The instant their heads broke into air, she flung her arms around his neck, whooping with delight. She could feel him smiling against her lips as she kissed him.
“A Sea Gate?” she said, when they broke apart at last. “Why didn’t you tell me there was one in our lake?”
His deep, rasping laugh vibrated through her bones. “Because there wasn’t, until tonight. The Empress made it. The third gift she came to give us.”
She hugged him tight, tears of joy mingling with the saltwater on her cheeks. “So now the sea is always just a short swim away. We can stay with the pack, and still visit Atlantis whenever we want, and—oh, Finn.”
“Not just Atlantis.” He turned her in the water, pointing. “Look.”
An island rose out of the sea, its low peak crowned by stars. The breeze carried the faint scent of jasmine across the waves. In the distance, she could just about make out a few scattered lights, nestled above the wide, sweeping bay.
All the breath sighed out of her. “Shifting Sands?”
He kissed the side of her neck. “It seemed only appropriate.”
The slight pressure of his teeth against her skin made her toes curl in the water. “How fast can you swim?”
The answer, it turned out, was ‘astonishingly fast.’ Before she knew it, he was carrying her out of the surf. She sighed again in delight as she recognized the tiny, hidden cove with its tumbling waterfall.
The place where she’d first shown him her coyote. The place where he’d first given her his smile.
“Oh yes,” she breathed. “Here.”
The white sands still held the warm heat of day. He lay her down on them, covering her body with his own. She closed her eyes as he kissed her gently, languidly, as though they had all the time in the world.
And oh, they did, they did.
The sea murmured in soft applause as they took their time. She was intimately familiar by now with every hard plane of his body, yet awed delight still rose in her like the tide every time she touched him.
She ran her fingers over the curve of his chest, down the hollow of his spine. She traced the tracks of old scars with her tongue. So many battles, so many long hard years, and yet he had fought his way home to her arms.
He stroked her in return; the laughter-lines at the corners of her eyes, the callouses on her fingers, the stretch marks curving over her hips. She knew that he treasured every part of her, as much as she treasured every part of him. They were who they were. Neither of them would have it any other way.
She arced up into him as he nipped his way down her body. He was always so careful, so exquisitely careful, with those sharp-edged teeth. But tonight they scraped just a little harder, teasing, tormenting. She gasped as he pressed them into the soft flesh of her inner thigh, anticipation flooding her core.
“Now, Finn,” she begged, winding her legs around him, offering herself up to his hungry mouth.
But still, he didn’t bite. Oh, he claimed her with his mouth all right, until she writhed against him and screamed out his name, pleasure pounding through her louder than the waves. Yet he still didn’t bite.
Spreading her legs wider, he pulled her upright, so that she straddled his lap. She cried out in wordless satisfaction as he slid into her. Slowly, so slowly, his bared teeth clenched with the effort of holding himself back. She bit at him, near-blind with need, but he didn’t relent. He made her wait, his calloused hands hard on her hips, as he gave himself to her inch by exquisite inch.
At last, he filled her utterly. She trembled around him, held right on the brink of ecstasy, an excitement more intense than any she’d ever known singing through her veins. His shoulders were hard as iron under her hands, his breathing ragged. She knew he was a hairsbreadth away from losing all control, and just the thought of that nearly tipped her over the edge all on its own.
His eyes were just a ring of silver around deep, dark pupils. Feather-light, he kissed her lips, then worked his way down her neck. She whimpered with every touch of his mouth, clenching around him.
And still he didn’t bite.
He rested his mouth right on the junction of her neck and shoulder. “Martha,” he breathed.
“Finn.” She tipped her head back for him, giving him her throat. “My mate.”
The sharp points of his teeth pressed down. And he was in her and she was around him and at last, at last, they were one.
He was her mate, and she was his. And they would never be separated again.
“Will it leave a scar?” she asked him sleepily, much later.
His rough lips brushed tenderly against the shallow bite-mark, already scabbing over. “I think so.”