“I’m warning you, this is not a stable situation,” she told him, shaking.

“So I can see.” Standing nude in front of her, he rubbed her arms. “What can I do to help?”

Greedily she spread her hands across the expanse of his chest, running her unsteady fingers through the dark, crisp hair that narrowed to a thin strip down his abdomen, to his erect cock. Grasping his erection in both hands, she sank to her knees.

Breathing hard, she murmured, “This feels a lot steadier.”

He laughed. “That’s not what I had in mind.”

“But you’re not going to argue, are you?” Slanting a sidelong look at him, she opened her mouth and took him in.

Everything felt so much more intense as a lycanthrope. His scent, the scrape of his fingernails across her skin, the roar of his magic that he no longer bothered to conceal. She felt giddy with it, with him, as she opened her throat to take him in all the way. His cock jumped as she suckled at the tip, then swallowed his length, and pulled back to caress the head again.

“I’m beginning to see your point about the unstable situation,” he muttered. Cupping the back of her head, he fucked her mouth. His muscles were tight, his skin hot.

Closing her eyes, she gave into the moment, the salty taste of him and the hot, hard glide of his erection against her tongue. His thrusts became shorter, more urgent. Willingly, she opened up to it, stroking the long, taut length of his thighs and cupping his tight sac at the root of his cock.

Suddenly he pulled out fast, swearing. She looked up at him in disappointment. “No!” she complained. “You said, Take me. I was taking you. You don’t get to pull out.”

His breath shuddered audibly in his throat. Caressing her cheek, he gritted, “Coming in your mouth sounds like the hottest thing ever, but… not this time. I need to look in your eyes.”

As soon as he said it, she wanted it too. She needed to see his soul housed in his body—that vital connection she had fought so hard to save.

“I’d like that,” she whispered.

She rose to her feet, and, taking her hand, he led her to the bed. When he sat at the foot, she moved to straddle his lap, facing him. As she wrapped her arms around his head, he nuzzled her breasts, kissing first one then the other. With one hand, he stroked at her sex, while he stroked her back with the other.

She felt so loved and desired, pleasure lit her from the inside, turning her incandescent. When he gripped his erection and positioned it at her opening, she pushed down, taking him in deeper each time she moved against him. Soon she had him in as deep as she could get.

Grasping her by the hips, he thrust up in time to her rhythm. The pleasure spiraled higher, hotter. She couldn’t take him in hard enough, deep enough. She needed—she needed…

With the ball of his thumb, he found her clitoris and rubbed, and the explosion that rocked her was so sudden and sharp she sobbed aloud.

Watching her closely, he moved steadily, providing the right pressure and the right penetration to help her spiral higher. “Give it to me again,” he urged against her lips. “Sidonie, it’s been fucking weeks. I’ve been tight and aching the whole time, and I thought you might never want to see me again.”

Her shaking lips moved under his. “I felt the same way. I need you the same way.”

“It’s okay now, my darling girl. Don’t strain for it. Let me bring it to you.”

Trusting him, she hung on to his shoulders, letting him caress her while she flexed on his lap. He was endlessly inventive, nipping at her lower lip, sliding a finger inside her along with his cock.

She lost herself in total sensuality, drifting with the play of their bodies, until he grasped hold of her firmly and picked her up. Without withdrawing, he turned to lay her out on the bed, coming down with her and settling between her legs.

It was the simplest position of all, entirely pleasurable and comforting at once. She reveled in his weight, in his penetration, stroking his back and murmuring wordlessly as he kissed her. He picked up the rhythm and the strength of his thrusts, and she rose with it, until he drove at her, hard and steadily, and when he stopped to grind against her, he hit it just right, and she climaxed again.

He rocked with the waves of pleasure, then thrust hard, and hard again. Bowing his shoulders around her, he shuddered with his own completion. She stroked his shoulders as she watched him.

She didn’t think it was possible to love him any more, to feel any more, but then in the middle of his own climax, while she could still feel him pulsing inside, he looked deep into her eyes.

“I’m yours,” he whispered. “Don’t ever doubt it. Don’t doubt me.”

That moment.

Tears slipped out the corners of her eyes as she took it in.

“No,” she promised. “I never will.”

They spent the next few months at the farmhouse, taking their time to get to know each other and exploring the moors. When they’d had enough time together so she could unclench a bit, she remembered she needed to warn him about their yearly obligation in Azrael’s Wild Hunt.

He took it better than she had expected. “If that’s the price it took for me to come back to be with you, it will be entirely worth it,” he told her. His features filled with the curiosity she was coming to associate with any time he became acquainted with something magical and new. “Besides, it should be interesting.”

She snorted. “I guess you could say that.”

On more mundane matters, they were both terrible cooks, but Morgan was more patient at trying to figure out recipes. Sid couldn’t be bothered.

“I don’t like to cook, and I don’t like to clean toilets,” she said. “And I’m more than happy to pay someone else to do those things.”

Morgan had little to no interest in television shows other than the news, but he was a voracious reader. Sid dabbled at both.

Morgan insisted she swear a pact to avoid any news about Isabeau or Oberon. “I’m done,” he said as they sprawled on the bed one lazy afternoon. “I’m out. I was done so many years ago. It was never my conflict to begin with, and I don’t want to know anything more about it.”

“Of course,” she agreed, resting against his chest. “Part of me feels like I should have been more bloodthirsty about going after Isabeau, but you know something? When it came down to it, most of me didn’t want to give her any more of my time.”