out of me. I could watch him in the mirrored walls around us, his body above mine, pushing in and out, in and out. He knew with the ardeur on us he didn't have to be careful, and he wasn't. He pushed all that length into me as hard and fast as he could. He grabbed my hips, lifted my lower body off the marble, held me in his big hands as he pounded himself into me, so hard and fast that our bodies made a wet, thudding noise. The end of him found the end of me, so that each stroke hit as far into my body as it could, and still he came in and in, so hard, so fast, he was almost a blur in the mirrors. He wasn't human, and he had speed and strength that wasn't human. Once he'd worried that he'd hurt me, but we'd found that I wasn't human-fragile anymore. We'd found that Richard could be as rough as he wanted, and he wouldn't break me. He was that rough now, then he found a new speed, a new hardness. It was as if he'd always been holding back, and I just hadn't known it. Faster, harder, until he was a blur in the mirrors, pounding himself inside me, until I cried out, orgasming around him, body spasming. I felt his body spasm inside me, felt his body buck against mine. All movement ceased, his head flung backward, eyes closing. His fingers dug into my ass, holding us both in that moment, as his body spasmed and went inside mine, with him buried as deeply inside my body as was possible to be. In that frozen moment, as our bodies rode each other, the ardeur fed. I fed. I fed on Richard's energy, fed on the part of him that was wolf, and human. I fed on all of him, took in every last delicious inch of his power, as I took in every last delicious inch of his body. When he let himself go like this, he gave so much energy.
He lowered me back to the edge of the marble tub. He slid out of me, and even that made me writhe. He collapsed onto his side, because there wasn't enough room for his shoulders otherwise. He lay gasping with his head near my waist. I managed to move my hand enough to touch his hair, but that was all I could manage. My pulse was still thundering in my ears.
He found his voice first. "Did I hurt you?"
I started to say no, but the endorphins were fading around the edges. There was already an ache beginning between my legs. To Micah I would have said, A little, but to Richard I said, "No." He had more issues than Micah did.
I felt his hand slide clumsily over my thigh, as if he couldn't quite make his hand work just yet. He brushed between my legs. I said in a voice that was half-laughing, "Not again, not yet."
He raised his hand so I could see that he had blood on his fingertips. "Did I hurt you?" His voice sounded surer of itself and less post-coital.
"Yes, and no," I said.
He managed to raise himself up on one elbow. "You're bleeding, Anita. I hurt you."
I looked at his fingertips. "A little, but it's a good hurt. I'll remember what we did with every ache."
His face closed down, and he stared at the blood on his fingertips as if it were an accusation.
"Richard, it was wonderful, amazing. I didn't know you'd been holding so much of yourself back."
"I should have kept holding back."
I touched his shoulder. "Richard, don't do this. Don't make it bad when it was good."
"You're bleeding, Anita. I fucked you so hard you're bleeding."
I thought of one thing to say, but wasn't sure if it would make things better or worse.
He moved away from me to sit on the edge of the tub with his legs dangling over the side. He washed the blood away.
"I'll be all right, Richard, honest."
"You can't know that," he said.
I rose, and I ached, deep inside my body. Maybe more than normal. I rose enough to see the blood on the marble, but there wasn't much of it. "If this is all the blood, then I'll be fine."
"Anita, you've never bled after sex before."
Truth time; I prayed that it was the right choice. "Yeah, I have."
He looked at me, frowning. "No, you haven't."
"Yeah, I have, just not with