Aster had refused to move when I’d claimed we needed more room as Hel had grown. For some years after the towers had fallen, Helvectus had been prone to nightmares, so we’d let him sleep with us. Which had made it difficult—but certainly not impossible—to carve out some time from each day to spend inside my mate’s body.

Eventually, he’d requested a room of his own.

I hadn’t wanted to move either, so I’d made more space by adding an extension to the front half of the cottage. One of the new rooms was for Helvectus. The other was for Aster to paint. But it was times like now, when he was still awake, and I didn’t want to wait, that I wished I’d built a larger extension.

Stars, a room for him within the fucking woods.

Aster laughed, and I snatched her nipple with my teeth, causing that laughter to break into a hissed intake of breath. Fingers sank into my hair and over my scalp, smooth legs climbing my back. I gave her other tit the same treatment and slipped my fingers over her mound, two sliding with dizzying ease into her cunt.

She whimpered when I withdrew to stick them in my mouth. I sucked them clean before laying down and ordering, “Climb on.”

Aster spent agonizing moments trailing her fingers over my chest. Reaching my cock, she gave her eyes to me while her fingers dragged down it. “Your mouth or your cock?”

Fuck. “I could listen to you say cock for the rest of my days.” At her raised brow, I grinned. “You decide.”

Not a second later, she was straddling me. My hands roamed her thighs to hug the addictive flare of her hips as slowly, she rose to her knees.

Then with a breathy moan and fluttering eyelids, she worked all of me into her body.

For so many years, I’d let the days blur together without a plan or hope for anything. I’d simply existed. I had done whatever I had to in order to survive without truly living at all. I hadn’t even known what I was trying so damned hard to survive for, yet ignoring my lack of purpose had become part of the mindless routine.

All that changed the night I’d walked into a tavern in search of someone who was looking for an evening of escape, and I’d found myself a miserable faerie queen.

I’d never expected her, and I’d certainly never expected to feel the way she made me feel for anyone. Love had never been something I’d thought I would need. Now, it was everything I couldn’t survive without.

And I would guard hers with my life.

Aster rocked her hips until she’d taken as much of me as possible, and only then did I rise and wrap her legs behind me.