Page 108 of Sunder

She gripped him tighter and tried to contain the sudden burst of emotions. He smoothed her hair behind her ear, trying to coax her up so she might look at him. “What happened?” Athan asked, his thumb making slow patterns across her cheek. He was searching her eyes rather than the bond, as if he wanted her to answer on her own.

Her throat ached, and the delightful sensations she’d experienced had quieted under the flux of her own feelings, but that was all right. They’d come back with a little attention, she was certain. “You think I’m beautiful,” she confessed, embarrassed she needed to explain, but wanting to be honest with him. “And I think you mean it.”

He smiled, but it was tight about the edges. “I do,” he promised her. He was quiet for a moment, which allowed her to settle, to sigh, to feel what he must have before, certain if he began petting her hair, she would fall asleep just like this, sprawled out on top of him like a living blanket. But instead, he delved, bringing her attention back to him. “Was that truly one of your worries? That I would find you somehow... lacking?”

She did not know how to answer that. It was, but that wasn’t the whole of it. It was more that she’d been certain he’d findallof her lacking, the very circumstances of their mating, the limitations of what she might give him, whether in his home, or in his bed, or the children they would never have.Her marred sort of beauty felt very far down the list until suddenly they were undressing and he was so...

“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 uphim.

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.

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