I was lying in bed with Quinn, watching excitedly as he opened the leather-bound box, so tiny in his huge hands, and took out the contents.
"Marry me?" he asked softly, knowing that was what humans said when they did this. He felt weird saying it, though, because as far as he was concerned, he'd 'married' me days ago (twice) and I'd 'married' him that evening. "Let's have a human ceremony as well?"
I nodded enthusiastically, happy tears running across my face to my pillow.
He went to take my right hand, but I laughed, shook my head and gave him the left one instead. Then I curled in all but my ring finger, because in his excitement, he'd forgotten how the human customs worked. He could perform a mating ceremony for any species of shifter, a vampire blood bonding or marriage, or the equivalents for demons, elves and a dozen types of fae in his sleep, but he found human customs convoluted and confusing. He laughed at his own mistake, then slid the ring on the correct finger.
I watched as he gently put it on me, delighting in how perfectly he had chosen. The pale yellow diamond looked like sunshine in the daylight, but at night, it glowed like the gorgeous amber eyes he had when he was in tiger form. I knew from Angela Barclay's thoughts that it was cut differently to normal, so any light it caught would bounce around inside it and make it light up softly, instead of flashing like a neon sign. It was a delicate, pretty stone, and the few tiny white diamonds on either side of it directed just enough extra light into it to keep it glowing even now, in dim lamp-light. The ring was stunning; simple and elegant, but also unusual and personal. It was expensive, I knew that, but as quiet about its own price as a diamond almost as wide as my finger could be. It helped that it sat lower down than usual, so it was close to my finger rather than sticking out into the air; it wasn't designed to draw attention to itself from a distance.
"Beautiful," I whispered.
"Uh-huh," he agreed, but he was looking at me, not the ring.
I leaned over and kissed him, and for the next few minutes, all we did was cuddle and smooch.
"So that's a yes, then?" he teased, when we finally came up for air.
"Yes," I beamed, as I looked at the ring on my finger again, turning it this way and that to catch the light.
He watched me intently. "It does look gorgeous on you. I don't really get the human traditions, but it does look pretty on your hand."
"Thanks," I grinned some more. "Speaking of human traditions... if a normal human wedding won't be meaningful to you, we can work out something that is."
"Why?" He looked genuinely puzzled. "Isn't the way this works... um, I turn up and do as I'm told? I thought it was traditional that human women are the boss of these things. It's a rite of passage for the man to prove tolerance and obedience, isn't it?"
I almost took offense, but thinking of some of Bon Temps' more difficult brides, I burst out laughing instead.
"It's 'your big day', right?" he checked. "I'm just expected to be a good accessory, or something?"
I shook my head. "I know that's how a lot of human weddings turn out, but you're marrying a telepath," I reminded him. "I'll know whether it feels meaningful to you or not, and it would spoil it for me if you were just going through the motions. So I guess we have to work out some kind of compromise. No church, for a start, because I know how uncomfortable the place makes you" - I'd dragged him along with me the last couple of times I'd gone - "but I'd still like Father Andrews to marry us."
"I liked the younger priest more," he admitted, "he seemed more open-minded about people who are different."
"Father Medina? He only just joined our parish and I don't really know him yet... I guess I could get to know him, though. Father Andrews did think some awful stuff about me when I was dating Bill, it would be hard if I 'heard' him thinking things like that on my wedding day."
"The only other thing I don't think I could stand is the veil," he confessed. "It's you I want to be with, not some random bride-shaped person. I know you'll be all kinds of covered-up then, but hiding your face is a step too far for me. I know who I'm getting, if I didn't I wouldn't be there."
I thought about it for a moment, and realized that was a compromise I could make. "OK," I agreed. "I'm having my white dress though. I know you find the whole symbolic virginity thing sick, but we both know I'm not actually a virgin, so you can deal with it. And I can't think of anyone who's still alive and in this world who I'd want to give me away, so maybe I'll let go of that one, too... I'm not sure yet." I knew exactly which parts of the human traditions he objected to; I'd 'heard' it all as he decided which ones he'd actually mention to me.
"OK, symbolic virginity it is," he rolled his eyes, "but you won't stay a symbolic virgin for long, with me around."
"I wouldn't expect anything less," I laughed. "We can do some naked celebrating too, but just the two of us." We both knew I wasn't referring specifically to sex; shifters did all kinds of things buck naked, including everything to do with becoming mated.
"Sounds good." He slid the bed sheets down to my waist as he kissed me again, his hands wandering all over my newly-exposed skin - which was even more sensitive for all the fine scratches he had made on it while he claimed me mere minutes beforehand.
"You are so great at that," I praised him a few minutes later, high on the pleasure his fingers were creating.
"I'm not the smartest guy around, but I do know that the better it feels when I touch your breasts, the more I'll get to touch 'em," he grinned, his finger tracing a scratch that went just past my nipple.
"Mmmm, every second of every day," I purred, "that's how good it feels."
He beamed at me and wisecracked: "So my evil plan is working, then."
I just giggled and let him play a while longer, reveling in his attentions. I was in an odd frame of mind: I wanted him to have me any way he chose, and I felt like even if he wanted to do something that would hurt me, I would still love every second of it, just watching him enjoy himself. I was his now, I realized - and I suddenly understood why he'd begged me to take him any way I wanted, so many times. I placed my hands over his as he played with my breasts and murmured the words, "Yours... all yours," a few times as he played with them.
Watching him, I could feel his love for me. I knew he would never knowingly abuse the trust I had placed in him, and tears ran down my face. There was something else I needed from him: a deeper and more permanent commitment than anything we'd already exchanged.
"I need more," I whispered.
"I thought you'd never ask," he grinned as he started kissing his way down my body. "Happy tears?" he double-checked.
I nodded, wondering whether I should interrupt; I hadn't actually been asking for more sex, for once.
But then his tongue ran along my lips again, and my mind was suddenly made up: if he wanted one more serve of Sookie juice before we went on, he could have all he wanted. I was all his, after all.
"It's so nice of you to do that all the time," I thanked him, as his tongue teased me.
"Why?" He looked up at me in confusion. "I don't just do it for you. The smell and taste of a turned-on woman... there ain't much better than that." He suddenly thought of one thing that was, and gave me a wicked look. Then I was on my back and his tongue was all the way inside me, shifting into his true form as I watched. He could probe me more deeply than anyone ever had, like this, and I was soon writhing and moaning as he tormented every tender spot inside me, loving my taste even more than usual. I 'heard' that the taste of his turned-on mate was far better than any other woman, especially when we'd had sex so many times recently, and he could taste himself all through my well-loved body.
I grinned at him, loving how natural and pleasurable everything was with him. He sure didn't think I was in any way soiled by his attentions; heck, even the fact that I'd been with other men before I met him seemed somehow right to him.
He 'overheard' without me meaning to project, and winked at me. The only men who prefer virgins, are the ones who are so insecure about their own abilities, they can't stand you having anyone to compare them to. It's far more fun to be with someone who knows what they like.
I didn't manage any response to that; his now-furry hands had found their way back to my breasts, and with his tongue still inside me, he'd started rubbing the tip of his nose against my nub, soaking himself in my scent as I writhed and screamed. I lay back and basked in his talented attentions, feeling pleasure well inside me until it overflowed once more... and when he kept me going past those few seconds of excruciating tenderness and pressed on, it wasn't long before I was yelling his name again, my thighs clamped so tight around his ears he probably didn't hear it at all. Then my legs flopped open again, as I lay limp and happy on the bed.
I tugged on his ear, and he took my hint to crawl back up my body and kiss me. He tasted wonderful: like his juices and my juices all mixed together. It wasn't something I expected to find hot, the flavor of our many couplings, but it was a pleasant surprise to enjoy it so much. I shifted into my fairy form and scraped my teeth on each of our lips, then kissed him again to mix our blood together as well.
"Fuck, that's good," he moaned against my lips. "Feels as good as coming, when you do that."
"I can make it even better," I promised, rolling onto my side so we were face-to-face. "If we bond the way fairies do..."
He stared at me in confusion. "You've marked me, I'm yours."
I shook my head. "You're a lennán to me," I used the fairy word for beloved and lover, carefully pronouncing the long 'a' sound. "I want you as my núachar," I tried to get the aspirated 'h' sound right. It was the fairy word for 'mate', but also one of their words for spouse. I wasn't sure how I knew either word, but I was getting used to just knowing helpful fairy stuff I'd never actually learned or heard before.
"Is that even possible?" He stared at me wide-eyed. "I'm really flattered, but I'm pretty sure lower beings can't -"
"You've taken my blood while I was in my true form twice today. I've transferred enough of my fairy magic to you, that if you want to do that, we can. It's up to you though, and if you need some time to think about it -"
"Yes," he interrupted, his voice hoarse with emotion. "My answer is yes. Of course it's yes. You can really do this?" He had that overawed, 'OMG my mate is a fairy princess' look on his face again - and as always, the strength of my new powers was turning him on.
"We can do this," I corrected. "You know how fairy bonding stuff works, it has to be completely mutual... if you want this as much as I do, we can make this happen."
He nodded, too overwhelmed to speak. He was amazed I would even offer this: fairies formed one kind of bond with each other, but a different type if their lover was of another species. A lennán wasn't an equal; they never could and never would have the power over their fairy mate that their mate had over them. He'd assumed it was the only kind of bond we would be able to form, and had been genuinely thrilled when I had marked him and bonded him as, what amounts to an especially treasured slave. To even think of being more than that to me made happy tears spring to the corners of his eyes, because he wanted so much for me to be his, just as he was mine.
I pressed my hands to his face and shared my feelings for him, so he'd know how deeply I loved him. He opened himself right up to me in turn, and that deep connection we'd figured out how to create that morning formed between us again, this time almost instantly. We stared into one another's eyes and simply soaked in each other's love for a while, basking in the mutuality of our feelings.
I hadn't understood why he'd been so thrilled when I took ownership of him by biting him, wondering why anyone would want to be owned by another. I hadn't even fully understood why feeling how that made him feel made me crave the same feeling myself. Now, experiencing the limited ownership a shifter had over their mate, I had to belong to him in every way I could. I had claimed and then marked him, so he was mine in the customs of both shifters and fairies; he had marked and was now going to bond with me. The symmetry of it was important - there was no way I would give anyone such power over me unless they were willing to reciprocate - but that was a requisite and not a reason for doing this. Even the universal desire to feel like you belong somewhere wasn't my main reason for wanting this any more.
I wanted this because there was such power and beauty in giving myself over completely to him; in placing my whole self in his hands and trusting him to treasure my gift. I was putting his happiness first by letting him have me in any way he desired, but there was no sacrifice in that: it brought me such joy to see him happy, I felt like I was the one receiving a gift. The state of complete openness I was still in was the greatest bliss I had ever known; something that transcended all those tiny emotions that usually passed for happiness.
You get it now. His mind was flooded with pleasure and he was beaming at me, delighted that I finally understood why he had wanted so much to be mine, and why it had brought him such joy to be claimed and then marked by me.
That knowledge pulled us even closer together, and suddenly I didn't need my hands against his face to share my thoughts with him. We lay smiling, running fingertips over each other's skin as we felt that joining strengthen and hold, simply because we each now had enough fairy magic running through our veins to make our will reality.
There was something profound taking place between us; something that went much deeper than a simple telepathic connection. The shifter bonding ceremonies we'd carried out, and even the ceremony fairies used to mark someone of another species as a mate, were all about creating a tangible, physical connection between two people; bonds that were obvious to all species. But when fairies bonded with each other, the physical world was largely irrelevant; they joined at the deepest spiritual level... but oddly, to create that spiritual connection, two people had to be joined physically.
'Hearing' that, he kissed me sweetly, then wriggled in even closer, pulling my top leg up to rest on his hip. He rubbed the very tip of himself along my wet, swollen lips a few times, staring into my eyes to see when I was ready. Mmmm... now, I silently encouraged him, and he gently found his way into me. There was no urgency in it though, so he simply held my hip and rocked us gently back and forth. It created only small, sweet movements within me, but that was somehow perfect; the sexual stimulation wasn't the reason we were doing this.
I shifted into my true form, and immediately, I felt all my energy swirl into my heart, and then a bright glowing orb started emerging from my chest. I gasped in shock, pulling my chest back from his so I could watch what happened. Then I reached over to put my hand to his chest, and felt something similar gather against my palm. As I gently withdrew my hand, an orb came out of his chest, too. I could feel that they were both pure energy, and that even though they looked similar, they were fundamentally different in character: mine with far stronger magic, his with animal as well as human energy.
When the two orbs touched, we both immediately knew why we had to be physically joined: when your ethereal being - what humans would call a soul - is taken partway from your own body and partway into someone else's, you have to keep your bodies joined or it all goes horribly wrong. We watched as the two orbs vibrated right next to each other, bouncing off each other when they touched, but too attracted to make it any distance apart before they were pulled back together again.
I silently checked that he was sure about this, and he responded with a huge smile and an enthusiastic nod. I could feel that he knew the significance of this even more than I did, and it was still an easy choice for him: he wanted me, and he wanted this. I had to have that confirmation, because the last time I formed a magical bond with someone, we had both been forced into it and it didn't work out well. The scars of that experience were visible on the orb of energy extending partway out of my chest: there was what looked like an impact mark faintly visible on one side, with hairline cracks crazing a large area around it.
Neither of us had perfect, unscarred ethereal beings; we each had the color variations that showed a person had been affected deeply by their life experiences. But each time the two touched, some of the darker patches lit up, so they almost matched the unscarred areas. Clearly, there were deep hurts we could each heal for the other, if we chose to offer each other that help. I knew we would.
Sensing it was time, I uttered the three words that made up the entire fairy bonding ceremony; the vow a fairy made to their beloved.
"Taí tar trembith," I proudly declared, my voice a shaky whisper because I was so overwhelmed by emotion. 'Yours for eternity', it meant.
"Taí tar trembith," he murmured back, having felt exactly what those words meant when I said them. His eyes were full of unshed tears.
As soon as we each said it, I willed the two orbs to connect, and when he joined me in willing the same thing an instant later, they did. As they touched, they stuck together at a single point, and energy surged through my body like I'd just stuck a fork in an electric outlet. We both just stared, watching as the join slowly grew and more and more of my fiancé became part of me. It was an exhilarating feeling, like gaining a whole new 'mini me' as part of myself, albeit one which had all his attributes. I immediately loved the new corner of myself that was all him, and was delighted to feel those same emotions echoed in his own thoughts, treasuring the parts of me that were now part of him.
As the join got bigger, we had to move nearer together so the two orbs could keep melding. We both somehow knew that letting any more than a tenth of our ethereal being extend outside our body would be fatal, so the more they overlapped, the closer we had to get. Soon we were lying chest-to-chest, skin-to-skin, feeling so deeply joined neither of us could remember what it was like to be separate people; how lonely it must have been. We kissed and embraced, pressing ourselves as close together as we could. It felt heavenly... and very right.
It seemed like eternity we were joined like that, feeling different parts of ourselves bubble to the surface as the two orbs found points where they could join permanently. Surprisingly, it wasn't only the points where we were alike that could stay joined; even stronger links formed around attributes where we balanced each other perfectly, and even stronger again at the points where one of us could give the other something they were missing. I somehow knew that the bond we were forming was far larger and more complex than fairies usually formed; that it would be a great deal stronger than those already-powerful bonds; and that it would need to be, for a halfling and a weretiger to remain joined to each other like this. I also somehow knew that what we were doing was unprecedented; that fairies would never bond a member of another species as an equal like this, no matter how much they loved them.
Then it was done, and the two orbs separated and sunk back into our chests, then slowly unfurled to fill our whole bodies again, before gently extending just outside our skin, the way all normal living things' energy fields do. As physically close as we were, we were within the edges of each other's energy fields still, and that felt exactly right. Letting the bond settle properly was vital, and for now, that meant being so close literally nothing could get between us. He was still inside me, but coming wasn't on either of our minds yet: we'd just experienced something a thousand times as powerful as the average orgasm, and it had left us both very satisfied.
For the first ten minutes we were bonded, we simply lay in each other's arms and kissed, effortlessly 'hearing' everything on each other's minds. We could both feel the bond settling, adjusting the strength and tightness of each link between us so we could live as separate, strong individuals when we needed to, but also merge into a tightly bonded pair whenever we wished. It was perfect.
There was a buzzing in another corner of my mind, though, and little by little it got stronger, until finally it hammered away at the calm closeness I was savoring, disturbing my peace altogether. It was like I had two sets of feelings: one blissful, relaxed, connected, and loved; the other angry, frustrated, hurt and violent - but in the circumstances, I knew I was only feeling the first; I had no reason to be angry or frustrated by my mate, he had done nothing to hurt me, and I certainly didn't wish violence against him. (Well, unless clawing deep red marks into his back as we made love counted as violence, because I did feel like doing that again some time soon...)
He licked his lips at that last mental image, silently reminding me that I could be as 'violent' as I wanted with him; his pain threshold and healing abilities guaranteed I'd cause him no actual harm, and he got a huge thrill from seeing me get carried away and take selfish pleasure in his gorgeous body. Somehow, satisfying me satisfied him; my pleasure really was his pleasure, so he was genuinely happy to give me anything I wanted. I could feel that right now, with his mark still fresh on my neck, I could experience that same feeling our love-making brought out in him, and I wanted him to do anything he wanted to me.
Then I realized what those other feelings in the corner of my mind were... or rather, who they were.
Eric.
But when Quinn shrugged and kissed me again, I simply didn't care that Eric was furious with me. I was no longer his, and pleasing my new mate / fiancé / bonded was all that mattered.
