Mac answered by pulling his cheeks apart, exposing his hole, and lashing across it with his tongue.

Paris curled his hands in the sheets. “Again.”

Mac was more than happy to oblige, happy to feast, happy to learn he was right—that his tongue teasing Paris’s rim, dipping inside his hole, drove them both wild. Mac rutted against the mattress while Paris lolled his head with his groans, grabbed more of the sheets with each flick of Mac’s tongue, and fucked the pillow with as much abandon as he’d fucked his mouth. And when Mac pushed one, then a second finger into him, opening him wider, getting him ready, he rode those with abandon too.

Trust and love, desire and hope pulsing along their bond the entire time.

A third finger and Paris cried mercy, thank fuck. “Get inside me, please.”

“I’ve got you,” he said, drawing those soft words over Paris’s back again with one hand, while with the other he lined his cock up at Paris’s hole and pushed inside him. They sighed in relief together, Mac stretching the rest of the way over him, lips against Paris’s nape. “I could stay here forever.”

“That’s fine with me,” Paris said, then thrust his hips. “Less so my cock.”

Mac chuckled, Paris’s torso under his rumbling with laughter too, until he started to move and their amusement became a series of grunts and moans, pleas for harder and faster.

As his orgasm approached, Mac stretched out his arms, hands seeking Paris’s, his fingers sliding into the spaces between his spread ones. A perfect fit. Like their bodies, like their souls, which would get what they deserve. They’d get a choice, and Mac knew his. “I choose you, Paris. Forever.”

Paris turned his head, his brown eyes swirling with love and a violet hue. “And I choose you. Forever.”

He rested their foreheads together, lips brushing. “I love you. My soul is yours.”

“And mine yours,” Paris said on a gasp, body quaking and clenching around his. “I love you too.”

“What we deserve,” Mac promised as he rode the wave of pleasure with forever in his arms.

THIRTY-THREE

The one thing his parents,Rena, and the kids forgot to stock the cabin with was more tea. Not surprising, given their family was a coffee one, Paris the odd-tea-drinker-out. And not surprising that Mac had caved when Paris had rolled over in bed, stuck out that adorable bottom lip, and, arm slung across the rest of his pretty face, claimed dramatically that he would never be able to get out of bed without his leaf water. Mac had considered saying no just to keep him there in bed, looking like the beautifully debauched lover he was—his brown hair rumpled, his pale skin marked from lips and teeth, his morning wood tenting the sheet over his hips—but they hada dayahead of them, one in which Paris would carry the heavy mantle for their team and for Nature. Grabbing him the morning beverage of his choice was the least Mac could do.

He’d paused, however, over the threshold, fear creeping up his spine at leaving Paris out here alone, no witches in the other cabins, only a half arsenal of corvids in the trees, their numbers having been needed elsewhere overnight. But then Paris had reminded him that no one except Kai had found them in thewoods before, and the only reason he had was because Paris had told him exactly where to look.

“Ten minutes down to the motel and back,” he’d pleaded with another pout. “I’ll be fine.”

Mac had relented, and thankfully, the little store had the olallieberry tea he favored.

“Anything else?” the clerk asked.

“I’m go—” he started to say, then noticed the collection of mugs behind her, one that made him think of Paris and grin. “Actually, can I get that yellow mug that saysNot Paint Water?” The words were in black brush strokes, big and bold, on a can’t miss background.

The clerk laughed as she rose on her tiptoes to reach it. “Painter in your life?”

“Yes,” Mac said, smiling wider. “And he steals all the mugs for rinse buckets.”

“My husband too,” she said as she wrapped the ceramic mug in craft paper. “I ordered a half dozen of these and kept three for us.”

“Did they work?”

She smiled, an amused, commiserative thing, as she handed him his bag of purchases. “Not one bit. Let me know how it goes with your man.”

“Will do,” Mac said, as he exited the shop for the car. He figured they probably would be back here, and that it would probably go about the same with Paris as it had with the store clerk’s husband. And Mac wouldn’t give a damn if it did, wouldn’t care one bit if Paris filled any place they lived with paint mugs, as long as Paris was in his li?—

The sudden, hard yank on the soul bond dropped him to his knees, the mug shattering beneath his hand on the concrete, his heart and mind racing to decipher the fear and fire—the betrayal—coursing along the bond.

The resignation.

Mac yanked back. To no response.

Fuck.