“Torrance,” Wylf said. He gathered my hair in his hands, inhaling against it before draping it over my right shoulder and speaking against my left ear. “I need you to know that everything I said at the ceremony was true. It was not a show for the Sionnachans. It was real.”

I shuddered, my throat constricting. I nodded, my ear moving against his mouth as I did so.

“It was the same for me.” I laughed. “Against all better judgment, Wylfrael of the stone sky and Sionnach, I seem to have fallen completely in love with you.”

He groaned, long and low, against me, as if he’d been waiting, holding his breath, to hear exactly that.

“You are my beloved,” he said, softly yet fiercely. “You have been for quite some time. Far longer, I think, than you have loved me.”

I snorted.

“You’re telling me, Mister Watch-You-While-You-Sleep,” I said, leaning my head back against his chest.

“Forgive me for the times I loved you and did not know it,” he murmured. “I may be older than you, but in this, I have very little experience. I’ve had relationships before, but I’ve made it a point never to love a mortal. Until now.”

“What changed?” I breathed, goosebumps rising as his lips pressed against the side of my neck.

“You,” he breathed. “You changed everything, Torrance. I’m still wondering what magic you’ve unleashed upon me. Every thought I have is shaped like you. Every breath I breathe tastes like you. I am bewitched, maybe even broken, but I find I do not care as long as I can have you.”

I shook my head, my hair rubbing against his lapel.

“I’m not a stone sky god,” I reminded him. “Or a Riverdark mage. I’m just a human. No magic,” I said.

“I beg to differ,” he said, sliding his hands down to grip my waist. “You’re like a new star in my world. Beloved. Bright. So beguiling that I am on my knees before you, hoping you’ll turn just a little of your light on me.”

I really was going to cry now.

But before I did, I had to tell him something. Make sure he understood.

I spun in his grasp, placing my hands on either side of his jaw and looking directly into his searing blue eyes.

“Everything I’ve told you is true, Wylf. Everything. I wasn’t lying about how I came here, how I was abducted. I just need you to know I’ve been honest with you about that. I didn’t lie.”

His brow contracted, his mouth twisting.

“I believe you.”

I let out a breath, reeling with the relief of his words. My hands slid down to his chest as I sagged forward. I hadn’t realized just how much I needed him to believe me about this. For him to really, truly hear me. See me.

“I am sorry I didn’t before,” Wylf said, vicious regret tightening his words. “I am sorry for many, many things. Your imprisonment. Your pain when I gave you Rúnwebbe’s webbing. I can change none of it now.” He lifted my chin with a gentle touch, his gaze bright with pain and promise. “But I can vow, with all the sincerity and solemnity of the stone sky and Sionnach, that I will do everything in my power to make it up to you, beloved. I will spend every single day, every moment, fixing things. Building and repairing and loving you. Until our marriage, our life, is as beautiful as you are.”

He lowered, and I thought he would kiss me, but he spoke again, his words a physical touch on my lips.

“We began in ruins, you and I. But I swear to you that we will end in splendour.”

This would end, someday. He knew it, and I knew it. I’d die, and he’d go into exile. But it just made here, now, all the more important. One life to live, to love. One half a precious heartbeat to make it all count.

I rose on my tiptoes and pressed my mouth to his, open and wet, inviting and searching. He answered with barely restrained need, surging into my mouth with his tongue, his fingers turning to iron against my skin.

This time, there were no questions, no rules, no hesitations. The dress was stripped away, and Wylfrael laid me down on it tenderly before spreading my legs and dipping his tongue inside me. As I moaned and writhed, I had the dizzying feeling that I was floating, high above the floor, caressed by a frothy, silky cloud lit by starlight.

In a way, I was lit by starlight. Wylfrael’s wings beat in the air behind his custom-made suit, an entire sky for me to stare up at while he circled my clit with his tongue and worked his fingers inside. My breasts and body were blue and glowing with him as I came, shuddering, against his hot mouth.

The azure light intensified as he rose up, leaning over me, positioned between my legs, priming his cock with my slick arousal. I whimpered my husband’s name as he worked his tip over my convulsing entrance, and his hips flexed forward, an unintentional shiver of movement.

“Not yet,” he rasped. “Want to make sure you’re ready.”

“I am,” I murmured. I ran my hands down his body, sliding my fingers under the waistband of the trousers he hadn’t even fully taken off in his hurry. I gripped his hips, trying to pull him into me. He groaned, his eyes fluttering shut for a moment before he opened them again, looking drunk on desire. He lowered himself onto his elbows, his mouth roaming across my chest to my right nipple in a movement that was somehow both worshipful and greedy, like I was something sacred and something to be devoured all at once.

“Wanton little wife,” he rumbled, his voice sliding over me like dark chocolate, rich and heated and making my insides tighten. “So beautiful in her need for me.”

“I do need you,” I panted, my fingers digging into his ass, my hips pulsing against him. That first orgasm had barely made a dent in my arousal. If anything, it had only stoked the flames higher and higher, until I thought I’d be consumed. I threw my head back, hair tangling against white silk, when Wylf suckled my breast, pulling the tip into a taut, aching peak. His tongue was a hot demanding swirl over my nipple, his cock a teasing prod right where I wanted him, just not deep enough.

“Wylf,” I choked out. I could feel reason slipping away, everything I thought and everything I knew being reduced down to pure, primal feeling. Silk below me, Wylfrael above me, and the desperate need to be filled. My hands ran all over him, moving of their own accord, squeezing his ass, running up his suit-clad back, then back down, petting the soft fur of his tail. He seemed to like that. He made a sound of dark delight deep in his throat as my fingers sank into the thick fur, and his cock jumped against me, nudging inside of its own accord.

Having that little bit of him inside me nearly made me come again. My breath caught, escaping my throat in desperate little sounds that I could not hold back. I gyrated helplessly against him, tightening with anticipatory pleasure even as I knew I needed to loosen, to open enough to take him.

“Save me, you’re so tight,” Wylf bit out against my slick breast. He said it like it would make him slow down, hold back, or maybe even stop. But even as he said the words, he braced his straining quads against the backs of my spread legs and began the long, beautifully torturous slide inside me.

I cried out, my fingers tightening on his tail, as if I wanted instinctively to pull him back, pull him out. Not because it hurt, but because I felt I was completely losing myself. That I was splitting apart, atom by trembling atom, to be scattered among Wylfrael’s stars.

“Open your eyes and watch me, wife.”

His voice was thick, a raw command that had me cracking open my hazy eyes.

“I want you to look at me this time,” he said, chest heaving, eyes licking frost and fire over my face. “You didn’t before.”

“Did... did you want me to?” I stammered. I remembered how I’d let my head fall forward on him in the sleigh while he’d slammed up into me from below.

“Yes.” The word lengthened into a hiss as he sank deeper into me. “And after, too, on the ride back. Stone of the sky, how I longed for you to look at me.”