“Yours,” I gasped. “Always yours. Only yours.”
He bit the mark, hard, and I broke. My body arched, legs shaking, the orgasm so sharp it bordered on pain. He followed, knotting inside me, the thick swell of him filling every inch. He let go of my wrists, hands cupping my face, kissing me softer now, slower, as if piecing the world back together.
We stayed like that, tangled and panting, for a long time. His sweat cooled on my skin. The sheets were soaked. He pressed his forehead to mine, both of us fighting to breathe.
“You okay?” he whispered.
“Better than okay. I’m alive,” I said.
He smiled. “So beautiful.”
He pulled out, rolling onto his side, and for a minute we just lay there, listening to the silence. The mate mark still burned, not with pain, with us.
Butthe hunger didn’t fade. It returned slowly, a pulse in the blood, a throb at the base of my spine.
I rolled over and found him watching me, eyes half-lidded but far from satisfied. I ran a finger down the length of his arm, tracing the veins, the old wounds, the story of who he’d been before me.
He grabbed my wrist, not gently, and pulled me on top of him. I laughed and pressed my palms to his chest, feeling the hard beat of his heart. His hazel eyes held mine and I began to rock back and forth, feeling the length of him fill me completely. I threw my head back, loving the feel of him. His hands came around and held me steady on my hips. His thumb rubbing my clit as I rocked. The sensation caused me to lose my rhythm. He sat up and wrapped his arms around me and turned us so I was on my back.
He fucked me slower this time, savoring every inch, every sound. He bit my shoulder, my breast, the inside of my elbow. He licked the sweat from my neck and whispered beautiful things to me.
“Love you, Red,” he said, barely audible. “Not gonna lose you. I waited my whole life to find you. Damned if some fucker is gonna take you from me now.”
I didn’t answer. I just pulled him closer, let the words bury themselves in my skin.
We came together, slower this time, the pleasure an ache instead of a blaze.
Afterward, he held me, arms circled around my waist, breath hot in my hair.
The afternoon crawled by in a haze of exhaustion and pleasure. We moved to the shower, washing each other with hands more tender than I’d thought possible. He soaped my back, traced the ridges of my ribs, cupped my ass in both palms and lifted me so I could wrap my legs around his waist.
He fucked me in the shower, water slicking our bodies, his cock sliding in and out with obscene ease. I bit his ear, leftcrescent moons in his shoulder with my nails, and when I came this time, I bit over my mate mark on his neck, drawing blood.
He shuddered, let go, and I felt his knot swell again, locking us together. We stood like that, breathless, forehead to forehead, the water turning cold around us.
We dried off in silence. He wrapped me in a towel, then carried me back to the bed, collapsing in a heap of limbs and wet hair.
We lay together, staring at the ceiling, listening to the city’s pulse below. His fingers traced patterns on my thigh. Never still.
“Do you think we’ll make it?” I asked, voice a whisper.
He didn’t answer right away. He just tightened his grip, held me closer.
“Doesn’t matter what they say,” he said at last. “We’re makin’ it.”
I wanted to believe him. I chose to believe him.
We had room service deliver food and nibbled on meat and cheese throughout the day. But mostly we stayed tangled in the sheets long until the room had gone dim around us as the city bled to dusk. The only light came from the edge of the curtains, a knife-blade that painted everything a shade between bruise and bone. I lay with my head against his chest, listening to the stutter in his pulse as if the next arrhythmia might be the last. His hands moved in slow, drifting circles down my back, fingers tracing patterns like he was trying to remember every inch in case the remembering was all he had left.
Neither of us spoke for a long time. The clock ticked somewhere—cheap, electronic, the kind of noise made for hospitals and council chambers. The mate mark on my shoulder was a fevered spot, burning hot against the cool of his skin.
He broke the silence first, voice a low scrape. “If the vote goes against us, we have three options.” He said it like he was reading the results of my biopsy, like it was a fact he’d practiced for years.
I propped myself up, pulling the sheet with me. “Okay,” I said, waiting for the punchline.
He didn’t look at me. Just stared up at the ceiling, the muscle in his jaw flexing as if he were chewing through the words. “Option one, we run. Council will hunt us, but I have the contacts. We could make it months. Maybe a year if we stay mobile.”
“And never sleep in the same bed twice? Always looking over our shoulders?” I tried to keep the bitterness out, but failed.
