It was all he needed. All she needed.
Cassian’s mouth met hers, and the world ceased to exist.
The kiss was punishing and exalting, thorough and frenzied, a claiming and a yielding. She had no words for it. She flung her arms around him, pressing as close as she could get, meeting his tongue stroke for stroke.
He growled and nudged her back toward the bed, his mouth devouring and tasting and saying everything she couldn’t yet voice, but one day, maybe soon, she could. For him, she’d fight to find the courage to say it.
The backs of her legs hit the mattress, and he broke their kiss to attend to their clothes.
She expected tearing and rending. But he gently removed her dress, fingers trembling as they unhooked each button down the back of her gown. Her own trembled as she removed his shirt.
Then they were naked, and staring at each other again with those unspoken words in their eyes, and she let him lay her upon the bed. Let him climb atop her.
There was nothing rough or wild about what followed.
She didn’t want his head between her legs. Didn’t even want his fingers. When he slid one down the center of her, she let him feel that she was ready and then took his hand, interlacing their fingers as her other wrapped around his cock and guided him toward her.
He nudged at her entrance, and then halted. His eyes met hers.
And then Cassian kissed her deeply as he slid home.
She gasped. Not at the fullness of having him inside her—but at that thing in her chest. The thing that thundered and beat wildly as he looked at her again, slid out nearly to the tip, and thrust back in.
On that second thrust, the thing in her chest—her heart … On that second thrust, it yielded entirely to him.
On his third, he kissed her again.
On the fourth, Nesta twined her arms around his head and neck and held him there as she kissed and kissed and kissed him.
On the fifth, the walls of that inner fortress of ancient iron came down. Cassian pulled away, as if sensing it, and his eyes flared as they met her own.
But he kept moving in her, making love to her thoroughly, unhurriedly. So Nesta let all that lay beyond those iron walls unspool toward him. Thread after thread of pure golden light flowed into him, and he met it with his own. Where those threads wove together, life glowed like starfire, and she had never seen anything more beautiful, felt anything more beautiful.
She was crying, and she didn’t know why—only that she never wanted it to end, this binding between them, the feeling of him moving so deep in her that she wanted him imprinted beneath her skin. His tears dripped onto her face, and she reached up to brush them away. He leaned his head into her hand, nuzzling her palm.
“Say it,” Cassian whispered against her skin.
She knew what he meant. Somehow, she knew what he meant.
Nesta waited until he’d thrust again, driving as deep into her as he’d ever gone, and whispered, “You’re mine.”
He groaned, thrusting hard.
She whispered, “And I am yours.” Those golden threads between their very souls shone with the words, as if they formed a harp strummed by a heavenly hand.
For it was music between their souls. Always had been. And his voice was her favorite melody.
“Nesta.” She heard the plea in her name. He was close, and wanted her to go with him. Wanted to tumble into ecstasy together. It was important to him, for some reason, that for this joining, this moment, they went as one.
Cassian lowered his head to her breast, teeth clamping around her nipple as his tongue flicked against it.
It was all Nesta needed to spur her toward climax. She moaned, and he did it again, timing his tongue to the hard thrust of his cock. Again, again.
The golden threads shimmered and sang, and she couldn’t take it, the music between their souls, the feel of his body on her and in her, and—
Release blasted through her, obliterating every last bit of that inner wall, razing mountains and forests, wiping the world clean with light and pleasure, stars crashing down from the heavens in a never-ending rain.
Cassian roared as he came, and the sound was the summons of a hunt, a symphony, a single clear horn playing as dawn broke over the world.
There was only this moment, this thing shared between them, and it lasted for an eternity. Time was of no consequence. Time had always stood still around him, around them.
He spilled and spilled himself into her, longer than ever before, as if he’d been holding himself back all the times before now, as if he had let his own inner wall come crumbling down.
Forever, forever, forever.
The word was echoed in their every breath, every pounding of their hearts, so in sync that they seemed to beat as one.