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“Nothing legal changes tonight,” Kesta continued. “The claim is already sealed. We do not complete a bond. If the mesh activates, if your implant pushes, or if either of us cannot stop when we mean to, we stop. No argument.”

“And if none of that happens?”

She looked at his mouth. “Then I want you because I want you.” His eyes went almost black around the silver irises. “May I kiss you?”

“Yes.”

He crossed the distance with careful control. His hands settled at her waist without pulling. Kesta did that herself, catching the front of his shirt and bringing his mouth down to hers.

The kiss was familiar now: the blunt scrape of one fang against her lower lip, the heat of his palm through her tunic, the way his tail betrayed him before the rest of his body did. Kesta broke the kiss once simply to check herself. Dreven released her immediately. Her body protested the distance. The mesh remained dark.

“Still mine,” she murmured.

“What?”

“The wanting. Right now.” She caught his hand and put it back at her waist.

Something in him eased. Kesta pulled his shirt over his head and let her hands travel across scars she had previously touched only as a medic. When she reached the base of one horn, she paused.

“Still allowed?”

“Yes.” His voice roughened. “Very.”

She wrapped her fingers around the ridged base and stroked upward. Dreven’s head tipped back. The sound that left him vibrated through her bones.

“Third ridge,” she reminded him.

His tail tightened around nothing. “You are cruel.”

“No. Thorough.”

She touched the third ridge deliberately. Dreven caught himself on the basin. “Kesta.”

“Begging?”

His gaze found hers. “Please.” She kissed him before he could regret the word. He lifted her onto the wide stone ledge only after she nodded. Kesta opened her tunic herself and guided his hand to her breast. The touch was warm and rough, careful enough to make her impatient.

“You have touched me before.”

“Before, I knew what the law wanted.”

“And now?”

“Only what I want.”

“Good. Try that.”

He did. His mouth followed the path his hands had learned during their earlier nights, but there was no legal seal waiting at the end and no quarantine forcing them into the same room. Kesta told him when she wanted more pressure, when a claw felt too sharp, when she wanted his mouth lower. Every answer made the wash chamber more theirs. When his hand slipped between her thighs, pleasure hit hard enough to steal her breath. Dreven stopped at once.

“Mesh?”

Kesta closed her eyes. Her pulse raced. Her body ached for him. Beneath the skin of her wrist, the silver lines remained quiet.

“No.” She opened her eyes. “Me.”

He brought her to climax slowly, with his mouth and hand, until her fingers had to tighten around the stone ledge. When the release finally broke through her, Dreven waited through every shudder and did not move again until she looked at him.

“Still yes?”