Page 68 of Monster Queen Rising

His good arm comes around the backs of my thighs and hauls me in and the stillness goes out of him all at once, and he kisses me like a man who's spent his whole life waiting. The mark on my wrist goes from cool to a low burn. His bond, awake.

"Shoulder," I say against his mouth. "You be careful of the shoulder."

His hand spreads at the small of my back and covers all of it. "I have the rest."

"Not tonight."

He stops.

"Tonight I have it."

I get him down the hall to the back room, the small one that smells like him and like bread, and I put my hand flat on his chest and push.

He goes.

One of the biggest things in this house sits down on the edge of a bed because I put a hand on him.

"Lie back."

"Jen —"

"Lie back."

He lies back.

His shirt takes both my hands and his good arm and he has to help, and then he's under me in the dark and I can see all of it — the scars laid across his chest and ribs from before I knew he existed, and the new one high on the shoulder where a round went through him on its way to not going through me. Pink at the edges.

I put my mouth on it. He goes rigid.

"Don't," he says. Notdon't stop.Don't.

"Why?"

"It's a hole. It closed."

"It went through you instead of me."

"That's what it was for."

I sit up on him. He looks back at me steady, and he means it exactly the way he said it. The shoulder isn't a wound to him. It's a piece of equipment that performed.

I put my mouth back on it. He makes a sound and doesn't stop me. I take my time with the rest of him. He watches me the whole way, like the moment ends if he blinks. When I get my hand around his cock he's enormous and hot in my palm and he says my name once, low, wrecked out of the stone.

"Jen."

"I've got it."

"Jen, if you —"

"I've got it."

I get my clothes off and put my knees either side of his hips. He reaches for me. Both hands, the bad arm too, going for my waist to lift me, to place me, to do the work.

I catch his wrists and put them back down on the bed.

"No. You don't get to carry this one." I hold them there until he stops pulling. "Hands stay down."

His eyes come open all the way. And Crull—who has spent his whole life doing—lies there with his palms flat on the bed and lets me.