The burning embarrassment mollified slightly at her velvet-lipped caresses along his neck. The dampness on her muzzle mingled with the sweat on his hide, a sensual melding that pulled at his desire— but also rekindled his shame’s flame. “Temb, love, what are you sorry for?” He still did not, could not, meet her eyes, despite feeling the pleading brush of her own beautiful cerulean pools along his face. A deep breath expands his massive chest, “I’ve never… not finished… Or not been able to… satisfy my woman…” The halting, humiliated rumble faded to nothing between on the mirror of the Flats. But he did not look down— he did not want to see his reflection. Their reflection.

A princess and an Elephant, so odd a pair. Drawn to each other like moths to a flame, yet burning each other alive with their lust. It was too much, this was too much. He shouldn’t have succumbed to his need for her. Too much had happened today: the battle, his wounds, her hallucinations and healing. Now, his impotence. This was his fault.

”You did what I asked for…” Had he? Her words broke through his spiraling thoughts, as they always did. His blue eyes, lightened from their previous passionate darkness, finally shifted to his gilded princess. They skirted her probing gaze, instead drifting over the many marks he had left on her neck. At first glance, the merest trappings of satisfaction bloomed in his barrel. She was his, and it was plain for any stallion see, stamped on her beautiful neck with his teeth. The gold and cream of her hide gleamed over the red love-bites.

But, on close inspection, his eyes found her puffy red withers, where he had bitten down so hard the moment his mind had rebelled on him and their sensual actions. Guilt flooded him, drowning his short-lived triumph of marking her as his. Slowly his muzzle stretched out, lips hovering and barely tracing the swelling, porcelain skin. Warm breath gently breathed over the blossoming bruise, “I did as you asked— as I wanted— but now look at this,” his low voice was quiet, nearly beaten.

He took his head away from her shoulders, away from her. Fear stirred in him, feeding on the shame and guilt. He didn’t perform for her, he marked her, and her mind turned him into a monster of her past. What was left for them? Did she still want him?

Finally, finally, his shaken blue gaze met her own, filled with silent questions.

“I’m not upset, Temb.” Despite these being the words that he wanted, needed to hear, they were only balm to his burns, they did not heal them. They did not reassure. Black-rimmed ears twitch as her voice mimics his words, broken and vehement all encased in a velvet voice that was his undoing. He saw the fire leap from her voice to her eyes, and suddenly—

Suddenly she was there. Warm, soft body pushing into his hot, hard chest. Persistently shoving back his doubts, his fears. Silken coat a golden salve to his self-inflicted wounds. Instinctively he moulded his hard body around her, taking her into his embrace as much as she was holding him. He both heard and felt her words, atoning for his actions as her slender barrel vibrated them through his chest.

”This is the look of love.” His ears tilted back as his eyes closed, squeezing shut against the nearly painful rush of heat that filled him at her words. “I’m okay with this.” His thick neck curved, pulling her in tightly, feeling the visceral pull of wanting to believe her words so very badly. “Are you?” His lips unknowingly traced a welt on her neck as her words ripped through him.

His shut eyes did not see her light blue gaze, but he could feel their lightness on his face. Slowly, his dark blue eyes reappear from beneath black lids, and he unclenched a jaw he had not known he clamped shut. His muzzle parted to speak, but his throat was trapped by the rush of heat that had filled him when she spoke.

So his lips shut for a moment, his eyes stately closely, intimately, into hers. Reaching out, his muzzle traced the crest of her cheek, mere whispers on her face. “Yes, I’m okay with this,” quietly, huskily, his heartfelt words managed to travel across lovely skin.

Come what may, they would make it because this was the look of love.

The smallest of grins crosses his face as the brief, frustrated purse of her lips at him. She was fighting for them, and it was not only endearing, but also arousing. Not in a sexual sense, but in a passionate, moving sense. Her satin cheek brushed against the short, rough coat on his own. And, as her body asked him to, he lowered his head and leaned his face into her caress. He watched closely as a smile found her lips, lighting face, and making her cerulean eyes glow. If you had asked the man if she could have gotten any more beautiful than that moment, he would have told you ‘no.’

But he would have been wrong.

Because she became incandescently exquisite to him as her next few words whispered like silken ribbons from her velvet lips. “I love you, Tembovu.” Though she had confessed to love before this moment, there was more weight, more meaning, in the statement, after all that had transpired on the Flats. A smile, warm and intimate, grew on his broad muzzle, melting any remaining doubt in his navy eyes. “And I love you, my golden Rexanna.”

His wounds, and her own, were brought to the forefront of his attention as his lips returned to her skin and found the brightly bruised bridge of her nose. They both needed to see healers… from their respective herds. He didn’t want to leave her warmth and softness. Thoughts of walking her to the Basin swirled in his brain, but quickly died before they fully formed. Though he did not want to leave her, in the face of all that had happened on the Flats, he was not sure he could part ways with her at the border of the Basin. The place that, to him, had created so many of their problems, of their pain. Perhaps his blame was misplaced, but it was easier to condemn a racist herd with known liars and manipulators than point a finger at either himself or the woman he loved.

“I think it is time you sought a healer for your bruises, and I one for my head.” Despite the call for action his his words, his tone were as reluctant and the slow steps he began to take away from his gilded woman. He glanced vaguely in the direction of the Edge, before returning his eyes to hers.