Page 104 of Sunder

Her eyes burned, and she could not account for why. “Oh,” she repeated, and no, she did not want to think about healers and tables and him looking over wounds and battered skin, but it was better than the alternative.

He shouldn’t have to swear. He shouldn’t have to look at her with worry that she would find fault with him, whether or not there had been a woman before her.

But in some secret part of her, she could acknowledge she was pleased. Did that make her horrid? She didn’t know. “I would have loved you anyway,” she promised him, because that was what mattered, didn’t it?

He hummed and leaned back a little, and the relief was pronounced through the bond. “Thought I’d ruined everything for a moment.”

Orma smoothed his hair back from his forehead. “You couldn’t do that,” she disagreed, but it only earned her a rueful smile.

“You think that now, maybe. Until I’ve come home too late for the third night in a row, or I left my boots too near the doorway and you trip over them.” He frowned, obviously imagining it, and he very nearly rose off her to go find them, needing to make sure she’d be safe.

Orma caught him before he might do any such thing and tugged him back to her. Pressed and fussed until he was using her as a pillow and she might play with his hair, trying to rekindle what had temporarily cooled.

“Say it again, please,” Athan murmured.

She paused, considering what he meant, then felt a warmth fall over her when she realised his intention. “I love you,” she reminded him, curling her fingers through his hair, urging him to look at her. To see the truth of it, to feel the whole.

She did not ask when he last heard such a thing. She did not have to.

It was in the ache she felt echoed through the bond.

It was in the way he curled himself about her, tightening his hold and keeping her as close as he possibly could.

He’d waited. Alone. Wondering where she might be, when she might come to him. He’d filled his home and his days with use and purpose, but it wasn’t the same as family.

As having someone to remind he was loved. That she cared for him for more than what he might do. How well he might heal.

“More than the Brum,” Orma continued, a strange lump of fondness nestling in her throat as she looked at him. “Which is saying quite a lot.” She swallowed thickly. “Although he cannot speak for himself, so perhaps that is presumptuous of me.”

Athan moved. Nuzzled his face into her middle, then brought his eyes up to hers. “We shall pretend it is more,” he agreed, eyes shimmering in the lamplight. “Because it pleases me to believe so.”

Orma’s lips quirked into a smile, and their little upset passed as if it had never been except...

Not quite. Because an understanding lingered. Of what he needed of her. More than touches and kisses. He needed her words. Needed them to fill too many years of silence. It did not come naturally, but she would try, for his sake.

And, maybe, for hers too.

“I am surprised he leaves us alone in here,” Orma mused, running her finger down the back of his neck, pleased with her reward as he shivered at her touch.

Athan snorted, teasing her shift down as far as he could make it. He’d run out of ties, and it was already scandalously open from his earlier tugging. He’d have to take it all the way off next, if he wanted more of her.

Her breath grew a little shorter, but she would not rush him. He’d find the ties on her shoulders when he was ready. And she would be pliant and keep quite still, and let him take in the sight of her, scars and all.

She would not even complain about the lamp.

Or... she would try not to.

“I knew there would be limits to my mate’s patience,” Athan breathed into her skin. “Sharing our bed with Brum might have been unreasonable.”

Her muscles tightened when he kissed the delicate skin beneath her breasts. She was smooth there, with no puckering scar to distract him.

And it felt...

She took a calming breath, but found it rather insufficient. It tickled, and bothered, and she wasn’t supposed to like it as much as she did.

“You were worried she would prefer his company to yours, admit it,” Orma teased, feeling flustered and out of sorts, but unwilling to do anything about it. “I suspect he would make awelcome bedfellow in the winters. Perhaps I will keep that in mind.”

It was a tease with no possibility of genuine threat, but he surged upward, enough that his fingers might delve at the knots on her shoulders and subdue the last of her ties. “He will be banished to the garden,” Athan pronounced, with as little weight as her own reflection. Athan would deny the Brum nothing.

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