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When the last pulse fades, I sag against him, boneless and shaking.

My head drops to his shoulder, or the closest shape of it, breath dragging raggedly out of me. My legs are still wrapped around him, but there’s no strength in them now. His cock remains inside me, swollen and slowly softening, slick warmth spreading through the deep ache and turning it into something bearable, something almost sweet.

The tree is rough behind me. His body is hard in front of me. I’m trapped between the two and have no desire to move.

For a while, there’s only breathing. His, deep and ragged. Mine, uneven and ruined. The bond, full and bright and pulsing with so much relief, makes my eyes burn again.

I press my face into the hair at his neck and inhale him, that wild first-body scent, stone and cedar and dark leaves and the faint medicinal note I’ll always associate with being found.

Onyx shifts his weight slightly, and I hiss before I can stop myself. He goes rigid. Pain?

I lift one hand and smack weakly at his chest. It probably feels like being scolded by a leaf. “Don’t you start.”

His worry does not move. I breathe through the sensation, taking stock. The stretch is there—God, the stretch is everywhere. My back stings from the bark, my thighs are trembling, and I’m going to feel him in places I don’t have polite names for. But under all of it, his slick is working, warm and strange, easing the sharpest edges, keeping soreness from turning into real pain.

“I’m okay. Just full.” Dark satisfaction curls through his worry, and I feel my face heat even after everything. “Do not get smug while you’re still inside me.”

His skull lowers until its edge brushes my cheek. Impossible.

I close my eyes and laugh once, breathless and shaky. “Yeah. I know.”

He begins to withdraw with the kind of care that feels almost absurd after the way he just fucked me. Inch by inch, slow enough that I feel every ridge on the way out. My hands tighten in his hair, and he pauses each time my breath catches too sharply.

The slick keeps soothing the raw pull, but the sensation is still intense enough that I have to rest my forehead against his chest and focus on breathing.

I’m naked, skin scraped, face flushed as he adjusts me. My pants lie somewhere next to my boots, my shirt torn, my hair probably a disaster. I am objectively a mess, but Onyx looks at me like I hung the moon off his antlers.

The intensity shuts me up.

By the time he’s fully out of me, I feel sore, yes, but not wrecked in the way I should. Used, stretched, exhausted, full of aftershocks, but whole. He keeps me lifted for another few seconds, as if he doesn’t trust the ground with me.

“Onyx, put me down,” I murmur.

Your legs are weak.

“They’re attached to my body, so I noticed.”

He ignores that and lowers me with absurd gentleness. My feet hit the earth, and my knees immediately try to make his point clear. His arm tightens around my waist before I can sag.

I glare at his skull because I know his smugness is rising again. “Do not.”

The blue eyes brighten. Did not speak.

“You thought loudly.”

Mate’s legs agree with me.

I huff as he picks me up again and carries me away from the tree. I get one glimpse over his shoulder as we move. The cedar is scarred. Deep claw marks bracket the place where his hands were, bark stripped in long grooves, pieces scattered at the roots. My back probably looks like I lost a fight with it too, but seeing those marks sends a possessive, satisfied heat through me.

Proof. The thought slips out. Onyx stills mid-step and his skull turns toward me. I close my eyes. “I didn’t say anything.”

Thought very loud.

“Unfortunately, I’m aware.”

Mate likes the marked tree.

I keep my eyes shut because dignity is easier when I can’t see his smug skull face. “Mate is recoverin’ from bein’ pounded against it within an inch of his life, and his hole is probably a fist-sized gape. Maybe don’t cross-examine him.”