Page 105 of May: Bloom & Bane

“Hm?”

“I want the other one, Ashán.”

“The other what, mí’vaela?” (My mortal soul)

“This.” She grinds against his length. “This is Sage’s… but I want yours. I want you to know that I accept both of you.”

Vresh. Vresh. Vresh.

“While I’m inside?” I murmur. “We are not the same size.”

“I don’t care.”

“You will care.” My hands tighten on her hips. “He is longer. I am… considerably thicker. And I do not come with the same soft parts he does, ash’kaela. What I have is not gentle to look at.”

“Ashán.” She takes my face in both hands, holding my gaze until I cannot look away. “Stop trying to talk me out of you. I want your vorí cock inside of me. Now.”

Let her, Sage says. She is asking you for the truth of yourself. Do not make her ask again.

It doesn’t happen quickly. The shift moves through us like frost spreading across a window. Sage’s length recedes, and my girth swells in its place, spreading her open from inside, without leaving her heat for a single second.

Eden makes a sound I have never heard a living thing make.

“Ohhh—” Her nails tear down my chest. Her thighs lock around my hips. “Ashán, you’re—oh my god. You’re getting⁠—”

“I know.” My voice is barely holding together. “Breathe out for me. Let it in. The venya is already working. (Venom) Feel it? Do not fight the stretch, sweet girl⁠—”

The skal emerges.

It blooms around my shaft in segments—rib after rib after rib, rising through my length, each one settling into place against her inner walls.

“What is that?” she sobs, her forehead crashing into my shoulder.

“My skal.” I breathe, my hand shaking so violently against her hip that I’m afraid I will bruise her. “It is called a skal. Are you hurt? Tell me the truth or I will pull out of you right now⁠—”

“No!” Her hand clamps around my wrist. “Don’t you dare. It’s not—it doesn’t⁠—”

The ribs flex. They roll, one after another, in a slow wave from base to crown, working her open. She shrieks against my throat and clenches down so hard I see white.

“I did not do that,” I rasp.

“W-what?”

“I did not tell it to move. It is not listening to me, ash’kaela. It is listening to you. The more you want, the more it⁠—”

The wave comes again, faster and deeper.

She sobs my name.

She is hot. She is unbearably, impossibly hot around me.

“Do not move,” I rasp into her hair. “Please. Do not move yet.”

She holds herself absolutely motionless above me while the freezing water pours down her spine and her thighs tremble around my hips. She gives me the one thing I have never had in my entire existence.

Time.

I press my forehead into the wet slope of her shoulder and I breathe her in—peonies, honey, and the salt of her skin. Something shameful moves up through our shared chest and I realize with a shock that my eye is wet.