfort from her face, but Athan noticed. Of course he did.

She did not have time to fear he’d put a stop to everything. Would brew a tincture and tuck her into bed and insist she go to sleep.

Instead, he flipped them over, easing her onto her back and pressing his weight back on top of her, searching her face as he massaged her hip. “Better?” he asked, his hand moving from the scars to the point he’d found just above the bone that pleased her so well.

No fuss. Just a quick adapting so they might proceed.

“Better,” she agreed, and looped her arms about his neck and kissed him. She did not mean to hold him so tightly, nor for the kiss to go on for so long, but she could not say she regretted it. Not when he groaned into her mouth, when he met her fervour and her relief with equal enthusiasm.

It somehow helped to be positioned so. For hands to explore without watchful eyes to see or judge. He delved first, which should not have surprised her. Not when he was brave and she most decidedly wasn’t. In between them, no longer with cloth to act as a barrier.

At his first, tentative touch, her breath caught. When he nudged her legs apart and she let him open her, a strange sort of sound came unbidden. Not a whimper, not a groan, but somewhere in between.

She was surrounded by him. By his weight on top of her, by the warmth of his skin. By the fingers that were intent on learning her most intimate places. He might examine others. Might help usher their babies into the world. Might dress and treat a wound.

But this was utterly hers.

The way he caught each of her gasps. Every involuntary twitch of her muscles as he nudged inward, the way made far easier than she might have supposed by her own interest. It should have felt intrusive. Made her squirm for the oddness of the sensation, to feel full in a way she had never thought herself empty.

But it was Athan, and his breath was warm as he panted against her shoulder, his eyes tightly shut as he seemed to work terribly hard at mastering himself.

She’d done that.

Or... they’d done that. With a few kisses. A few removed clothes. And suddenly she could see the last tendrils of his patience. When he brought his mouth back to hers, when he asked without words.

For her touch. For her to move. To do anything at all.

Why was that so much harder? To fear she was doing wrong, that she would seem ignorant and inexperienced, without even medical training to guide the way, if only in a rudimentary form.

But this was Athan, and he needed her.

She took a breath, and it was full of him, and the world felt suddenly smaller. Stuck to the confines of her bed. Their bed. To what they were making inside of it.

Her hands stroked down his back, and he shuddered over her. Such a simple thing, but it could affect him so.

It would be so easy to get lost in her own feelings. To the persistent touches, the stretch and pull, the fervent pulses that threatened to take the last of her wits and turn her mind to nothing else.

She needed to do this first, though. Of that, she was determined. She wouldn’t be selfish, wouldn’t forget him as she got lost in her own pleasures. Orma reached down, wondering at her mother’s words about insides and outsides and how men and women differed once they were ready to celebrate the bond.

She swallowed thickly as she found him, not neatly tucked away as she’d expected, but firm to her touch and ready. Athan’s own touch wavered. Retreated.

His kisses, too.

And it might have frightened her, might have made her pull away and ask if she’d done something wrong, if perhaps he did not like to be touched there after all. Except the bond was strong and steady, the threads almost blinding in the lamplight as they thrilled and danced, securing them together in ways she hadn’t known they needed.

“Are you all right?” Orma asked, feeling the length of him, careful to keep her touch gentle. She wouldn’t hurt him. She must be careful, just as he was with her. She let her hand retreat, and suddenly Athan could breathe again, his eyes opening to give her a sheepish glance.

“Utterly bothered,” he insisted, and she had to smile because he was kissing her again, and perhaps he was afraid as she was. How was one generous enough with such matters? To focus on loving the other while receiving what the other wished to give?

“I want to be good at this,” Orma confessed, smoothing her fingers down the length of him again, watching his throat bob as he swallowed thickly at such a simple gesture. Hers was the easier job, she decided. Since his parts could come to the outside, while he had to venture inward to find her greatest delights.

Athan chuckled, more breath than sound. “I have no complaints,” he promised her, kissing her lips and then her cheek, his voice strained even as he was careful to be tender with her as he eased back into her.

“But I will admit to a certain thrill at the prospect of practicing.”

She hummed, and then it was abruptly ended when he found some other part inside of her, one that sent bright little spots to her vision as he pressed. “Why was I afraid of this?” Orma whispered, not necessarily referring to the appendage currently subjected to her modest inspection, but all of it. Mating. His body on hers. She’d thought herself somehow removed, as if it might affect other people, but not her. She was wrong. Wonderfully so.

“Because you didn’t know it would be with me,” Athan reminded her, his lips just beneath her ear as he leaned in closed and nudged his face against hers.

She smiled and ignored the rest of it. How resistant she’d been and yes, still frightened.

But not now. When he was coaxing and plying and her hand fell away from him because she really could not focus properly when he seemed determined to draw all of her attention to what was happening between her legs.

She gasped. Wriggled. And his lips found the twist of bond beneath her throat and then he pressed his teeth lightly just there, and he had no business biting at her like that, and she certainly had no business liking it so well that everything tightened and lurched all at once and...

The bond glowed. She didn’t know how she saw it, her eyes too tightly shut as she was lost in the newness. So perhaps she simply felt it along with everything else.

It was sharp and twisting, and it was pleasure too, but it wasn’t satisfaction. Not entirely. Because she could feel Athan’s want, feel there was more, and when everything settled back into place, when he eased his fingers from her, she was the one to reach. To bring him toward her. To whisper she was ready, that she loved him, that she needed him.

And she felt his shudder, felt his restraint as he considered, and she couldn’t understand what he was waiting for. She was open and ready, and her hip wasn’t being nearly as troublesome as it might have been, and...

Her hand went to the back of his neck and she rubbed lightly. “Be with me,” she urged, and that was enough, because he was pushing—no, not pushing. Easing. Always careful, because this was unfamiliar, and her muscles were untried, but the way was easier than she expected.

A little slick. Warm. Full. While Athan shuddered, his eyes closed as he wrestled, both with the bond and the sensations that were just as new to him. And she was happy she was present enough she could cup his cheek. Could lean forward just a bit and kiss wherever she could reach. Until he murmured something in her ear and the angle shifted, and there was that spot again, the one he’d found before, this time rubbed and stroked while Athan felt his own pleasures.

It was so much... more. Bright and shiny, and she tried to keep her eyes open. To see the threads as they tangled and fused, twisting together in a glorious harmony.

But her body seemed to have a will all its own, and her eyes fluttered closed, and Athan was finally certain of her comfort enough to move in earnest. She loved him for his care, but she loved him for his confidence as well. He did not carry worry around with him like an old friend. He did not dwell on his misgivings.

“I love you,” she managed, because she remembered that was important. That he needed to hear it.

That she needed to say it.

Even with the bond swelling between them. When they touched all over, here and clasping one of his, her other buried in the hair at the nape of his neck.

He did not answer her, but he shifted again, this time wrapping his arms around her back and holding her impossibly closer while he buried his face in her neck. Her hair. While he mumbled something that held all the cadence of a prayer.

And maybe words failed him, but the bond didn’t. He pushed all of his love back toward her. Held her safely, made promises that didn’t require speech at all.

He would care for her the whole of his days. He would love her as best he knew how. He would give her anything she wanted. She had only to name it.

Her eyes grew misty, and it was all too much and not enough all at once. The feel of his skin against her, the tenderness of her feelings toward him. The steady stroke of his hips pressing against hers. Holding. Waiting. Then moving again when she was ready for him. When it pleased her.

Because he was paying attention.

Could not focus solely on his own pleasures, and they would have to work on that, because his were no less important than hers, and she’d already had some and yet...

Her hand moved from his neck to stroke along the edges of his wings. To the feathers she would have to help him tend in the spring months.

His movements stuttered. Almost halted, and then he was kissing her again. Distracting her from her explorations, which really was rude of him, but it was a complaint for another time, another moment, one when she could think and speak and there was more than this returning coil that promised her another release if only... if he’d...

She couldn’t say what changed. How his movements shifted. If it was something he did, or merely a shared feeling that grew and fed from the other until she was tumbling. No longer alone, but together. Always. When his pleasure became hers, when he grew still and she could only hold him as best she could, her legs clamping around him and holding him to her in ways that were highly indecent.

She didn’t care. Couldn’t care. The world felt different. She felt different. As if... as if parts of her that had been uncertain and doubtful were suddenly still. Quiet.

She was a mate. A proper one. Christened and everything.

She could please him, whether with a gentle word or by accepting his touches. By returning them when he’d let her and didn’t start seeing to her instead.

And there was the relief that came with it, all in a rush that left her gasping, first with something that felt too near to tears, then with laughter. Was surely worse, but it was bright and bubbly, and she was happy, and Athan was looking at her as if she’d grown a second head, and that made it harder to stop.

“And what amuses you so?” Athan asked, and while his tone was light, his eyes were worried, and Orma reached for him and pulled him back, kissing him all over. Because she wouldn’t have him cross, not when she felt so light. As if something had loosened inside of her. As if she could finally take a full breath after a lifetime of restriction.

Was that the bond? Or simply the nature of letting go. Of release.

“That I could be a fussy, ridiculous girl who was afraid of that . And that we get to do it whenever we please.”

He settled down beside her on the bed, and that was much too far. And he couldn’t be too cross at her laughter because he pulled her to him, tucking her into his side and holding her there while she nestled as close as she wanted. Modesty seemed like a part of the old her. The one that cared about decorum and what anyone might think if they saw them in such states. Or maybe those thoughts would trickle back in, once the hazy glow left her mind and strength came back to her limbs.

But for now, she let herself not care. Not about the blankets that would need to be taken to the laundry. Not the late hour and how important sleep was for her regimen. Although now that she considered it, sleep did sound like just the thing she wanted most. And perhaps something to eat. But not if it meant moving to get one.

“I want to stay just like this,” Orma continued, brushing her lips against his chest simply because she could.

“That would be rather cold come winter,” Athan teased. “I would have to build you a hearth.”

She hummed, feeling languid and happier than she could ever remember. It wasn’t simply because of their relations, surely. It was more than that. Or maybe it was all tied up together. That the bond was somehow renewed by their closeness. Bright and bold, their feelings flowing easily between the two of them, and she did not have to wonder if Athan was just as pleased.

She could know.

“It would be worth it,” Orma teased, skimming her fingers across the planes of his torso. Watched as his muscles clenched, his skin prickled. All because of a few brushes of her fingertips.

“Are you attempting to seduce me?” Athan queried, his fingers burying in her hair as he gently pulled her head up to look at him. “Already?”

He abandoned her hair in favour of running his hand down her arm, then boldly setting it on her backside. “Have I neglected you so completely?”

Orma ducked her head and refused to let the niggling concerns take hold—that she was greedy and ungrateful when he’d already pleased her so well.

“Can’t I touch you with no need for something?” she asked, genuinely curious. She’d keep that in mind if it troubled him. Or if it bothered him and not in the pleasant way he’d done to her.

She felt the very edges of a purr deep in his chest rumbling against her ear. And she thought it beautiful. Thought him rather beautiful, too, although she supposed that was not a compliment most men would appreciate.

He pressed a kiss to the top of her head. “You can do whatever you like.”

Which should not have pleased her so, yet it did. Because he meant it. Whatever made her happy, that was fine with him. She would not abuse such power, of course. Wouldn’t wheedle or ask for anything too extravagant. But the idea of a hearth in their bedroom wasn’t a bad one, and what did he do for heat in the coldest months?

“Now,” Athan moved, which was not at all what she wanted. Most especially when it felt very much like he was trying to get up. “Wash separately or together?”

Orma blinked at him, still trying to keep him in place as her pillow. “We washed before bed,” she reminded him, in case their activities had addled his mind and he’d truly forgotten.

“We did,” he agreed. “And then we did not sleep.” She had. For quite a while. He’d been the one to abandon her.

She glanced down at herself, trying to catch his point. Some of the warm feelings were diminishing, and she was more aware of the cold pricking at her skin, of the sticky feeling between her legs.

“Oh.”

It was Athan’s turn to chuckle as he helped her to her feet. “I choose together,” he added with a smile, and waited for her to give an objection.

She did not have one to give.

Just took his hand and let him move them to the washroom. Tried not to cross her arms and feel strange as she waited for him to tend the light. A proper moonstone lamp would be good for this room. That way, when she scuttled down the hall in the dark, she would not be met with inky darkness.

When the wick caught and warm light cast eerie shadows across the washroom walls, Orma swallowed thickly. She’d ask for a lamp when she was certain it wouldn’t overtax his income. She’d even ask to attend the market with him so she might know who crafted such things.

She would mention how agreeable something to nibble would be. And a fresh nightdress, and if he wasn’t too cold, how she would not mind if he forewent a nightshirt. She did so like the feel of his skin...

But for the moment, she stepped nearer to him and wrapped her arms about him. It was strange to need an embrace so acutely when they’d just shared so much, but perhaps that was part of the reason.

“What’s this for?” Athan asked, returning her embrace and tightening his hold when she did the same.

“Just because,” she mumbled into his skin, and she probably should offer more of an explanation. Should try to sort out this sudden urge for affection. To hold and be held. To keep him close and hers for as long as she possibly could.

He hummed. Then purred, the sound pleasant and soothing beneath her ear.

She shut her eyes and let the contentment fill her.

Let him shudder. Let him murmur his thanks for trusting him. For loving him.

She would like to say it had been easy, but it hadn’t been. But perhaps...

Perhaps that was all right. Because now it had been forged with experience rather than faith in the bond alone. That she knew him, and he knew her.

There was more to go, of that she was certain. But it was a start. And a rather lovely one.

“I’m going to learn to cook,” Orma whispered, more to herself than to him. Then turned her head and offered a sheepish look upward. “Would you help me?”

And his smile was bright, and his pride in her was brighter still. “It would be my pleasure.”

And she certainly would not tell anyone, but she let him wash her. And she even mustered some of her courage and washed him in turn, a rather strange process that included having to prod out his appendage when she hadn’t needed to before, and Athan was gracious in her nerves, and he did not even make fun of the way she poked at him while she did it.

And when he picked her up again and took her back to their bed, it did not feel like when she was little and too weak to do it herself. It felt like... like a man who loved his mate. Who wanted to keep her as close as he possibly could. To make sure she was warm and comfortable when he eased back the covers and pulled them over her. When he removed the topmost where they had loved and replaced it with another from his trunk before easing in beside her.

She didn’t mention a moonstone lamp, or a nibble before bed after all.

Instead, she let him pull her into his side. Let him curl about her and whisper how much he loved her, and some of those warm, intoxicating feelings returned. Not insistent and urgent to be fulfilled, but a reminder of what had been. What would be. When she wasn’t so tired, and he had not made commitments to patients the next day.

But that was all right. Just knowing there would be other times.

She forgot the nightdress.

And that was all right, too.