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thirty-four

His lips hovered over mine. I closed my eyes and waited, eager, patient for once, because I knew he wasn’t going anywhere. We weren’t done yet. And I wanted to own every moment of him, too.

Rune lowered himself onto me inch by inch. He kissed me slowly, on the lips and nose and my closed eyes, while I touched his chest and traced the curves of his arms with my fingertips. I wanted to know his body better than I knew mine.

The skin of his abs was so smooth, and I went lower as he continued to kiss my face, lick my skin, graze it with his teeth. When I wrapped my hands around his cock, I moaned, and he growled again.

That was my second favorite sound of him. The first were his moans.

My God, he was big. I wasn’t surprised that it had hurt me to adjust to his size at first. I could barely wrap my fingers around the thickness of him. Only minutes had passed but I was burning with need, my hips getting impatient, moving up, trying to rub against him.

When I positioned his tip against my center, we both moaned into each other’s mouths.

“How do you feel so good?” he whispered, rising on one elbow so he could bring his hand down to cup my breasts, play with my nipples while I played with the both of us.

“How do you ?” Seriously, I was only rubbing myself against the tip of him and I was so close already.

“You’re driving me crazy,” he said, and it almost sound like an accusation. “I need to be inside you right now.”

My body really was at his fucking command.

“Don’t move,” I said and positioned him right at my entrance again.

Rune closed his eyes and held his breath, waiting…

I thrust my hips up and took him inside me all the way from below.

A million birds made out of white light were soaring inside my head. I was so wet, and he slid inside me so easily that the pain was no longer there.

With my hands on his lower back, I held myself there and just breathed for a moment. Moaned out his name. Enjoyed the feel of him thoroughly.

Rune had his eyes closed still as he held himself back.

“Open your eyes,” I told him because I needed to see. I wanted to know his body, yes, but I wanted to know his soul more.

And I did. The galaxies in his eyes and the maps in them drawn in silver were all mine. They belonged to me even if only for this moment. He was entirely mine, and I had never felt more grateful. I had never thought I could feel like I had it all. Everything. The whole world in the palm of my hand.

“Does it hurt?” Rune asked me again, and I shook my head.

His eyes searched every feature of my face as if for the first time. His lips curled up into an easy smile before he leaned in and kissed me gently. He let go of his weight and fell on top of me all the way until my lungs emptied and his cock was so deep inside me I felt him to my core. My eyes rolled in my skull. My legs locked around his hips.

“Are you ready to scream again, wildling?”

“Yes,” I said with all my heart. I was more than ready.

With my lip between his teeth, Rune slowly pushed his hips down and somehow came even deeper inside me. His name left my lips with every new thrust. It didn’t escape my attention how my body fit his perfectly, how we moved in perfect harmony, like we’d done this a thousand times before. Like we knew each other our whole lives.

His movements became faster by the second, and the harder he fucked me, the harder I screamed. He whispered praise under his breath that I only understood halfway, so lost in the feel of him, in the pleasure that had consumed me completely. We were one, face-to-face and chest-to-chest and lips-to-lips.

It wasn’t just sex, not for me. It was connection, a kind I never even knew one could have with another person.

And I was fully his, too, that night—and all other nights to come for the rest of my life.

My arms were around his neck, his hair in my fists, and his ear was next to my mouth when the pleasure exploded in me and I screamed out his name. He pushed his hips down and let me move at my own pace while I rode the high, like we had indeed done this before and he knew exactly what I needed, what my body loved.

Rune’s body must have loved it just as much to have me moving like that underneath him because he came, too, with my name on his lips, seconds later. With that voice of his, I had never heard a more beautiful sound.

Our eyes were closed, and we were pressed against each other. The bird had faded, but its silhouette still flew over us while we took a moment to catch our breaths.

Despite how I’d come to be here right now, this really just became the best night of my life.

Rune came out of me slowly, kissing my face as he moved to the side and lay on the ground next to me. Our hearts had yet to slow down the beating, but our breathing was becoming more even quickly. He held me in his arms like I was this fragile thing, like he thought I might break if he handled me too roughly, and I fucking adored it. As strange as it sounded to my own self, I felt free and safe to be fragile and vulnerable when I was with him.

Never would I have thought that to be a good thing, but it was. It was incredible to give up control all the way like I had right now.

“Are you cold?” Rune whispered a little while later.

I snuggled closer to his chest, and he pulled me tighter with his arm around my waist. “A little.”

The heat of him kept me warm, though, even if the night was colder and we were still wet from swimming in the lake. We could still stay here among the bushes, secluded from the rest of the world, for a moment longer.

“I’m not on birth control,” I said when the fact occurred to me, when I felt the wetness between my legs. Possibly his cum slipping out of me.

Fuck, the thought alone turned me on.

Rune kissed my forehead. “The marked can’t conceive.”

Not going to lie, I was relieved, but I could have sworn he sounded sad again. Raising my head, I looked at his neck, at the tattoo marking him, the curves and the straight lines, and the dots.

“It’s actually beautiful.”

His hand closed on my cheek and he looked down at me, eyes sparkling, the brand-new bird he’d made me flying a bit higher as if to give us privacy while still giving us enough light.

“I don’t think anything more beautiful than you exists in my world or yours.”

My toes curled and my stomach went wild with all these butterflies that came out of nowhere.

“You caught me off guard, Wildcat. I wasn’t prepared for it.”

I laughed a little. “I wasn’t prepared for you, either.” He’d hit me straight in the face, and I’d had no idea what the hell I was doing since. “What was it like? You know— before. Before me.”

“It was just life. I had my routine. I had my work.”

“What’s that? What is it that you do?” I knew so little about him, which was ridiculous considering I wanted to know every little detail about him since the day he was born.

“Weapons,” Rune said. “I make weapons for the Seelie Court soldiers.”

I looked up at him. “You do?”

“Yes. Metal manipulation is a Midnight fae trait. I don’t really have much power, but I understand how it works. How it bends. How much pressure it needs.”

“Holy fuck,” I whispered. “That’s…how in the world do you make that sound so hot ?”

A chuckle that warmed me to my soul. “I don’t understand why I love the way you talk so much.”

Hiding my face below his chin, I tried to act cool, stifle that giant smile, and basically not melt into a pile of goo. “So, do you have like your own shop or something?”

“My own workshop, yes.”

“And? What about other smiths? And other people you work with?”

“I work alone.”

Again, I looked up at him. “Really?”

His eyes were closed as he held onto me with one hand and played with my hair with the other.

“I prefer it.”

Something told me it wasn’t the truth at all. Nobody preferred to be on their own all the time…did they?

“What’s that like?” I asked because I didn’t want to make him feel uncomfortable by asking him if he was sure or something. I would rather just lie on his shoulder and touch his smooth skin, listen to him speaking indefinitely.

“I…got through,” Rune said in a soft whisper. “It was easy, actually. I never really had any idea what I was…well, missing .”

My toes curled again, and I pressed my lips to his collarbone. His skin erupted in goose bumps. I loved the effect I had on him, and for a moment, I chased the little bumps away by running my fingertips over his skin.

The silence started out comfortable, but…

The more seconds ticked by, the more Rune’s muscles tightened. I gave it a moment, didn’t let myself read into it, thought it would pass.

But then the silence changed within just a couple of minutes. The way he held me by the waist changed, and the way he dropped my hair and no longer seemed interested in playing with it…

Like something else had just occurred to him, something…not good. I wasn’t sure how I could tell—the air just seemed to be filled with tension now and something else I couldn’t quite put my finger on.

“We have to go,” Rune then said before I could gather courage to ask what was wrong. My heart jumped. “Raja is waiting.”

The next moment, he sat up, took me with.

He was naked still, and his shorts were there by the edge of the lake. He put them on without ever looking at me, and suddenly I felt so cold.

Not because of the air but because of how quickly his entire demeanor changed. Just like that.

Again—I figured I was just being silly, though. Probably just reading too much into it. So, when he offered me his hand, I took it and let him pull me to my feet.

“I’m going to need to use the bathroom,” I said, just to say something. To try to chase away this strange tension that came out of nowhere and settled between us. It was too scary to even try to understand it yet, so I didn’t.

Rune nodded. “Let’s go.”

My bird disappeared into the dark.