Page 85 of Dead Drop

His tail winds around my waist. Not constricting. An announcement.

I straighten. His cock is hard—hard against my lower back through the fur-lined jacket, already straining, already seeking. The jacket he made me.

Lined with fur from something large that he killed and skinned and shaped to fit my shoulders. His scent in the weave.

"Here?" I say.

His mouth comes down to the crown of my head. He has to fold his entire upper body to reach—the effort of it visible in the curve of his spine, the way his wings shift behind him to counterbalance, the massive muscles of his shoulders working to bend himself around my smallness. His lips press into my hair.

"Here. Now."

He lifts me. One hand under my thighs, the other bracing against the tree, my back against his chest. My legs wrap around the thickness of his forearm because that's what's there—corded with muscle, the crimson skin warm against the backs of my knees.

The climbing hooks on my belt catch against his arm. He doesn't seem to notice or care.

He sets me against the tree. Bark against my back, rough through the jacket. His hands under my thighs, spreading them wide.

His cock free of the loincloth, prehensile and straining, the tip already slick with clear fluid. His body's been ready longer than his breathing let on.

He enters me in one stroke.

Standing. In the territory I just helped him map. In the clearing I identified as tactically sound.

The irony isn't lost on me. I would laugh if his cock weren't hitting the place inside me that turns laughter into a sound I didn't know my voice could make.

His wings spread wide. Blocking the clearing from view, the membrane catching the dappled light, the span of themenormous. The scent of him floods my mouth—mineral, green, the taste of his skin.

He drives into me with the slow deliberate force of the post-rut, not the frenzy. Not the mindless pounding. This is chosen. Every stroke is a sentence his body is saying with intention.

My legs find his waist. My face at his chest, my mouth finding the hollow of his throat. The bark bites into my shoulderblades through the jacket.

His hands grip my thighs hard enough that tomorrow the bruises will bloom dark as clouds.

I want them.

His tail finds my clit. The tip—deft, precise, the same tip that braids my hair while I sleep—circles once, twice, then presses firm. The vibration isn't there anymore, not like the rut.

What's there is better: intention. He's choosing this. The pressure. The rhythm. The way it syncs with his thrusts until my whole body is caught between his cock inside me and his tail against me, and the clearing tilts sideways.

I come gripping the bark above me with one hand and his horn with the other. My back arcs off the tree. My thighs lock around him so tight the hard line of his pelvis presses against my bones.

The sound I make fills the clearing. Birds scatter. Insects fall silent.

His cock drives deep, holds, and I feel him come inside me—the heat, the thick pulse of it, his groan shaking through his chest and into mine where my mouth is pressed against the column of his throat. His tail tightens. His wings fold forward, enclosing us, and for a moment there is nothing but warmth and dark and the wet sound of his cock still inside me, still softening by small degrees, still making lazy flexes against my walls.

"Good," he says into my hair. The word from the rut, but it sounds different now. Possession and choice both.

After, he carries me back to the aerie. One arm under me, his cock finally withdrawing, his free hand braced against each branch as we move through the canopy. I'm boneless.

Marked by him across the territory that will be ours.

That night, I draw up the eastern ridge proposal. Two defensive positions, sight line angles marked with precision, resource costs ranked from minimal to intensive. I work by firelight in the aerie, his tail draped across my lap, his heartbeat steady at my back where he's settled himself around the shape of me.

He reads over my shoulder without comment. By the time I finish, he's already thinking in angles too. The fact that his mind works like mine—tactical, layered, three steps ahead—lands in my chest with the weight of something I'm not ready to name.

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