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“It must break skin. Venom and blood start the transformation. Talon claimed Tamsin in an emergency. Every consensual permanent claim after theirs happened during sex, at climax. That is how I want it with you. But the sex and the claim are separate choices. You may have one without the other. You may stop either at any point before the bite. After the bite, it is permanent.”

“Say what you want without briefing language.”

I stopped trying to sound clinical.

“I love you. I want to claim you while you’re coming on me. I want my teeth in your throat when you say yes, and I want to feel the bond open on your pleasure and your certainty. I want your marks on my skin and mine on yours. I want every year in the white space after this one with you in it.”

She crossed the room. Slow, because she knew what waiting did to me now. She put the pin on my desk, took my hand, and laid it flat over her heart.

“I thought about it while you were talking,” she said.

“There is no version where I walk out of this room and go be alone well. I’ve been alone well. It’s the thing I’m best at and I’m done being good at it.” Her pulse struck my palm, steady and fast.

“I don’t see the bond as something I’m giving up for you. I want it. Yes to the sex. Yes to the claim. Yes to permanent.”

“Lika.”

“Do not make me say yes six different ways.”

I kissed her.

Every other time I had fought myself in stages. This time I didn’t. She had given me permission to want all of it, and I stopped treating that wanting as something dangerous.

I took her mouth hard. She met me harder. Her hands went into my hair between my horns and pulled; pain flashed bright and good down my spine. She pulled me back toward the hatch, then reached behind herself and locked it. The click went through me. At last we had time to finish.

“Careful shoulder,” she said against my teeth.

“Careful woman.”

“I did not request careful.”

“You requested permanent. I’m still not hurting you to get there.”

She laughed once, breathless, and bit my lower lip. I carried her to the bed.

I undressed her. She reached for my clothes in turn, impatient with the fastenings, until I helped her. Then she lay back with her throat bare. Soon my mark would begin there. My fangs ached. Venom flooded hot behind them.

She opened her legs. “Rylos.”

“When do you want the bite?”

“Claim me when I come.”

I knelt between her legs. I wanted to hear her come before the bond let me feel it.

Her hands found my horns the moment my mouth found her, and the pull was sharper this time, deliberate. I let the heat of my saliva spread over her, worked my tongue until her back lifted and her strategy dissolved into direct orders.

“Use your tongue. Yes. Like that.”

I obeyed. Her pulse climbed under my hand. Her thighs shook around my head. When she came the first time, she did it with my name in her mouth and no bite in her skin, because I needed her to know the pleasure did not depend on the bite.

I came up her body slowly. “Do you want the bond?”

Her eyes were dark, wet, furious with want. “You ask more questions chasing after permission than you did when I was a suspected traitor.”

“The suspected traitor could walk away unchanged. The bond cannot be undone. You can still leave me.”

“Then stop delaying her.”