When the ridges finally release, he doesn't pull away. Instead, he rolls us so I'm on top, still connected. The movement makes me gasp. Every nerve ending is hypersensitive, my body still pulsing from the intensity.
"Again?" he asks, reading my intentions easily.
"Different this time," I say. "I want to see you."
"You are seeing me."
"I want to see you come undone. Slowly."
I start to move, just the slightest roll of my hips. He groans, his hands coming to rest on my thighs. Not guiding, just holding. Every small movement resonates between us, doubled and reflected back.
I set a deliberately slow pace. Rising up until he almost slips out, then sinking back down inch by inch. The ridges are soft now, but I feel them starting to swell again with his renewed arousal. His shadows writhe around him, wanting to manifest as tendrils, but he holds them back.
"Let them," I tell him.
"You said you wanted slow."
"I said I wanted to see you lose control. Slowly."
A single tendril escapes his restraint, wrapping around my waist. Then another, tracing my spine. They move languidly, like smoke underwater. One curves around my breast, barely touching. The sensation is completely different from before. Not desperate hunger but careful exploration.
I lean forward, changing the angle, and we both gasp. My hands brace on his chest, feeling his heartbeat through shadow-flesh. It shouldn't exist, that heartbeat, but it does. Racing under my palm.
"Yorika," he says, and my name sounds broken.
"I'm here."
"I can feel, everything you."
"I know. I feel it too."
We move together with agonizing slowness. Each thrust takes forever, each withdrawal an eternity. The tendrils multiply gradually. One threading through my hair, another tracing the marks on my skin, making them pulse silver. But they all move with the same drowsy intensity, like we have infinite time.
His control starts fracturing. I feel it before I see it. His form solidifies further, becoming more real than I've ever seen him. The shadows that comprise him darken from smoke to midnight. His eyes burn brighter, gold becoming white-hot.
"Please," he says, and I've never heard him beg before.
"Not yet."
I maintain the torturous pace even as my thighs burn, even as my body screams for more. This is different from our desperate coupling. This is trust. This is knowing we have time, that neither of us is going anywhere.
His hands tighten on my thighs. The tendrils start moving faster, less controlled.
"Now," I tell him, and increase my pace just slightly.
He shatters. Not comes. Shatters. His form breaks apart into component shadows before slamming back together. The tendrils go wild, wrapping around me completely, holding me against him as he bucks up into me. The ridges lock again, different from before. Not claiming but completing.
I follow him over, my orgasm quieter but deeper. It rolls through me in waves, each one pulling me further into the bond until I can't tell where I end and he begins. We exist in the same space, shadows and flesh intertwined at a fundamental level.
When we finally separate, I collapse beside him, every muscle liquid. My body carries new marks, delicate silver traceries where the tendrils held me, darker brands where his hands gripped too tight. They pulse with their own light, beautiful and alien.
He traces one with a finger that's not quite solid. "I've marked you completely."
"Good." I catch his hand, noting the scratches I've left on his shadow-flesh. They glow faintly with my heat, impossible but undeniable. "I've marked you too."
"The bond allows it," he says, wonder creeping into his voice. "You can affect me the way I affect you."
"Equal claim."
