Page 64 of Lucky or Knot
As I bottomed out, the thickest part of my cock opening him up, Raven wrapped his arms around me, clutching my back, pulling me down almost frantically.
“I thought I’d watched you die,” he said wildly, and his voice hitched. My chest tight, I clutched him close, braced my knee, and thrust into him, so deep I punched the air out of him in a gasp. “Tony, I thought you were, yes, that, please—you were willing to, to sacrifice everything for me, and no one of my own kind would ever have done it—Tony!”
Fucking Christ, so tight, so perfect around me, his nails gouging down my back, his panting breaths echoing in my ear as I buried my face in his hair, his magic lighting me up from theinside the way I was filling him to the limit, the grip of his thighs around my hips, urging me on.
There was that humming in my ears again, the way the coin had sounded, almost. Only this had a higher, more melodic timbre, and I knew it was him, his pleasure, his desire, his inherent magic, soaking through my skin and suffusing me.
I lost myself in him, shaking apart, my climax torn out of me by the whirlwind that was Raven. He cried out as I knotted him, forcing it as deep as it could go and pushing my come into him, and he pulled me even deeper than that, as if he wanted to consume me.
The world came back slowly, in fits and starts: the sweat cooling on my shoulders and legs, his still-damp hair stuck to my face, my breath stuttering as he shifted a bit under me, tugging on my knot—and on that point under my ribs where his magic had burrowed in and taken up residence.
Raven was petting me, soothing, up and down my spine. He sighed, turned his head, nuzzled my ear, kissed the side of my neck and made me shiver.
“Were you listening?” he asked, the words hushed but still startling in the quiet of the bedroom. “We don’t love. We don’t even trust. We hide our names, we make careful bargains, we form alliances, and we dally with those we find beautiful. But we never sacrifice.”
He sighed and kissed me again. Was that all? Would a subtle fairy lover have understood what he meant? I didn’t, although if I hadn’t been so bone-weary and wrung out, maybe I’d have been able to make sense of it. To me, it mostly sounded like my old college buddy’s descriptions of going to law school. He was grateful, I could tell that much. But I’d never wanted his gratitude.
But hang on, there was something tickling the edge of my brain…
I managed to push myself up on my elbows to see his face, and I stole a kiss along the way, lingering, soft and sweet.
When I pulled back, his eyes were troubled, a furrow between his arched brows.
“Tony, I—”
“You sacrificed yourself for me, though,” I cut in abruptly. “Or you tried, anyway. When we were on the stairs. You tried to give yourself up so they’d let me go. And then you helped me get out of there when I couldn’t move on my own, even though you could’ve died if my plan didn’t work. Which you didn’t think it would.”
He laughed a little, shaking his head. “Be honest, if you were me, would you have immediately said, ‘Oh, what a well-thought-out idea, I have complete confidence’? You jumped through a flaming hoop on the command of a man with rhinestones on his jacket.”
“Speaking of sacrificing for you,” I grumbled, and raised my eyebrows at him. “And don’t dodge the question.”
“I know,” he said softly. “Believe me, I know. Also, those were statements, and you didn’t ask a quest—oh, very well, there’s no need to flash those eyes at me. Yes. I was willing to sacrifice for you. Because you earned my trust. I told you that. No one ever has before. You changed me,” he added, sounding not all that pleased about it, “and I think, I think I belong to you as much as you do to me, actually.”
Not without a mating bite, but I choked that comment down. Slowly. I needed to think before I acted, for once, and go slowly, because I suddenly realized, with a warm, joyous ballooning of hope, that Raven hadn’t been trying to let me down easy—or at all. He’d been trying to understand something that had, for the entirety of his life, been not only totally beyond his comprehension but outside the fabric of his reality. When we’d met, his disregard for anything beyond his need to undohis magical fuck-up had left me baffled and angry and vengeful, beating my head against a brick wall of a completely different way of existing in the world.
But I’d made the effort. I’d pushed, and I’d tried, and I’d worked at it stubbornly (and sometimes suicidally) until I’d helped him to a solution that fit his parameters. Raven was worth it.
He seemed to be trying to do the same. For me. To act like he loved me the human way, even if he couldn’t wrap his brain around the idea that he might be capable of feeling it, too.
Fairies. For fuck’s sake.
I kissed him again, because I could.
“Answer me this, then,” I said, after thinking about it for a second. I had to meet him halfway on this, try to put it in terms that would be common ground. “Would being with me make you happy? You know, the human way. Kind of human. Like me. Sharing a bed, meals, a life. Somewhere that’s not Vegas, maybe? Not sleeping with anyone else, I can’t do the free and easy, anyone who’s beautiful thing.”
“Yes,” he answered without hesitation. His dawning smile lit him up from the inside, making him even more luminous than usual. “Yes.”
Another kiss seemed necessary, and then more kisses, and then I’d started to rock my hips again, lazily feeling out how much I’d stretched and owned him, how much more thoroughly I could do it again.
I took him like that, at my leisure. At our leisure. Free of anyone else, or any expectations. All mine, because I could make him happy in a way no one else in two realms could.
We didn’t break my bed like we’d destroyed the ones at those two hotels, mainly because my one investment in decent furniture had been a steel-reinforced, alpha-proof bed frame, but it creaked ominously, and Raven laughed, high andunselfconscious, dissolving into giggles when I nipped at his throat and growled.
Somewhere near the end of the night, as the desert’s pink sunrise started to filter through the half-open blinds, I tucked Raven closer against my chest, staring up at the shadowy ceiling. His head fit perfectly on my shoulder, and I only breathed in his hair and started to choke once in a while, something I’d need to get used to.
“There’s one thing I want,” I said, and Raven stirred and murmured something incoherent, mostly asleep and annoyed that I wouldn’t shut up, if I had to guess. I squeezed his waist. “Seriously. One thing. Will you ever trust me enough to tell me your name, do you think?”
He didn’t answer me for long enough that I thought he’d probably pretend he hadn’t heard me.
