ACOTAR One~shots [Discontinued, Will be deleted]

Mark Me

He carries her into the room. Her body has come a long way growing in strength and power. But tonight Rhys feels the softness, savors the way her muscles melt where his fingertips press in along her thighs and back, where he cradles her against him.

They’ve never been able to properly live together as man and wife inside these four walls.

But the war is over now and she is home.

Feyre - his Feyre.

And he wants to make sure he does this right, for her.

He never breaks eye contact, choosing to drink in the blue that has sparked to life behind the crystalline grey of her eyes. There were nights he thought he might never see these eyes again, nights he didn’t sleep or awoke in such a blind panic because he was afraid he would forget their shape, where the flecks of sky were tucked away in their depths, how precisely her lashes curled.

If he weren’t carrying her, his arms would collapse. Touching her - it’s not like clasping a glass to drink or a sword to wield. His Feyre is unbreakable, but Rhys knows that he is not. To lose contact with her would be to break himself, so drop her he will not.

He lays her down instead, tenderly, on the bed they’ve shared together only a few scattered times before the war stole away his bride of night. And he inspects every feature of her taking time to roam over her skin, her scent, her touch, stopping at her heart.

Rhys hears it beating away inside her chest, pressing his ear delicately over it. He wants to press and press and press until he sinks right in, but too much might burn him alive before he even begins.

So he stays content to just listen to that gentle melody. If he listens closely enough, he can hear it pumping out his name, the name Feyre’s blood carries in her veins singing only for him.

Feyre runs her fingers through his hair once and leaves them to rest buried atop him. A hum purrs in her throat over that delicious melody soaring in her chest and Rhysand can feel it crawling over his skin, soaking into the core of his body until it is reverberating down the bond between them and he thinks that this is what dying feels like - it’s not a bloody fight on a battlefield or a knife in the back. It’s this. It’s her. It’s the all-consuming feeling that if he does not quiet the ache overtaking him, he will fall apart in her arms begging her to save him.

She always saves him.

He pries his ear away from her chest and locks eyes with her once more. He loves the look of her beneath him, how she accepts his heat and the weight of him over her. He can hold her, love her, cherish her - just like this. Most nights, he would take her no other way.

Just as he does now with his arms binding her to him and his wings unfolding behind him to shield them from the idea that anything exists beyond this bed except for them. Feyre’s eyes watch his wings expand and her breathing seems to sync with the motion, her chest rising and falling as each bone and membrane uncurls itself to guard above her. She looks like she could cry.

They’ve wanted this. For so long. It could have been a day in the Spring Court. It could have been a hundred. It all would have felt like an eternity to wait to have this again, but never once did Rhys doubt that it would happen even if he was terrified it wouldn’t.

“A thought for a thought?” Feyre asks.

The game is as old as their story, Rhys thinks. The very first move in the wicked dance that had set the rhythm of their courtship. “Aye,” Rhysand nods wanting not one thought, but many. He could number Feyre’s thoughts as numerous as the stars in the sky and the vast galaxies beyond and still be starving for more. “You first.”