Morgan and Lain climbed the stairs to their room, and when the door shut behind them the silence fell differently than it had in the morning. There was warmth in it now. A shared memory of laughter, of children’s sticky hands, of bread passed without bargaining.

  Morgan paused by the window, looking out at the harbor. His jaw worked once, as if he was holding words back. When he turned, his eyes found Lain’s hand again where it had settled over her belly. His expression softened into something Lain didn’t know how to withstand.

  “I want…” he began.

  Then he stopped, and corrected himself.

  “I can wait,” he said.

  The bond pulsed with him: want, yes, but also a cautious tenderness, a fear of frightening her into flight, a reverence that made his restraint feel worshipful.

  Lain stood by the bed, cloak still on her shoulders. She should have been tired enough to sleep. She was, in her bones. Yet she felt awake in a new way too, nerves humming with a longing that had nowhere safe to go.

  She remembered his hands on Finn, catching him without thinking. She remembered the way he’d let her speak in Grainne’s house without interrupting, without owning.

  Her body still held its wariness. It would not release it simply because Morgan had been gentle for an afternoon.

  But she could feel his hope through the bond. It made her want to step toward it even while knowing what it might cost.

  Lain swallowed.

  “Morgan,” she said.

  He went still, attention gathering without pressing.

  She took a breath. “Come here.”

  For a heartbeat he didn’t move, as if he was afraid he’d misheard. Then he crossed the room slowly, stopping just in front of her. His hands stayed at his sides.

  Lain lifted her gaze to his face.

  “I don’t forgive you,” she said quietly. “I don’t know if I ever will.”

  His throat worked. “I know.”

  “And I’m frightened,” she added, because it was true, and because saying it aloud felt like laying a knife on the table where both of them could see it.

  Morgan’s eyes closed briefly. In the bond, he bowed around that fear instead of pushing against it. “I know,” he said again.

  “But today… I.”

  His eyes opened.

  She reached up, slowly, giving him time to flinch away if he would, and touched his cheek. The skin was cool. His pulse jumped under it.

  Morgan didn’t move. He didn’t lean into it. He waited.

  Lain’s fingers slid into his hair at the nape of his neck, and the bond filled with a stunned, aching joy that made her throat close.

  “Hold me,” she said, and hated herself for needing it. She wanted it anyway.

  Morgan’s hands rose, hovering for half a breath, then settled around her with great care, one arm around her shoulders, the other around her waist, drawing her in as if she might shatter if he did it too quickly. He held her like something precious and easily broken.

  Lain let herself rest against him.

  She felt his self-control like a living thing, the way he kept the hunger leashed, the way he tried to make his body safe. She felt his longing too, glaring and painful, threaded with tenderness that didn’t demand anything in return.

  For a moment she only breathed him in, and let the bond hold what her mind could not.

  Outside, the harbor wind rattled the shutters.

  Inside, Morgan’s mouth brushed her ear, a touch so light it barely existed, and he whispered something in a language she didn’t know, something that felt like a promise, even without understanding the words.

  “Lig dom grá duit. Lig dom tú a chosaint.”

  Lain closed her eyes.

  Morgan held her as if he’d been taught, at knife point, how to do it without taking. His breath moved against her hair in careful intervals. His hands stayed where they were, firm enough to keep her from swaying and light enough that she could have stepped away without having to fight him.

  Lain did not step away.

  She listened to her own body first, the way her lungs filled and emptied and the way her stomach settled under the weight of food; the way her shoulder still ached from the fall, and beneath it all the steady, quiet pulse of the bond. Morgan’s feeling pressed through it in warm bands of reverence and wanting and a vigilance that watched her every breath for the first sign of fear.

  It should have made it easier, but it didn't. It made it harder, in a way she couldn’t explain without sounding foolish. If he had been cruel in this moment she would have known what shape to take. She had learned how to survive cruelty. Tenderness from him was an unfamiliar animal. It made her reach for it and recoil from it in the same motion.

  Her fingers were still in his hair. She could feel his throat work when she didn’t pull her hand away.

  “Say something,” Morgan whispered, barely more than air.

  Lain’s brow furrowed. “What?”

  “Anything,” he said, with a raw sort of honesty. “Tell me what you need. Tell me what I’m allowed.”

  Allowed. That word scraped something in her chest. It was too close to the language of cages. She drew a slow breath, forcing herself not to flinch from her own memory.

  “I’m allowed,” she said quietly, “to stop.”

  Morgan went very still. His voice was steady when he answered. “Yes.”

  “And you’ll let me.”

  “Yes.”

  Lain searched his face. In the dim room his eyes looked paler, the silver less like a blade and more like water. She felt the edge of his hunger in the bond, present as it always was, but held back by something stronger than appetite.

  “If you don’t,” she said, the threat soft and real, “I’ll hate you until the day you die.”

  A flicker crossed his mouth. “You already have every right.”

  Her hand slid down from his hair to his jaw, thumb brushing the corner of his mouth. Morgan’s eyes lowered at the touch, not in pleasure exactly, but in restraint, like a man holding his breath in a room full of smoke.

  Lain felt the tremor in him and it made her heart stutter with the strange awareness that he was choosing, in this moment, to be governed.

  She leaned forward. Her forehead touched his.

  He didn’t move.

  The bond warmed, slow and steady, a shared point of contact that made her feel less alone.

  “You were different today,” she said, hating the softness in her voice.

  Morgan’s lips parted, but he didn’t speak at once. When he did, his words were careful, as if he didn’t trust himself not to gild them.

  “I remembered what it feels like to be in a room where no one wants something from you,” he said. “Where you can be… ordinary.”

  “You’re not ordinary,” Lain murmured, bitterness slipping through.

  “No,” he agreed. “But I don’t want to be what I was with you.”

  Her throat tightened. She didn’t know what to do with that. She didn’t know how to accept it without making it sound like forgiveness.

  So she didn’t accept it. She only acknowledged it.

  “I don’t know what you are,” she said. “Sometimes I look at you and still see…” she stopped. She didn’t want to name the nightmarish hunger.

  Morgan’s eyes closed briefly. “I know.”

  “And I’m tired,” she added, because it was true. “I’m tired all the way down.”

  “I can hold you and nothing else,” he said at once. “If that’s all you can bear.”

  Lain’s breath shook, and she hated herself for needing to test him, but she did anyway.

  “Lie down,” she said.

  Morgan hesitated the smallest amount. Then he backed away from her with visible care, and moved to the bed. He didn’t climb in. He sat on the edge first, removing his boots, slipping out of his coat to hang it on the bedpost. Then he braced his hands on his knees, and waited.

  Lain stood there watching him, and the power of that – this man who had once spoken to her as if she were an object, now waiting like a guest in a room he didn’t own – made some part of her relax.

  She removed her cloak before she climbed onto the mattress, slipping under the blankets to lay on her side facing him. The sheets were cool. Her belly, still mostly flat, shifted sideways and sank slightly into the bedding in a way that made her suddenly aware of how much she was carrying without anyone seeing it.

  Morgan moved only when she lifted the edge of the coverlet, a small and silent invitation. He slid beside her as if entering a chapel. He kept distance, an inch of air between them.

  Lain stared at the ceiling for a long moment, listening to the sound of his breath. Then she rolled closer, a slow drift of her body toward his warmth until her knee brushed his thigh.

  Morgan’s breath caught. He did not reach for her.

  Lain’s hand found his shirtfront and curled there, fist closing gently into the fabric as if to anchor him.

  “Don’t –” she started, and stopped.

  Morgan’s hand lifted a fraction, hovering over the bed. “Tell me.”

  “Don’t make promises,” she said. “Not about forever. Not about being good. Not about anything you can’t keep.”

  His throat worked. “Alright.”

  She waited for the counter of his charm and persuasion, the way he could turn a boundary into a game. It didn’t come.

  This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

  Morgan’s hand settled slowly on her upper arm. His thumb made a single small stroke along her sleeve, then stopped, as if even that might be too much. The bond flared with his want in a muted, aching way, and underneath it an almost brutal patience.

  Lain turned her head and looked at him.

  His eyes were on her face, attentive and unsettled, like he was watching for a storm. She lifted her chin a fraction, and Morgan understood without being told. He leaned in and gave her a brief and careful kiss.

  Lain answered by staying.

  The second kiss came a little deeper, still cautious. Morgan’s hand slid to the back of her neck, not to pull her closer, only to support her head.

  Lain’s body reacted in spite of her mind, a slow warmth unfurling in her belly. Some of it was desire. Some of it was the bond, that terrible intimate thing that made her feel him feeling her, made every touch echo twice.

  The ease with which her body could still respond frightened her.

  Her hand pressed lightly against his chest and Morgan froze instantly, mouth lifting away.

  “Sorry,” he whispered.

  Lain shook her head, breath unsteady. “I didn’t say stop.”

  The barest flutter of his irritation was lost in his remorse. “I just wanted to be sure.”

  She shifted closer until her forehead rested against his, and she could feel his pulse under her skin.

  “I hate you,” she said.

  Morgan let out a single bitter laugh, if only because the statement was so unexpected. He closed his eyes. “I know.”

  “And I want you,” she whispered, hating herself for that too, hating the way the bond made it impossible to pretend.

  Morgan’s eyes opened. The hunger stalked through the bond, and with it restraint tightening like a leash pulled hard.

  He cupped her jaw with a gentleness that made Lain’s throat ache.

  “Tell me what you want,” he said. “I’ll do only that.”

  Lain swallowed. The sea wind rattled the shutters not unlike the quiet pulse of life inside her body.

  “I want to be held,” she said slowly. “I want to feel like I can close my eyes and you won’t turn into something else.”

  Morgan’s face tightened, grief darkening in him like a shadow. “Alright.”

  He shifted behind her then, moving with exaggerated care, so that his body curved around hers without trapping her. He lay down, tucked his arm beneath her head, and drew the blanket up around her shoulders, a domestic gesture that felt strangely intimate on him.

  Lain let her back settle against his chest.

  Morgan’s hand slid to her belly, resting there like a steadying weight. He held himself as if he could feel how easily her fear might ignite, and he held her as if he could bear the responsibility of that. Lain lay with her eyes closed and listened to his breath until it became a part of the room, part of the bed and the steady tide of the village outside. Morgan’s hand stayed on her belly, warm through the cloth, as if he thought the smallest shift might frighten something loose inside her. His chest rose and fell against her back with a careful patience she could feel in the bond as clearly as if it were spoken aloud.

  Sleep did not come the way it was supposed to. It hovered at the edges and then retreated, leaving her awake in that dim, half-lucent hour where thoughts moved too quietly to catch, and the body took its own inventory.

  There was warmth in her that had nothing to do with blankets. There was the slow, uncomfortable ache of wanting, and beneath it something else: a hunger to be touched by someone who knew her, who could not pretend he didn’t, who could not lie to her without the bond turning sour between them.

  She hated that part most of all. The part that reached for him because he was so achingly familiar.

  Morgan shifted slightly, adjusting the blanket where it had slipped from her shoulder. His fingers brushed her collarbone through the fabric. It was an accident, barely a touch, and still her breath caught.

  The bond tightened with his attention. His hand went still on her belly, the way a man stills himself around a skittish animal.

  “Lain,” he murmured.

  She kept her eyes closed because it was easier to speak into the dark. “I don’t want you to stop holding me.”

  “I won’t.”

  “And I don’t want you to pretend you don’t want me.”

  His breath shuddered behind her. He gathered himself.

  “I want you,” he said finally, very softly. The admission ran through the bond like heat through metal. He kept it contained, but it existed. It was real.

  Lain swallowed. Her throat felt tight with everything she did not know how to say: that she wanted more and also wanted to run; that she wanted his hands and also wanted to bite them; that she was so tired of being alone inside her own skin.

  She turned, slow and cautious, rolling until she faced him. The movement broke the careful arrangement of her in his arms. His hand hovered at her waist as though he didn’t know where to put it anymore.

  His face was close. In the dimness his expression was achingly open. Want, yes. Awe, yes. Something like fear, too, and underneath it a steadier thing: a chosen restraint.

  She pressed her palm flat to his chest and felt the heartbeat there.

  “You said you’d do only what I ask,” she whispered.

  Morgan’s eyes held hers. “Yes.”

  The bond vibrated with his readiness to obey, and with the older, darker hunger that watched all of this like a wolf crouched just beyond firelight. He was still a Veinwright. He was still what he was. The bond didn’t let her forget it.

  Her hand slid lower, down the line of his ribs beneath his shirt, feeling the warmth of him through the cloth. He flinched at the pleasure of being touched. He kept his hands still.

  “I want you,” she said, “To kiss me.”

  Morgan leaned in as though coming toward a lit candle, careful of the flame. His mouth met hers, gentle at first, a press that asked. Lain answered by lifting her chin and opening to him, and the bond surged with his relief, his gratitude, his desire.

  The kiss deepened. His hand came up to cup her cheek. His thumb brushed the corner of her mouth with tenderness that made her stomach twist.

  She pulled back just enough to breathe. “And I want you,” she began, voice shaking despite her efforts, “to touch me.”

  Want rose in Morgan like a wolf from the darkness. Alongside it came a spike of fear so immediate it startled her. His fear, not hers: he was afraid to hurt her, to take. He was afraid of becoming the thing she’d already seen in the night when he hovered over her like an animal.

  “Tell me where,” he said. “Tell me how.”

  Lain’s breath trembled. She hated that she had to do this, hated that wanting him made her feel like she was betraying herself, hated that tenderness from him could still make her melt. She hated that she wanted to melt.

  She took his hand and guided it. She pressed his palm to the curve of her waist first, anchoring him there, letting him feel that she wasn’t fragile glass. Then she drew his hand down, lower, to the heat between her thighs.

  Morgan followed her lead, breathing hard, eyes locked on her face as though her expression was the only permission he trusted.

  When his hand finally settled against her through the thin cloth of her shift, Lain gasped. It was too much and not enough at once. Her body arched toward him before her mind could decide if it was safe.

  Morgan paused immediately, feeling the involuntary movement through the bond and reading it as a question.

  Lain shook her head, a small, fierce motion. “Don’t stop.”

  He exhaled. His hand began to move, slow and careful, coaxing pleasure from her. He touched her like someone praying, like someone afraid his god might leave the room if he misspoke the litany.

  Lain’s fingers curled into his shirt. She held him there, both anchoring and claiming, because if she didn’t she would drift into panic and shame and memory. She felt those things circle at the edge of her mind anyway, waiting.

  Morgan’s other hand remained on the bed, open, not trapping her. He kept his weight back, giving her air. The bond was full of his reticence, and it made her want to test it, to see if it would hold.

  “Come here,” Lain said.

  Morgan slid closer in increments, until his thigh pressed against hers, until his chest was near enough that she could feel his heat without being pinned beneath it. He kissed her again, deeper now, and Lain made a small sound into his mouth that felt like a tangle of demand and surrender.

  Morgan’s hand between her legs kept its slow rhythm. Pleasure rose like dawn, steady and relentless, until she had to pull back to breathe.

  She stared at him, dazed by the simple fact of how good it felt to be touched without cruelty.

  “I want more,” she whispered, before she could stop herself.

  The bond snarled with hunger so fierce it almost hurt, and then, just as quickly, his control tightened around it again. He didn’t move. He didn’t climb over her. He didn’t turn her want into his.

  “Are you certain?”

  The question should have made her angry, or made her feel patronized. But instead it made her throat ache, because he was asking a question he had never bothered to ask her when it mattered most.

  “Yes,” she said. “But slow. And stop if I say stop.”

  Morgan’s mouth parted. His eyes looked wet in the dim, and the bond filled with a worshipful, broken sort of gratitude.

  “Yes,” be breathed. “Always.”

  He kissed her again, then moved his hand away long enough to lift the hem of her shift with trembling care. The air against her skin made her shiver. Morgan watched her face the whole time, like he was afraid he might miss the moment her fear returned.

  Lain caught his wrist and guided him again. This time she brought him to her bare skin. To where she was slick and ready. He tensed, fighting the urge to take control and finally submitting to her lead instead.

  When he touched her directly, she arched and gasped, and her pleasure spiked hot enough that it chased thought from her mind.

  Morgan made a sound that was almost a sob. He pressed his forehead briefly to her shoulder as if he needed something solid to keep him from losing himself. His fingers moved again, careful, steady, building slowly toward something inevitable.

  Lain wanted the weight of him. She wanted to feel him inside her and know, in some crude animal way, that she wasn’t alone in what she carried. She pushed at his shirt, impatient suddenly, and he flinched with restraint, like the sight of her wanting him was its own kind of violence against his self-control.

  “Tell me,” he whispered.

  “I want you inside me.”

  His gaze dropped to her belly. His hand slid up, resting there, warm and protective, and he looked at her like he was asking her to understand the war inside him: desire and fear, joy and guilt, reverence and hunger.

  “I don’t want to hurt you,” he said.

  “You won’t.” It might have been a command. “Slow, Morgan.”

  He shifted, pulling back enough to free himself from his trousers. The movement was unhurried. When he returned to her he didn’t climb over her. He slid close and waited again, hovering as though he couldn’t trust himself.

  Lain reached down and took him in her hand, guiding him where she wanted him. Morgan’s breath broke, and he bit down hard on it, holding himself still while she positioned him. He was hot and heavy in her palm. The reality of it made her pulse jump.

  Morgan’s eyes met hers again, and she nodded.

  He eased into her with such careful patience. The stretch burned at first, then turned into a deep, heavy warmth that spread through her belly and up her ribs. Lain’s breath came in uneven pulls. She held his gaze, watching his face, watching him fight the old hunger and choose reticence again and again.

  Morgan stopped when he was only partway in, trembling.

  Lain’s nails dug into his shoulders through his shirt. “Keep going.”

  He moved again, inch by inch, until he was fully seated inside her and both of them were shaking.

  Morgan stayed still, pressed close, breathing hard into the space between her neck and her jaw. His arms came around her, and the flare of worship through the bond made Lain’s stomach twist with grief and want all at once.

  “You’re safe,” he whispered, and it wasn’t a promise about the world. It was a promise about this bed. And for this moment, at least, it was true.

  Morgan moved carefully, letting her body adjust and pleasure build. He kept his rhythm gentle enough that she could breath through it, gentle enough that her fear didn’t have room to grab hold.

  Lain’s pleasure rose again, deeper now, threaded with the heavy fullness of him inside her. She clung to him, and the bond caught her in return, carrying his desire and his restraint and his astonishment at her choosing him again, even now, even after everything.

  She moaned into his shoulder, and wrapped her legs around him, and even as she pulled him closer she did not forgive him.

  Morgan’s breath hitched. His control frayed at the edges, the wolf of him pressing forward, hungry for more. He held it back with visible effort, shoulders trembling.

  “Tell me,” he whispered, voice breaking. “Tell me you’re still here.”

  “I’m here,” Lain gasped, and it was true.

  Morgan shuddered. His mouth found hers again, the kiss deeper now, less cautious, but still within all of her boundaries. He held the rhythm that brought Lain’s pleasure to a relentless crest, until it tore a sound out of her that made her feel both ashamed and alive.

  She came like the sun rising. Morgan went still again, riding it with her, holding her through it, and then, only when she was coming down, did he begin to move again, slower, controlled, as if trying to keep himself from falling off the edge, seeking her permission to have some part of this just for himself.

  She took his face in her hands, and nodded. “Yes.”

  He didn’t last long after that. Lain felt his restraint finally slipping into release, felt the shudder of it, the raw relief, and then he spilled inside her with a broken sound against her mouth.

  He went rigid, shaking, then he collapsed carefully at her side, curling around her.

  For a long time, neither of them spoke. Their breaths slowed, their bodies untangled by degrees, and the bond settled into something warm and aching.

  Morgan’s hand rested on her belly again, and it only felt like wonder.

  His voice, when he finally spoke, was barely audible. “Thank you.”

  Lain stared at the ceiling, throat tight. “Don’t,” she whispered. Gratitude from him made her feel like she’d handed him something he didn’t deserve.

  Morgan’s hand stilled, and the bond filled with his immediate readiness to obey.

  Lain exhaled and turned her head to look at him. He was watching her, as though she might disappear if he blinked. She brushed her thumb along his cheek, and felt the way his breath caught as if even that much gentleness was more than he knew how to hold.

  Then she closed her eyes again, letting herself rest in the wreckage of wanting, in the uneasy comfort of being held, knowing the morning would come and the world would still be broken, and she would still have to decide what kind of future she was allowed to imagine.