She didn’t expect the question, and wasn’t sure if he actually expected an answer in turn, but if he still needed validation every so often she wouldn’t withhold it. “You know I wouldn’t,” she said, placing a particularly slow and tender kiss on his neck.

His following words made her grin against him and her heart beat a little faster for a moment. For much of her life she had been seen as a possession, a weapon; anything but a woman of flesh and blood and feelings. Nobody owned her, she didn’t belong to anyone, but she was secure enough in her life now, in the woman she had become, to admit that perhaps giving a part of herself away wasn’t such a bad thing. She hadn’t given it freely at first, but over time Clint had stolen small pieces of her heart, so gradually that she hadn’t even noticed until it was whole again and in his possession. He held her heart, and now she wouldn’t even dream of trying to take it back, so in that way she was his as well. The thought was surprisingly not frightening at all.

“You are...” she replied, her breath catching when he found just the right position and held her there. For a moment she forgot what she was doing, her lips falling away from his neck as she moved slightly, gasping when even that small movement sent a thrill of pleasure through her. Lifting her head she surveyed her handiwork and, placing one last kiss upon the deeply coloured mark on his skin, she gently grasped his chin in one hand and turned his head to look at her. “And now everyone will know it.”

Kissing his lips, she ground against him again, moaning into his mouth.