Free Fall by Carolyn Jewel

halfway to a transformation that made his vision preternaturally acute, but he clicked on the lamp by the bed and turned it to face the wall. He fell back on his mattress. She came with him, and he set his hands around her waist and lifted her up. She was so gorgeously naked, and he was going to do things with her he hadn’t done with anyone in years. Decades.
    She knew what he was going for. She bent down and braced herself on his shoulders while he pushed inside her, and the friction felt so good, she was so soft inside that he vibrated with the need for more. He let her take in what it was he wanted them to do.
    Her hair fell around her face as she bent closer. “Show me.”
    He withdrew from her body before he let the transformation happen. His senses became sharper, his body bigger. The texture of his skin changed to something more like soft hide. His body turned color; bronze, gold and black. He took on more mass, larger torso, longer limbs, and his skin, his hide, burned hotter. He was the monster he’d promised her.
    Quiet covered them. Deep and wide and while she kept the silence, Telos didn’t move but for the expansion of his chest as he breathed. They remained touching, hide to skin. In the quiet, her mind stayed unrestrained. It would be so easy to take control of her. Make her his so he could do whatever he wanted to.
    Slowly, she raised a knee, let it fall to one side while she arched toward him.
    A low growl came from his throat. He got them missionary, and he fucked her hard, and she answered the need in him. Sex like this was better than he remembered. All that twisted-around and convoluted magic of hers aroused him beyond belief. Her humanness intensified all his reactions. He went harder, giving into his need, and once he understood she was okay with him getting rough, he used his size and weight, too.
    His mind went out ahead of where he was at this moment, and it was like catching a wave, there was no stopping the momentum. He’d spent so long passing for human, so much time in his human form, that he hit peaks he’d forgotten existed. He reached for that core of magic in her, and he could touch it. Bathe in it. He pried open his eyes, and she was looking at him, cupping a hand to a face that couldn’t possibly look right to her, and her eyes were a well, deep and intimate. Her belly pressed against him, her breasts were soft and there just wasn’t much about her that wasn’t exactly what he craved.
    And the magic. How the hell had she managed to survive with any part of her sanity intact? She ought to have died coming into that kind of power with no one to help her learn how to control it. He worked one hand underneath her shoulder, careful not to hurt her with a talon, and her magic was there for him. Right here, and even if he wanted to he might not be able to take it all in. She knew what he wanted, and turned her head, exposing her throat to him. He fit his mouth there and bit down hard enough for his teeth to draw blood and give him a deeper taste of her.
    Her sharp intake of breath was sweet in his ears. She fell deeper into his head as the tang of her blood spread over his tongue, and, for a moment, he couldn’t see a thing. Then there was this weird moment when he thought about how he could bind her to him permanently, and, in his head, in their shared mental space, he could see it happening like he was watching a movie, except he was immersed in it. Living it. She was his, and he was fucking her in this form, coming in her.
    And then he was back in the present, the now, and he was hard inside her, thrusting with his emotions closer to the edge because, for him, this was starting to be mostly about the imperative to procreate. He withdrew because he was too close, and she turned onto her side, breathing hard. She ran her palm over him, over his face, his back, his torso, and then she gave him head, which he already knew she was really good at. He wanted his dick inside her so bad, he