He felt everything.
Not in the blunt, animal way he had before the Cradle—this was a new clarity, a sharpening that ran from his teeth to the soles of his feet. Every tiny tremor of her muscles registered under his palm like code.
The heat of her breath against his collarbone, the tremble of her inner thigh where it pressed to his hip, the soft exhale that escaped when his hand brushed the hollow beneath her ear—each was a note in a song he could read with his bones.
'Alive,' he thought.
He shifted his weight, angling his hips so the head of him hit that spot inside her that made her throat lose words. The bracelet at her wrist caught the lamplight—cold metal against warm skin—and he felt, through the thin ribbon of magic, the faint, disciplined resistance of the maid who'd been forged to obey.
The chain didn't stop her; it softened the danger. It made her texture different beneath him: controlled, taut, and deliciously restrained.
