Page 121 of Sunder

“Athan,” she answered, as his hands moved over her hips. Over scar tissue. Too-tight muscle. Smooth skin.

“I should like to...” he began, then stopped. Hesitated. As if she would deny him. Would complain and make him wait.

Was there more that should happen first? A set time, an amount of kisses to be shared before culminating in themore?

She didn’t know. Could only take a breath and run her finger down his chest and watch his eyes burn as he took in the view of her. “Like to what?” she asked, feeling horribly wicked for asking when she knew the turn of her own thoughts. She was teasing him, she realised. But also teasing herself. Testing her self-control. If she could be patient.

He was.

She however...

She didn’t expect him to break first. For him to suddenly sit upright. To catch her in his arms as she nearly fell backward. For his eyes to dance with good humour and desire in turn as he crushed her to him. Kissed her deeply. While she was wedged and suddenly far more needful than she’d been a moment before.

It was the angles. Or maybe the way he’d pounced at her. Claiming and holding, his hands caressing her sides, holding her waist. The way he—she swallowed thickly, her breath catching in her throat—moved his hips just once, pressing up at her.

“I want to have you,” Athan murmured into her ear.

Her heart hammered in her chest, and the threads between them sparkled and shone in the sunlight.

“Then have me,” she urged. Not a taunt, not a tease. A promise.

He made a strange sound at the back of his throat and brought one hand to cup her head and hold her in his kiss. Theother delved between them, urging her to rise just enough that he might join them.

In her mind, he would lay her down first. Would make it like it had been their first time.

She hadn’t expected to feel him prodding at her, seeking entrance with her perched in his lap. Wondered at the mechanics of it, wondered if she should move or keep still, should offer to lie back and let him do as he’d done before.

She did so want to be helpful.

But then he caught. Sank or pushed, or maybe it was a pull if she was the one on top of him, and she did not want to move, needed to adjust to the feel of him like this, her hands tight on his shoulders as she tried to make sense of the sensations.

It was pressure, firm and tight, made all the more because of the angle of his body against hers. She felt too sensitive to move, Athan’s breath a warm pant against her shoulder. “You all right?” he asked, smoothing circles into her waist with his thumb.

Then not her waist.

Toward her hip bone. Where he knew that cluster of bond to be, awaiting attention.

She gasped, finding it all a little too much, and she very nearly got off of him entirely.

She pushed at his hand, and that was better, the movement rocking her ever so slightly. Distracting her. “I...” she started to answer him, because that was important. To connect, to answer his queries because he cared about her comforts, and shehadbeen sore, but now...

She made another, experimental movement.

Then another.

While he abandoned his grip on her hair so he could smooth his hands over her back, her hips. And it felt much less like he was the one taking her, and instead...

He shifted back ever so slightly, and she couldn’t question about pillows or if his back was straining and they ought to move over. But it allowed her room to do as she pleased, which had been the point after all. Even if it meant not getting to dry him properly, even if she had forgotten to remove her shift and it was tangled and scrunched up between them.

Those things should matter.

Would. After.

Once she...

If she could only just...

“My Orma,” he murmured in her ear, pulling her into his embrace, obviously not caring for the increased distance between them.

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