Page 64 of Fate

Pressing.

Holding still.

His neck tense and his brow furrowed, as if he was going slow for her sake rather than for his. She reached up. Cupped his cheek in her palm. Because he was rather beautiful, her mate. With his high cheekbones and the pale hair that had a tendency to dip over his forehead in the most becoming of ways. She could forgive that he looked too much like...

She did not allow her thoughts to linger there.

Would not let that man have one moment’s quarter while she was entangled with her mate.

Hers.

His eyes met hers. Had she said it aloud? She didn’t know. Hadn’t meant to, if she did. But it somehow he seemed to know the turn of her thoughts, the claim she had on him.

And he turned his head so he could place a kiss to the centre of her palm, and she thought her heart might burst at the sudden burst of affection she felt for him.

It groaned, and suddenly there was no more pausing. No more waiting and teasing. Just fervent movement, insistent and not quite right, not quite...

She shifted, brought her leg up a little higher, and she had to close her eyes against the sudden sensation.

Better.

Much better.

He huffed out a breath, and her hand fell away. She couldn’t decide if she liked it better clutching at his back, smoothing her fingers through the downy feathers at the base of his wings, or clutching at the bedclothes beneath her.

She settled with one hand doing each, and his head dropped to tuck at the curve of her shoulder, hiding his expression, hidinghow something so simple and yet so fundamental could affect him.

That was all right. She could allow such little modesties, especially when it meant she could squirm all she liked, could smile and bite at her lip and do whatever else pleased her without fretting about anything at all.

She abandoned her hold on the bedclothes and settled it against the back of his head. Let her fingers drift through the soft hairs at his neck, the longer bits artfully cut. Did he have someone to tend his hair? Surely he did not do it himself, and she doubted he would be ushered into the kitchen along with the rest of his family to await a father’s skills with shears and a mother’s care with fresh wing feathers.

His lips parted. His teeth found her shoulder, and it might have been a shocking sensation as they pressed downward. Not hard, but present, and it kept her very still as she was more than aware that he had found his pleasures.

While she’d yet to find hers.

Which was all right. Surely.

Except that her body still thrummed with the tension of it, and she wasn’t ready for his weight to lift from her.

Certainly was not ready to sleep. Not when she hadn’t... when she’d...

She could not express her disappointment when he slipped out of her. When the feeling of delightful fullness was replaced with a cool sort of emptiness. When she was aware of how he’d soon be retreating from the bed to wash himself from the basin before he came back and rolled her back onto her own cot, perhaps not even aware how... neglected she felt.

Which hadn’t been his fault. She could acknowledge that in an exasperated sort of way. He’d touched her well, he’d kissed her and prepared her and...

He pulled his weight from her.

And she would not cry. Would not complain about how cold she felt when she realised her shift was up around her waist and the quilts had fallen to the sides, and it was somehow worse than when she was naked and sated and held no shame at all for any of the things they’d done.

And it wasn’t shame now. Just...

He did not leave the bed. Instead, he tucked himself behind her, his lips coming to her shoulder as he rolled her onto her side, his body following the entire length of her. “Where did you go?” Lucian asked, his lips skimming across the naked skin of her shoulder where her shift had fallen. “You were with me, and then...”

She swallowed, trying not to shift and wriggle as her body urged her to do.

Made all the worse when his hand reached around to offer her some relief, his ministrations entirely too slow. Which she would certainly not grasp hold of his hand to urge him to do it differently, because that was... that would be...

“I was thinking about who tends to your hair,” Firen answered, because that seemed the only thing to do when the alternative was to indulge her own boldness. “I got distracted.”