He pressed his free hand flat against the soft, warm skin of her lower back.

And pushed down.

The displacement.

The soft belly of her pressing against the mattress, the fullness of him inside the passage above it creating a pressure that translated — the stuffed, overwhelming fullness of a body that was being asked to accommodate something in a space it had never been filled before.

She made a sound that was not in any language.

"MMMMNNGH~—"

"A function," he continued, his voice level, his fingers finding the swollen, wet bud of her clit and pressing, "is something that produces a result. The result women respond to is not cruelty. It is certainty."

"AAANGHH~!! HNGH~!! RAVEN — THE FRONT — AND THE — BOTH AT ONCE — I CAN’T—"

"A man who doesn’t flinch," he said, "tells a woman’s body something it has been waiting to be told."

Seven centimeters.

"IAAAANGHH~!! IT’S TOO DEEP — STOP — I’M FULL — I’M SO FULL — RAVEN—"

He twisted her nipple.

"AAAHH~!!"

"What does it tell her body?" He said it to Suresh.

Looking directly at him.

Over Preet’s shoulder, past the flower-petal-scattered bed, over the decorated bridal suite — looking at the groom on the floor with the direct, conversational, entirely unmalicious look of a professor addressing a student.

Suresh stared back.

His jaw against the gag.

His eyes the eyes of a man who does not want to be receiving a lecture and is receiving one anyway.

"It tells her body," Raven said, "that it is safe to want things."

He pressed Preet’s face to the side.

Gently.

The turn of her head so that her profile was visible — the side of her face, the tear-running cheek, the open mouth, the ruined eye makeup — and he angled her so that Suresh could see.

Could see her expression.

The ahego expression — not performed, not constructed, the raw, biological, completely involuntary expression of a body that has been overfilled and is reporting on this in the only honest way it knows how — her eyes half-rolled, her mouth open, the tears running not from pain alone now but from the , dense overwhelm of sensation that had moved past pain into something the nervous system did not have a clean category for.

Full.

Her whole belly feeling full.

The strange, interior pressure of a passage that had never been occupied being occupied — the walls reporting in, the nerves sending their signals upward, her body producing data that her brain was failing to file correctly.

"MMNH~— RAVEN — I FEEL — SO FULL — WHY DO I FEEL—"

"That," he said, still looking at Suresh, "is the expression of a woman who has been told what her body was waiting to hear."

He pulled Preet’s pubic hair.

A gentle handful of the thick, natural growth — the tug of it sending its own signal, the nerve endings at the root of each hair contributing to the cumulative, overwhelming density of inputs her body was processing.

"HNGH~—AAAHH~—"

His mouth descended to her breast from behind.

Finding the dark, thick nipple — the wide, sensitized areola — and he sucked, the deep, genuine pull of it producing the immediate, involuntary arch of her spine, her breast pressing into his mouth from the motion.

"AAANGHH~!! RAVEN — MY NIPPLE — AND THE — INSIDE — I CAN’T—"

He looked at Suresh.

Over the top of her breast.

His eyes not leaving the man on the floor.

Suresh’s eyes were sharp.

Despite everything. Despite the silk scarf. Despite the stone at his ankles. Despite the forty-five minutes of being present for things that were dismantling the architecture of everything he had been building — his eyes were sharp, because he was a man who had been trained since childhood to be precise, and precision does not leave just because the information arriving is unbearable.

He was looking at her face.

At the expression.

At the , demolished, involuntary expression of a woman who was crying and full and overwhelmed and whose body was producing, alongside the tears and the pain, the unmistakable, visible, honest evidence of something else.

The tear that ran down his face was precise too.

Clean.

Straight down.

The tear of a man who has looked at something clearly and understood it completely and wishes he had not.

His eyes closed.

Raven watched them close.

The corner of his mouth.

"There." He said it quietly. Not to Preet. To Suresh’s closed eyes. "That is the moment a man understands something he cannot ununderstand."

He turned his face back toward Preet.

"

Eight centimeters.

She screamed.

Not the cry of the previous entries — the full, unmanaged, open-throated scream of a woman whose body had just been given more information than it had anticipated receiving at this moment.

"IAAAANGHH~!! AAAHH~!! IT’S — TOO — RAVEN — TAKE IT OUT — TAKE IT OUT—"

His hand flat on her lower back.

Holding her down.

His mouth leaving her breast.

Both his hands now — one on her lower back, one on her hip — and his hips still, the patient, devastating stillness of a man who has arrived at a depth and is letting the room adjust.

"Breathe," he said.

"I CAN’T — IT’S TOO—"

"Breathe, Preet."

The sound of her breathing.

Trying to.

The , shaking, interrupted breath of a woman whose body is full of something it has never been full of before and is working on the architecture of this.

"I feel—" Her voice. Broken. Small. The smallness of a voice that has just arrived somewhere new and is reporting in. "I feel like — there is a — inside — it is — Raven, what is inside me—"

"Me," he said.

Simple.

"Oh."

A pause.

"Oh," she said again.

The second ’oh’ had a different texture than the first. Not the ’oh’ of pain. The ’oh’ of a person who has just looked at their own interior experience honestly and found something they were not expecting to find alongside the pain.

She pressed her face into the pillow.

"I hate myself," she said.

"No you don’t."

"I hate you."

"No you don’t."

She made a sound that was not agreement and was not disagreement.

He began to pull out.

"

The withdrawal.

Slow.

The , agonizing, inch-by-inch reversal of the last several minutes of arrival — the walls of her anal passage clinging to the shape of him with the devoted, comprehensive grip of muscle that had been forced to learn a shape and was now reluctant to release it.

The drag.

The obscene, wet, dense drag of nine inches of cock being pulled from a passage that had been built for none of it — her walls pulling outward with the withdrawal, following the shape of him as it left, the puckered entrance emerging around his shaft like fabric pulled by a hand and then springing back.

"AAANGHH~—HNGH~—MMNH~—"

The sounds running together.

The continuous, shaking, broken string of sound that accompanied each centimeter of the withdrawal — pain and the strange, interior drag of something being removed that her body had already started to adjust to — and the feeling.

The feeling.

’’Like a dragon.’’

The thought arrived in her without words — the sensation itself, the interior passage reporting on the withdrawal with the full, honest, overwhelming density of nerve endings that had just been educated for the first time — the drag of him pulling through the tight ring of her, the walls stretching outward as he withdrew, the hollow, strange, cavernous sensation of the departure.

"RAVEN — WHAT — IT FEELS — WHY DOES IT FEEL — AAAHH~—"