…..:::::|. Fifty-Foot-O-Rope Inn .|:::::…..

She kissed him with a bit too much of a whimper and his mind snapped back to the present. He stared at her; expression flat and hot. If any other instance had been fuzzy he was very present now. Zero else mattered, to either of them. Not the Venge or those mancers or this accursed buzzing, not their Agency or even the pit of regret in her gut. The world could have cracked in half and there would still have been only the two of them.

Her mouth was trembling out begging words for anything of his he would give her. He wanted to pet and shower compliments on that exquisite instrument but his need now to take her was far too strong.

He remembered something about thighs and took the opportunity to shift them so he could wrap those round hocks just where he wanted them on his waist.

His lips parted as he stared down into her eyes, and his voice never sounded so sincere. "I want to make you mine."

"Please." She couldn't see straight for the fire in her skin but he sounded so incredibly delectable. "Please, make me yours." Her voice wasn't so much small as it was too far up into her need for it to come out fully-voiced.

He made a tiny moan of deep craving. He’d remembered wanting to hear this kind of need from her. A hundred thousand times before, he'd heard it. But it was a damn sight shocking to hear it in earnest from her now. The utterance so sent a shot of adrenaline up his middle that he growled on instinct. It would be hard to contain himself inside of that need.

"Zhuer men tend to be...um." He started deeply, a finger dipping into her warm mouth for a moment. "The feeling a bit different there...than here--"

"Yes. I'm finding. But...I want to know you, Siin." She whispered brushing fingers down his molded chest and middle.

"I don't want to hurt you." His words were saying but his hand was caressing her inner thigh. He knew she was flexible but finally let himself explore just how far that skill went.

"I'll…handle...the pain." She assured. Her memory tried to serve her shame from repeating the necromancer’s words but Siin's perfect lips were just too beautiful hovering above her and his tail smoothing itself about her waist down between her hips was far too heavy a caress to think ill of herself right now. "Share everything with me." Her eyes rolled and she licked a fang catching his gaze; as his fingers and tail familiarized themselves with her make. "All of you." Her voice was quivering and body sinking into acquiescence under his skill.

Her words raised his heat and assurance to the point of confidence.

So, with his hands steady and sure at her parted hips and his warm kiss softly encouraging hers to focus just on it, he dealt with her, carefully. Gently. Her arms slapped around his back, in the surprise of his struggling fit to occupy her but she held on to him. His whispers went to immediate care and encouragement but her sounds and words and pleas were all caught in her throat.

He felt different.

She honestly thought she'd felt this before but now was wholly sure that hadn't been the case. After a full moment of panting consideration, she realized, he felt good.

Very good.

Sharply painful but very good; like his body had been made only to fit hers. Like his love was tailor-crafted to be hers. Something in her was painfully elated, relieved almost, her arms wrestled to keep him close even as she tried to loose those very good words of him into his ears.

He liked them, those words so close; a long awaited validation of sorts. He had wanted to hear these words and pants and winces in his budding youth but to hear them now and have them shoved into his memory felt empowering.

He wanted to hear her kindly choke on those panting words more so he shifted their position a bit differently to work her better. It wasn't long before their elevating awareness of one another and new kinds of arousal faltered their gentle moment to create new room for base need to take over. She wrestled for more of him and relented whole new sounds he'd not known her to make.

...

They hadn't minded if anyone else in the inn could hear them or if they'd even been loud enough to draw attention but the thought left as quickly as it had entered. Siin didn't care if anyone else heard them. Only the present was important. Siin in this moment in this room belonging to no one significant, was teaching her what that meant; what the present was. What The Now was; the time between forgetting and remembering. What was precious in the here and now needed to be cared for, loved, handled; nothing in the regret of the past or the wonder of the future was to be minded...only the Now.

...

This wasn't anything like what Kodlaa had described of her escapades. This experience, the way he warmly lay upon her, was deeply sweet, painful yes, but sweet and welcomingly impassioned. He wasn't out to 'romp' or 'fool around' or 'have a little fun'; he was making love to her with a kiss that never left her lips. He was offering into her everything he'd always wanted to; honest, raw, and unapologetically vulnerable.

Halycind buried new moans into the meatiness of his shoulder as she began to melt into his serpentine movements. Memories of how he walked, how he ran, bounded, fought, all struck her mind now and she finally understood how hotly snakelike he was. In the wake of those realizations, her body begged him for even more. His smile was warm on her cheek and delighted in his kiss to her jaw.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

She, then, tried to hate something. She tried to hate herself for having been so drunk and stupid before but the hate couldn't last as his intent was soothing away all her loathing thoughts with every slow redefining stroke.

Thighs in his hands and deep kiss in her mouth as he laboured for her growing comfort, shooed whatever skittering dark thoughts she had been developing of herself. For she was being given new compliments to hold on to.

She felt beautiful, he told her. Mind-numbingly luscious, even to his schooled body. Everything about her femininity was like an answered wish from all the years he'd dreamt of her. Her softness, her motion, her reactions, her need. He'd wanted nothing less than this for their first time in one another’s arms. Every breath a moan. Every word a whimper against his smooth, sure, and soft force.

He’d opened his eyes and stared into her pretty ambers, kindly watching her let him learn of her, know her, make her his.

Halycind was glad she’d been given the chance to be his instead of anyone else's, but he assured her she’d already been enough for him, anyway. He’d been thinking he was going to say some of these things over wine. But saying them while making love to her was world’s better. Shudder-inducing even. She could feel it in him, hear it in his voice and the things his quivering words were trying to whisper to her.

Albeit, fewer words than sounds exited his throat but they were all honest, warm and honest, against her skin. He'd needed her in so many ways throughout his life and she smoothed reassuring moans and needingly loving palms down his back and across the ridges if his spine. She smiled and took his words. Wrapped her arms around him tighter and took those words and his moans and his love and buried them deep into the belly of her heart.

She had indeed missed him when they found him gone that fateful morning. Her best friend. Her protector. Gone without any notice or trace of his whereabouts. She had cried to Kodlaa, to Taphsel, to all others who knew their antics but for a while nothing soothed her of the loss of his friendship.

Now, here in his arms, swimming against his enkindled body to enrich their coupling, she suddenly began to understand why she'd had such a disdain for home and the growing need to leave Cashtiel Roams.

That anxiety had made her hands mischievous. That emptiness had strained her boredom. She'd needed him just as much as his words in bed with him now needed her. This solemn latch of understanding drew long forgotten tears from her eyes now and he kissed them, each.

“I missed you so much, Siin.” Her words were almost pure sob. The boy in him, who wanted to protect her for the rest of her life, made his arms wrap tightly around her and all his promises flooded her ears.

“I’m not going anywhere anymore.” His deep voice whispered.

She was starting to realize he had been the reason she climbed that stupid mountain. Not to attain some higher station she thought would fulfill her, but to find what she'd been missing. What she'd been deeply craving. She was so relieved circumstances had thrust them back together.

And this Siin was far from the child she ran the woods with, this one was a scholar of nuance, enticement, sensuality and power. His gripping palms held her fast in the crevice of her hips as they laboured, and she was again reminded of his body's deceptive strength. She hadn't recalled a time, other than his villa business or magecraft, when he had been this serious. She cursed herself for not having observed him better before this moon. She’d wished she’d taken in every one of his micro-expressions or quirks or flips of his hair.

Her fingers were in it now, his hair, holding on to him as he travailed for his occupancy. She briefly remembered that oily wad on the top of his head as a child and giggled in a hot whimper. He heard that laugh and knew what it was for, so he pressed his head into her fingers. His blue-black shoulder length tress was thick with mild waves and softly coarse and smelled so richly of fresh Buraamiran oils and citrus fruits she almost wanted to lick it; like she had the rest of him before. To her pleasure, however, strands of it made it into their breathy kiss as he worked them. It made her quake under him as he gripped her round hips differently, ushering words of fierce arousal into her neck.

The sharpness of his fangs found her skin there, at her neck, and he toyed with the switch between pleasure and pain. Her jaw reeled and he eyed that nine pointed star there again. A wild want hit him and he took a long lick up her neck to that star as his passion urged him to create for her an inseparable association to it.

She'd wanted a piece of him, so now she'd be able to think of nothing less than his fervid desire upon her every time she saw it. Something in him enjoyed this too, knowing they shared the same mark, but he soon found his mouth upon hers again, as they shifted.

He'd been thankful for his indomitable focus on his life's love during his cycles at the brothel, for they afforded him the learned confidence to show her everything she'd asked of him. All of him. All of the Siin she never knew. All of the lover she never understood was even in him. Whatever she’d said before couldn’t have been true, for this was indeed her moment of crimson gold; the moment they’d first shared the fire in their blood.

Any practiced positioning he'd chosen, his warm body and strength smoothed them into with fluid effort. They'd all been for her anyway, so he showed them all to her. Listening to her honest spillings of sensual wishes she’d not even expressed to Kodlaa, he let her make sweet choices against his skin and he'd respond in kind. And when some of her choices were rough he’d show her the same; always met with the kiss of serious interest.

The warmth of his palms, now, around her wrists there at the crown of her head as he kissed her, sent wild shots up her middle as all their dizzying passion swelled. That voice she'd wanted to hear for hours was both booming and soft so close to her ear. He was telling her things, loving things, naughty things, things to make her whine with her wrists pinned to the pillows. His seductive words were far too rich in desire to keep her legs from quaking around his waist.

There, too, were words spilling from her lips. Words she never knew she had the mind to say. Words in deep earnest she never thought she would find someone to say them to. These were the words he'd always wanted to hear from her. There were affirmations and beckons and wishes and promises and sheer surprise dripping down the inners of his hearing.

She could see waking up to him every single morning of her life. Bearing him all the pups he'd ever wanted to sire. Hunting ne'er-do-wells and thugs forever at his side. These words, in the midst of all their passion, were his and his alone. He didn't want to forget these. They were the promises that would shape the rest of their lives together. She was his, only and always.

Nothing and no one else even need write their story. It had already been written, right here, under the hunter moons. Here, in the Now, between them as they worked each other. Damning whatever he’d been thinking in the infirmary, his strength in the loving moment told him there would be no way he'd ever be able to forget this.

But they'd wholly forgotten what today had even been and this new thing around their wrists and how exhausted their bodies actually were but they gave each other all the tired breaths and moans they could muster in this moment.