The chamber door closed behind them and the world reduced to one room.

Guinevere stood at the foot of the bed. Her heart was a drum she could not turn down.

Maddox crossed to her in two slow steps.

His gold eyes had been molten since the hall. They had not cooled in the walk back. If anything, they had deepened, the sun-gold sliding further toward the fire-gold she had seen the night he had tossed an urn across her father’s throne room.

His hands went to the laces of her gown.

He pulled them one at a time. Slowly. The kind of slowly that was a choice, not a hesitation. The white silk loosened at her shoulders and he eased it down her arms, careful of her bruised hand and rib. The fabric pooled at her hips. Then at her feet.

She stepped out of it in her heels, then stepped out of her heels.

Maddox pulled her white silk stockings next.

Her face was already red.

She reached for the collar of his formal coat.

Her fingers were shaking. She ignored it. The coat was heavy and the clasps were gold and she had never undressed a man in her life, and she was not about to say so. She worked the clasps one at a time, silent, cheeks burning, and he let her. He did not help. He was not going to shortcut a single second of it.

The coat fell.

His tunic came next. She pushed it up over his chest and he lifted it the rest of the way over his head because her splinted hand could not. His trousers went after, slower, her face going redder. Then he stood in front of her in only black briefs.

She paused with her fingers at the waistband of the briefs.

He caught her hand. Lifted it. Pressed a kiss to the pulse point at her wrist.

He pushed the briefs down himself.

She did not look. Then she did. Then she looked away. Then she looked back because avoiding it was somehow worse than facing it, and she was marrying him so she was probably allowed.

"You are allowed to look, Gwen. We are married. That is an official ruling from the council. You can take that up with them if you have concerns."

Her face went a shade of red she had not known her face could produce.

He was the first man she had seen naked.

His pupils dilated.

Instant. Involuntary. The gold of his irises darkened the way they had darkened in the bathing chamber when he had lifted her off the counter, except this time there was no ritual stopping him and no bruise she could hide behind.

His gaze moved down her body slowly, mapping the line of her collarbones, the curve of her breasts, the flat of her stomach, the line of her hips, the small private space between her thighs.

His jaw worked once.

Then his mouth found hers and the jolt from the ceremony hit her again, softer this time, a low hum under her skin that pulsed in time with the rings still glowing on their hands. She locked her left hand around the back of his neck.

He lifted her.

One arm under her thighs. His other arm at her back. He laid her down on the bed with the same careful reverence he had used every time he had put her down in the last three days.

Then he kissed her again. Slower. His mouth moved from her lips to her jaw to her throat, and she felt the exact moment his lips found the bruise along the side of her neck and lingered there like he was apologizing again in that language she had not learned yet.

His mouth kept moving.

Her collarbone. The hollow of her throat. The valley between her breasts. He was very careful of the bandages. His lips brushed the skin above them and below them and skipped the linen entirely, and then his mouth was at her stomach, and then lower.

She registered what he was about to do approximately one half-second before he did it.

"Maddox?"

Her face went bright red. Her good hand shot down on pure reflex, and she was not sure if she was going to push him away or hold him there or just cover her face with her own hand, and she did not get the chance to decide because his mouth closed over her and the thought broke.

He sucked her clit.

Her back arched off the furs before she had decided to move. A sound came out of her mouth that was not a word. His tongue moved against her in a slow pattern that said he knew exactly what he was doing and was going to do it until she did something specific.

The embarrassment lasted another three seconds.

Then the pressure started.

It built somewhere low and tight, a thing that had no name because she had never felt it before, and her hands went into his hair without her permission and stayed there.

He did not stop.

His tongue worked her slowly, then faster, then in a pattern she could not follow, and she realized with dim horror that her hips had started moving against his mouth on their own. She was rocking against his tongue. Gasping. Her fingers tightening in his hair.

She did not know how to stop. But she didn’t want to. Her face was on fire and the rest of her was on a different fire entirely.

He pulled back.

His thumb replaced his tongue. He rubbed slow circles against her clit and looked up the line of her body at her face.

"Just like that, baby. Let go for me."

Baby.

The word slipped out of his mouth like he had not noticed he had said it, and it hit somewhere under her ribs with more force than it had any right to. She did not get time to examine it. The pressure crested.

She came apart under his thumb.

It hit her like a wall. The sound she made was small and broken and entirely new to her mouth.

He felt it through the matebond.

Her pleasure hit him like a flare going off in his chest, pure white ecstasy carried through the sensory bridge. He had not been prepared for how it would feel to have her climax and his own nervous system informing him about it in real time.

His tongue was back on her before the orgasm had finished. Inside her this time. He groaned at the taste of her and she made another small broken sound, and her hips rolled against his mouth on their own because her body had forgotten how to stop.

Eventually he came back up her body.

She was panting, and her skin was flushed. Her good hand went into his hair and she pulled him down to her mouth, and the kiss was less careful than the first one had been.

She could taste herself on him.

That should have embarrassed her. It did, in the back of her mind, somewhere. The front of her mind was fully occupied with the fact that he was settling his hips between her thighs and she could feel him, hard and warm, pressing at her entrance.

He paused there.

His forehead came down to hers.

"Gwen. I don’t want to hurt you."

Her heart was pounding.

"It does not hurt."

"Okay. But tell me if it does."

He pushed into her slowly. She tensed.

The burn hit sharp and bright and she stiffened under him, her good hand going to his shoulder, her breath catching.

He did not wait for her to adjust. He started to move in slow, shallow thrusts, not all the way in, his forehead pressed to hers, his breath uneven against her cheek.

"Fuck," he grunted. "You are so tight."

She held onto him, still tense. Her body did not know what to do with this yet. The burn was painful.

He kept going. Slow. Gentle. Short strokes, deeper by small degrees, and she could feel him fighting something in himself because the arm braced beside her head was shaking.

Then her hips moved.

Small. Involuntary. A roll upward to meet his next thrust, and she did not know her hips had decided to do it until they had.

"There she is," he breathed against her ear. "Just like that. Does it feel good?"

"Yes. Don’t stop."

His restraint broke.

His next thrust was not gentle. He pushed fully into her and she gasped, stiffening, but he was already drawing back and driving in again, and the pace changed from careful to relentless.

Her hips met him.

She did not know how her body knew what to do. It just did. The pressure that had crested once under his tongue was building again, higher this time, and tighter.

Then her wolf pushed forward.

Guinevere felt it the way she had felt it for Shadowfell. A pressure behind her sternum. An instinct rising. She closed her eyes and pushed it back down because she had no framework for why her wolf would want to be present for this and no intention of finding out mid-act.

Maddox misread her completely. "Let go for me, baby."

"Maddox, wait, I am fighting..." 𝒇𝓻𝓮𝓮𝙬𝙚𝒃𝒏𝓸𝙫𝒆𝙡.𝓬𝓸𝒎

She did not finish the sentence. Her hips moved more rapidly on their own. Part instinct and part wolf taking over. It felt so good, she didn’t want to slow down.

"That is my tight little virgin wife taking every inch. Fuck. Cum on my cock."

The dirty talk hit her brain like a small explosion. Her face went redder if that was possible. She had not known he had that vocabulary. And she certainly didn’t know she’d have a reaction to that vocabulary.

The pressure spiked higher, and her wolf pushed harder.

A moan escaped her at the same time the orgasm hit.

Her wolf broke completely through her control, and her fangs dropped before she understood what was happening, and her mouth was at the juncture of his neck and shoulder before the thought had finished forming.

She bit down.

Her fangs sank into him.

Maddox felt the prick of her teeth and the orgasm rolled through him at the same moment. He groaned, low and wrecked, and started releasing into her in long, shuddering pulses.

Then the venom hit.

It spread from the bite outward, through his shoulder, down his spine, into every nerve he had, and it felt like liquid ecstasy poured directly into his bloodstream.

"Oh fuck." His thrusts grew frantic.

The second orgasm hit them both before the first had fully finished. She was still cumming around him and he was still cumming inside her, and her fangs were still in his neck pumping venom into him, and the matebond was carrying every sensation of hers into his nervous system and every sensation of his into hers in a loop neither of them knew how to close.

Her good hand fisted in his hair.

His arm locked tighter around her.

The runes on their rings pulsed, and their bodies glowed gold.

She held her bite for three minutes, before her fangs retracted and her mouth fell away from his neck, and she was panting against his collarbone with absolutely no idea what had just happened.

Maddox pulled out of her slowly.

He collapsed onto his forearm above her, breathing hard. His eyes found hers for one full second.

Then his eyes fluttered closed.