CORVIN

It was definitely a bad idea asking Marco to call her to my room. But it was tradition and I needed to uphold it.

Staring at her right now I knew it was a mistake. A mistake that would cause me a lot to stay in control especially when she looks the way she does right now.

Amaris walked into my room and I closed the door.

Black lace. Thin and barely there, I looked at her for one full second and turned to the wall behind her head because one full second was already more than I could afford.

I crossed to the chair, "Take the bed."

Her head tilted, "That is very considerate of a man who told me all he wants is an heir."

No sharpness in it. Just the fact dropped between us.

I sat down, "Why did you do it, why admit it in front of the whole pack."

She settled on the edge of the bed and pulled her knees up, "My father told me to come here presenting as a virgin, that was his lie not mine, I was maintaining it because it was already in place." She exhaled. "When Darius stood up and handed me the way out I took it."

"Who did you sleep with."

Her eyes came straight to mine, "It does not matter who, it changes nothing about the arrangement."

She was right. I let it go.

"Nothing changes," I said, "the arrangement stands, the heir plan stands, if you want it handled medically I will arrange it, I have no interest in forcing anything on you."

"So when I said breed me," her eyes stayed on mine, "you took that to mean what exactly."

"I took it to mean you were agreeing to the arrangement in whatever form it required."

"In whatever form."

"Yes."

She turned toward the window and I looked at the window on my side of the room because looking at the same window meant looking at her reflection and that was not better.

"What happens now with Freya in the pack."

"Her being here does not change your position as Luna."

"That is a vague answer."

"Most things require vague answers."

She turned back, "She came to your room tonight before I did," direct and flat, "I am not an idiot."

I said nothing.

"Are you going to sit over there all night."

"Yes."

"Okay," she said. Nothing else.

The lamp threw warm light across the room and she rested her chin on her folded forearms facing the window, hair loose across her shoulders, completely settled at four in the morning after everything the night had held, the ceremony, the blood bowl, Darius, Freya on my arm in that boardroom, all of it, and she sat there like none of it had touched her and some of it clearly had and she was not going to show me which parts.

I had been telling myself for weeks that she was the bloodline, the heir, a position in a plan, and I had been doing a progressively worse job of believing it every time she lifted her chin in a room full of people twice her age and held her ground without blinking.

And I had stood in that dungeon corridor tonight and held Freya’s hands through the bars and felt the pull of that bond hit me clean in the chest the way it always had, real and immediate and not asking my permission, and then I had come upstairs and mated this woman in front of the whole pack and she had sat in my study afterward and said breed me without her voice shaking once.

Both things were sitting in my chest at the same time and I had no clean place to put either of them.

I got up from the chair.

Sat on the edge of the bed beside her and she turned her face toward me and waited, not pulling back, not leaning in, just present and still, and I put my thumb against her jaw and she turned into it, the small involuntary press of someone not accustomed to being touched without an agenda behind it, and that small press undid something in me I had been keeping carefully fastened.

I held her face in both hands and kissed her.

Slow first, and then her mouth opened and her fingers curled into my shirt and pulled and she made a sound low in her throat that went straight through me, and I pulled back and looked at her face, her eyes open and watching mine, and I pulled the strap of the black lace off her shoulder.

I ran my mouth down her throat, across her collarbone, feeling her pulse jump under my lips, and she tipped her head back against the headboard and her hands slid from my shirt to my shoulders and gripped. I pulled the lace down and took her breast in my hand, squeezed firmly, felt her nipple harden against my palm, and put my mouth to it.

The sound she made hit me somewhere I was not prepared for and her fingers dug into my shoulders and pulled me harder against her and her chest rose into my mouth and her breathing came apart fast, and I worked at her with my mouth and kept my hand moving on the other and she arched into both at once, head pressed back, a low continuous sound leaving her throat that she had stopped trying to contain.

I lifted my head and looked at her face.

Lip caught between her teeth, eyes half open, chest rising and falling in pieces, the black lace pushed down around her waist.

Her hands moved to my shirt buttons and I caught her wrists and she looked at me and I looked at her and I let go.

She pushed my shirt off my shoulders and pressed both palms flat against my chest and I felt every point of contact with a clarity that had no business being that sharp, and she put her mouth to my collarbone and I put my hand in her hair and held her there and closed my eyes.

Then I laid her back.

My hand moved from her breast down her stomach, slow and deliberate, and she watched my face the entire way down, her hands on my forearms, not stopping me, and I slid my hand between her thighs and felt the heat of her through the thin fabric and her hips pushed up toward my hand before she caught herself, and I pulled the fabric aside.

She gripped the sheet with both fists.

I pushed one finger inside her and felt her clench tight and hot around it immediately and she turned her face into the pillow and the sound that came out was wrecked and low and her hand came down hard on my forearm and gripped it like she needed something to hold onto, and I added a second finger and held her hip down with my other hand and built a rhythm, watching her face the whole time, the way her jaw had gone completely slack, the way her hips rolled against my hand with nothing held back, the way her mouth kept falling open like she was about to say my name and closed before she got it out.

I could feel how close she was, the way she had gone tight and trembling around my fingers, her thighs pressing hard against my hand, her breathing in short broken pieces, her knuckles white in the sheets.

I curled my fingers forward.

Both her hands came down on my wrist and gripped hard and her back lifted clean off the bed and she was right there, right at the edge of it, her whole body pulled tight and shaking and her mouth open and—

Three knocks at the door.

Soft. Measured. The exact spacing between each one that I had known for years before I believed I had lost them forever.

My hand went completely still.

Amaris opened her eyes and looked at my face and read everything that had just moved across it and went very quiet under my hands.

I pulled back.

Stood up.

Crossed to the door and opened it.

Freya stood in the hallway in the plain clothes from the cell, arms at her sides, chin level, and her eyes moved from my face to Amaris lying on the bed with the black lace pushed down around her waist and her hair loose against the pillow and her face completely open and undone in a way she would not have allowed if she had known anyone was about to see it.

Freya looked at her.

Took in every detail of it, slowly and completely, the way she always absorbed difficult things, without flinching and without looking away from any part of it.

Then she looked at me.

Her jaw tightened. Just slightly. The only thing she allowed through.

And said nothing.