And Weaver, yes. He was taking his time. Being gentle. One hand braced under my backside to hold me up against the rocks. The other stroked my hair. His muscles were tense, trembling.
He’d work himself into me slowly, if that’s what I needed. What I wanted.
It wasn’t what I wanted.
I stilled, drawing in a breath. He stilled too, face turning against my hair. Listening. Waiting.
But instead of giving him the words he was looking for, I tightened my legs around his waist in one abrupt movement, pulling him into me in a single thrust.
He hadn’t been expecting that. He let out a groan, fingers tightening around my body, while I sank my teeth into his shoulder—hard enough that I tasted blood. A whimper escaped my throat. The sudden burst of pleasure-pain consumed me, so intense my body tightened against it.
For several long seconds, we stayed like that, locked together in every way. Even our threads had been tied, intertwined, like strands in a braid. I felt his desire as clearly as my own—and with it, too, his concern, as he cradled my head against his shoulder.
Strange, how our breathing synced up of its own accord, our chests rising and falling at the same rapid rate.
I had never felt so close to another soul before.
It terrified me.
It intoxicated me.
Heartbeats passed. The pain, initially sharp, faded to a distant throb. I felt as if I had been split open, full in a way I never had been before.
“Good?” Atrius murmured into my hair, at last.
In response, I shifted my hips, testing the way it felt to move with him inside me and—
Weaver.
I threw my head back and let out a low, long moan. My entire body shuddered with the movement, rolling against him.
The pleasure was worth the pain. Gods, it was better for the pain.
He stiffened, nails tightening around me, fighting the primal desire to move with me against the desire to be gentle with me.
But I had already told him I didn’t want gentle.
I used my thighs to urge him to withdraw, and a slow, predatory smirk spread over his lips as he understood what I was doing. What I was giving him permission to do.
Another stroke, harder this time. I urged him back into me fiercely. The balance of sensations now skewed pleasure, hunger, desire for more.
I was louder this time, my moan a strangled gasp, which earned a wordless, approving sound from him.
Weaver, I wanted to bottle that sound and keep it. That pleasure imbued his entire body, his threads, vibrating in mine.
This time he ground against me, hips circling as if to make sure his cock branded every part of me, as deep as he could go.
Oh gods—gods—
He hit something there, something deep, making me claw at him and let out a fully involuntary cry.
I yanked him closer, a rough movement with my legs, harsh and demanding.
A challenge.
The bars of the cage snapped.
He kissed me hard, his tongue invading my mouth with the force of his next thrust, which left me whimpering against him. Suddenly, his hands were at my wrists, roughly pinning them above my head, forcing my body to stretch against the stone—exposing it all to him.
His next thrust wasn’t gentle.
It was exactly what he had warned me of. His presence, a force of pure lust and impulse and raw, uncontainable power surrounded me, and I let it take me over, let my own soul meld with it, our threads now so tangled that neither of us would be able to tell where one stopped and the other began.
I relished it. Relished the control and the relinquishment in every stroke, every thrust, every time his cock bottomed out within me, grinding against me. Pleasure built there, where we were connected, the entire universe disappearing except for him and me and our bodies and everything that I still wanted from him. Weaver, needed from him.
Gods, what a fool I was for thinking his tongue was the pinnacle of what pleasure could be. That was nothing. Nothing compared to feeling him surge into me, again and again, before I could catch my breath.
With one particularly powerful thrust, my entire body arched against the rock, the sound escaping my lips wild and wordless and too-loud. My body rocked against it, matching the force, chasing the pinnacle of pleasure that rapidly rushed toward me—rushed toward both of us, I knew, because I could feel it in his aura, maddening and close, fraying our final threads of control.
I needed him to sever it with me.
My head nearly slammed back into the stone with the force of our passion, but one of his hands slid between my hair and the rock, the other still holding my wrists firmly above my head.
He held himself there, deep, both of us trembling around it. The sudden lack of friction was torturous, even if the depth hit me exactly where I needed him.