“If she does this, I know it’s too much and she needs to leave.” She must realise my silence is due to confusion and adds, “If she gets overwhelmed with Amon, it’s my cue to intervene.”
She drops her hand, and I mourn the lost opportunity to take it.
Imbécile.
“Why would we need one?” she asks after a pause. “I thought we were past the…” She glances up, searching for the phrasing. “Starving beast saga.”
Starving beast?
That is precisely what I am.
Even now, the hunger coils beneath the surface—an insatiable, unrelenting need... We all feel it. Which is why she must have a safe word. I will not risk losing the progress we’ve made.
“I amalwaysstarving for you.” That simple statement makes her eyes darken to a richer shade. “Which is why I need you to choose one. A word you can say if any of us ever cross a line. If something doesn’t feel right. If you need us to stop.”
I see the understanding settle in her gaze, piece by piece, until the red nearly disappears, swallowed by something darker.
“Oh.” Her voice is soft. Her eyes wide, but so dark, so alluring.
Dangerous.
“No. It must be a word you are very unlikely to say in… such moments.” I add a soft smile. But I let the tips of my fangs show, intentionally. Her gaze drops to them, caught, as I knew it would be.
“But we’re not… we’re just…” The denial comes gently, layered in hesitation, and I already know what she’ll say next. “We’re just friends. We don’t need—”
“If you sleepwalk to my door tonight, I will not be a gentleman.” Her breath catches. “You will be in my bed. I will be touching you. I will not let you leave.” My voice drops lower, sliding into a rasp as the edge of my darkness rises to meet hers. “I need your safe word.”
“Pit.”
“One syllable. Perfect.”
She soaks up that tiny piece of praise like I’ve draped her in it. And goddesses, it makes me ache to see how she’ll respond when I tell her the things I truly wish to say.
“You speak it, and everything stops,” I murmur, studying her darkened gaze. “No hesitation.”
Then I flit. I have to.
The urge to reach through that barrier, to feel my skin blister for just a chance to touch her cheek, to cup her face like she’s the last soft thing in a brutal world—it’s unbearable.
As I strip off the uniform in the bathroom, I pull out my phone...
Me: Her safe word is ‘pit’.
She could have refused. Denied me with ease. She’s so good at pretending, at batting her long lashes and feigning innocence. But she gave me a word.
She gave me herself, in that small, silent way.
Her expression. The way her lips parted at my tone. The dark heat in her gaze.
I rest my head against the shower tiles and force my hands to remain at my sides, even as need claws down my spine like hunger incarnate. Another form of torture. One I’ll endure gladly, if it ends with her beneath me, beside me, above me…
Breathe. In… one, two, three… and out.
Control. I need to stay in control.
But she riles my beast so easily, carelessly. With no idea of what she awakens.
Like all immortals, I do not need sleep. Not in any significant quantity. But when I’m near our bond… the urge takes hold. Strong and barely inescapable. Ezekial hassuccumbed almost every night, drawn in by her darkness, lulled beneath its tide.
