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“Loosely,” she says.

They curl around her wrists, with room for her hands to move, and brace her waist. I keep the release signal we used at the footbridge: a word, or two knocks against the wood. The scrape on her wrist is closed; I guide the vine away from the thin new skin.

Her mouth finds the seam beside mine first. With the leaves gone, there is nothing between her lips and the raw grain, and the touch goes through the wood of me and down into the roots under the moss. It comes back up through the bower as a creak. She hears it, and her mouth comes back to the seam.

My mouth goes to her throat. The pulse there is fast. I follow it down with my tongue to the place where her collarbone meets her shoulder, and the sound she makes lands in my antlers. The moss under her hips warms without my asking.

“Lower,” she says.

I go lower. Her breast fits the flat of my tongue, and when I close my mouth around it her back comes off the moss. Her hands drag over my shoulders, over bark, over the newly exposed grain, and every place she has touched keeps its light after her hands move on. I want my mouth on every part of her. I want to know what each part of her sounds like.

She tells me what she wants, and the vines adjust with every answer. She goes quiet just before she asks for more. The sound after is worth the quiet. When my mouth reaches the inside of her thigh, her fingers close around the bases of my antlers and pull, and I let her steer me the last distance.

I taste her. My fingers press into the moss on either side of her hips. Her heel finds the ridge of my back and presses. I stay there until her instructions stop being words.

When she pulls me over her, I stop at the first pressure between her thighs.

“Are you ready?” I ask.

She looks up at my uncovered face.

“Yes.”

I enter her.

Pleasure strikes through both of us. I move, and the bower moves with me: vines tightening only where she asked, moss holding her hips, flowers opening in waves. Her body takes me deeper. The new bond carries her pleasure back through my own nerves until I cannot tell whether the ragged sound belongs to her or me.

“Don’t cover your face,” she says.

“I won’t.”

Her legs close around me. I thrust harder. She meets me, open and fierce. The warmth between us deepens.

She feels me in return and grins.

“You are trying very hard not to lose control,” she says.

“Yes.”

“Then stop trying.”

She pushes against my shoulder. The vines at her waist yield as I let her turn us. Moss rises beneath my back, and she settles over me with the vines still loose around her wrists. The new connection carries the weight of her, the heat between her thighs, the exact moment she chooses to take me deeper.

She moves. The bower answers her: flowers open above, roots brace beneath us. The bond carries pleasure in both directions until her rhythm becomes mine and our joined movement breaks my restraint.

Her body tightens over mine, and it reaches me before my own does: her release, breaking open in my chest while I am still holding back. I cannot tell where hers stops. I stop trying. Her name is in my mouth and I do not remember putting it there.

I follow her, bare-faced, with nothing left between us to close.

Vai lies across my chest breathing hard, one palm against the exposed grain over my heart.

The vines release her wrists and waist before she asks.

I draw one arm around her, and the flowers remain open above us.

For a while, neither of us speaks. The warmth between us has changed. I can feel her contentment without reaching into the wood, and beneath it a little surprise that becomes my own when she laughs.

“You felt that?” she asks.