Page 264 of Primal Bonds

“Yeah. For now, anyway—I want you all to myself for a year or two. But someday, yeah. I’d love to have a baby with you.”

He met her eyes, his soft with affection. “Exactly what I was thinking.”

He started to move faster, harder. Angling himself to stroke against the knot of pleasure on the upper wall of her pussy.

It seemed with every stroke, their bond grew stronger, so that she was feeling his arousal along with her own. She closed her eyes and tightened around him, and came again in another hot, bright explosion.

“That’s it, love,” he said on a groan. He thrust in hard and then pulled out to spend himself on her stomach.

His head rested on the pillow beside hers for a minute. Then he rolled onto his back, tucking her into his side. She set a hand on his chest. He was warm and a little sweaty, his heart thumping as if he’d run a race.

For a time, they were silent in the sunshine-filled room. Then Fane kissed her forehead.

“I’ll do my best to be a good dad. I know I could’ve done better with Evie, but I was always afraid the king would use her against me. And yeah, some of it was me being an arse. I didn’t want the court to know I had a kid with a human mother.” He swallowed. “Gods, that sounds so fucking shallow. But it’s the truth.”

She tangled her fingers in the fur on his chest. “She loves you. You must have done something right.”

“Yeah?” He looked at her, pleased. “You think so?”

“I do. But it’s not too late—I think she’d like to get to know you better.”

“I’d like that, too.” He let out a breath. “Guess I’m coming home with you. You think your brother can make a place for an unemployed, penniless fae envoy?”

“He won’t like it,” she said, “but he’ll come around. He loves me.”

It wasn’t Adric she was worried about so much as the clan. Everyone had expected her to mate with Luc. They wouldn’t be happy when she brought home Fane instead, a part-fae who had been part of the ice fae court for six decades. Especially when they found out Luc had accepted a geas to save her.

She tamped down the guilt that flared in her. Now was for her and Fane. She’d worry about Luc and the clan when they got back to Baltimore.

“But what about you?” she asked, those doubts she’d had in Iceland returning. “You gave up everything for me. You’ll never have a place in any fae court again. You sure you want to mate with a woman from a poor clan in Baltimore?”

He touched her face. “Forty, even twenty turns of the sun ago, that might have stopped me. But now, all I want is you. You’re too good for me, Marjani. You think I don’t know that?”

He meant it. She scented the truth in his words, saw it in his eyes.

“And besides,” he added, “I didn’t do it only for you. The last few years, I could barely stand returning to the court. I just didn’t have anywhere else to go. But now I do.”

He rolled on top of her and, capturing her wrists in his hands, pressed them to either side of her head. The hard ridge of his erection nudged against her stomach.

“We’re mates, Jani. I’m not going anywhere. Get used to it.”

She frowned. “I don’t want you to go anywhere. I just want you to be happy.”

“Then stop trying to convince me I’d be better off without you.”

She gave a jerky nod, and then turned her head, offering her throat to him. Inviting him to mark her in a way her cat craved.

He might not be a fada, but he understood. He stilled, and then lowered his head and bit her. Just hard enough to leave a mark.

Her hips rocked up. Heat bloomed in her belly.

He laved the mark with his tongue, and while she was sucking in a breath, thrust inside her again.

Their loving this time was hard and fast. Marjani let her wild side out, and Fane met it with some wildness of his own. They ended with her on her hands and knees, him thrusting into her from behind.

“Touch me,” she begged, and his long fingers stroked over her body, pinching her nipples and rubbing her clit until she split apart in another earth-shattering orgasm. He pulled out and came right after her, breath sawing in and out, spilling hot against her lower back.

After that, all she wanted to do was sleep, but she made herself call Adric first. He wasn’t overjoyed to learn she was bringing Fane Morningstar back to Baltimore, but she was pretty sure he’d guessed they’d mated. She didn’t tell him though. That news could wait until she was home.

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