“No more punishment. No more pain,” I breathed, rubbing myself tenderly against him, feeling him throb and groan. “We’ve had enough of that for a hundred lifetimes.” I placed my hands on either side of his jaw, kissing him softly before locking gazes fiercely with him. I wanted to banish that haunted look from his eyes. “I forgive you, Wylf. You may not accept that yet, but I do. You can hate yourself if you want to, but I never will. Not anymore. You’re my husband. My mate. For as long as we both shall live, remember? ’Til death do us part. Well, death already came, and even that couldn’t part us. Because I’m still fucking here and I still fucking love you.”
I kissed him again, then reached to undo the laces of his trousers. He caught my wrists in his hands, as if to stop me.
“It’s OK, Wylf,” I murmured against his lips. “You don’t need to worry about protecting me. The prophecy is fulfilled. It’s done. You’re free now.”
Wylf shuddered and released my wrists.
I undid his trousers, pulling out his cock. It was thick and heavy and so fucking hard, glistening at the tip. The shape had changed, and I stared in fascination at the way it bulged in the middle, a hot, round swell so engorged it almost looked painful.
I reached a tentative hand forward, brushing the swell with my fingers. Wylf hissed in response, and I started to stroke, using both hands, wrapping them around the thick bulge and kneading it experimentally.
As I touched him, a prickling fever spread through my spine. My blood heated, and goosebumps pebbled down my arms. I shivered, weakness gripping me, weakness I thought I’d largely overcome in my recovery.
“Wylf,” I moaned, afraid of the sudden change in my body.
“Torrance, beloved, you’re starburning.”
Wylfrael eased me onto my back in the bed while my limbs convulsed, frosted fire licking through my veins. I was burning, boiling and freezing, every nerve inflamed to the point of ecstatic agony. My nipples hardened, and I arched on the bed, shivering uncontrollably. Something in me was changing. I was changing. Slick fluid soaked the place between my legs, and my insides clenched and stretched, feeling hot and cold and so fucking empty.
“I need you,” I groaned, the words distorted by my chattering teeth. Wylf ran soothing hands down my body, massaging trembling tightness from my quivering thighs.
“You need my knot,” he corrected me gruffly.
“No,” I whimpered. “Need you.”
“Torrance, curse me, Torrance. I’ll give you everything. Everything I have, everything I am.” He eased my thighs apart with a choked groan. “Stone of the sky, you’re already so ready for me.”
“Hurry,” I cried. I needed, needed, needed, right there, right between my legs. Deep inside, I needed fullness and firmness and pressure. I knew instinctively that it was the only thing that would help me, the only thing that would save me now.
Wylfrael pressed his slick tip to my wetness, and I trembled, breath burning in my throat. I fisted the furs, my spine arching right off the mattress. The pain in my chest was a distant echo to the agony between my legs, a need only Wylfrael could fill.
He pressed inside, sinking all the way up to his knot in one brutal movement. Before now, it had taken foreplay and adjusting to even get this much of him inside me. But now? It was nowhere near enough.
Wylfrael rocked into me, his knot grazing my folds with every thrust, a teasing kiss of sensation that made my fever spike higher. I was a desperate thing, wild and writhing, trying to drag him harder into me.
“I give you everything, Torrance,” Wylf rasped, punctuating each word with a hard thrust. “My knot. My life. My death.”
His words cut through the manic heat in my brain.
“Wait!” I gasped. “If you do this, you’ll be mortal. You’re asking me to cause your death! You’re basically asking me to kill you someday!”
“Good,” he growled fiercely. “So, kill me, then.” He grabbed my hands, holding them high over my head, twining his fingers between mine as he pumped into me. “This is what I want, Torrance. I want to be mortal with you. I won’t survive the loss of you – not again.” The motions of his hips grew more chaotic, less controlled. Every thrust drove his knot a little harder against me. Not all the way inside, but almost, a maddening press that made my eyes roll back in my head.
“This is what I want,” he said again, directly against my ear. “I’d rather live for half a heartbeat and make it count than live ten thousand empty lives without you.”
I wept, overwhelmed by his words and the starburn and him. I nodded over and over again, my hair tangling under my head.
“Yes, Wylf, yes. We’ll make it count. I swear, we’ll make it count.”
Wylf buried his face in my neck. His thrusts quickened, as did his breathing, until I was a sopping wet and sobbing mess, desperate and whining when I’d never whined during sex in my entire mortal life. His knot pressed close, so fucking close, teasing me, torturing me, until, with a sudden forceful movement and a guttural cry, he plunged all the way inside.
I gripped Wylfrael, my eyes so wide but seeing nothing, hearing nothing, sensing nothing except him, above me and inside me, his knot hitting some desperate place, stretching it, soothing it, until I was coming like I’d never come before. I quivered and clenched, milking him, my passage fluttering around his knot as he drove it slightly deeper and then froze.
“Torrance, beloved, I give this to you now. Yours and only yours,” he moaned against my ear. I nodded jerkily, tipping my head to the side, searching for his mouth. He started to kiss me, then stopped, his entire body arching as he came, his knot twitching and vibrating inside me with the force of his pleasure and what it meant, what we’d done.
I sobbed again, the beauty and the heaviness of the moment pressing down on me. Wylfrael was mine. And now, he was mortal. Bound to me, his life forever fused to mine. He’d live by my side and die by my side. And we could have a child.
I wept and held him and trembled with the poignant, ephemeral beauty of the future that awaited us. Short, perhaps, by his standards. But absolutely perfect by mine.
Wylfrael remained inside me for a long time, his knot locking us together until it slowly began to return to a more normal size. I fell asleep with him like that, exhausted and filled and never having felt more safe in my entire life. At some point in sleep, I was aware of him easing out of me with a grunt, and when I moaned, half-asleep, he made soothing sounds, kissed my hair, and drew my back close against his chest.
When dawn’s light filtered into the room, the starburn returned in full force, a chilled heat, a primal need that made my already weak limbs into weights I could barely lift or move until I was shivering in Wylf’s arms, whimpering and whining.
“Will I always feel like this?” I moaned as Wylf pressed into me from behind, his shaft hard, the centre swollen and ready.
“No,” he groaned, sinking in up to his bulge, wetting the thick swell with my fluids before pressing it fully inside with a hiss. “The starburn is temporary. I don’t know if yours is lasting so long because you’re human, and you’re sensitive, or because the first time it started, it was interrupted.”
Interrupted when I died.
I didn’t want him to talk about that anymore. Didn’t want to think about death or grief right now. I just wanted my husband to take care of me.
And he did.
He stroked over my breasts, belly, and clit, making me come mere seconds after he’d filled me. He tumbled into bliss soon after, exploding into my shuddering core.