His hands move to my boot, carefully undoing the Velcro straps. “Let’s get this off so you can sleep properly.”
He removes it with practiced care, setting it aside, then gently massages my ankle—just light pressure, checking the swelling.Then he stands and scoops me up, carrying me to the center of the bed and settling me against the pillows.
He climbs in beside me and I immediately turn into him, pressing my face against his chest. His arms come around me and we just lie there in the growing dawn light, holding each other.
No words. Just breathing. Just the steady beat of his heart under my ear and the warmth of his skin and the knowledge that we’re both here, both safe.
After a while, I tilt my head up to look at him. His eyes are already on me, watching me.
“Hi,” I whisper.
“Hi.” His hand comes up to cup my face, thumb tracing my cheekbone.
I lean in and kiss him, soft at first, just a brush of lips. He responds immediately, kissing me back with a tenderness that makes my chest ache.
But then something shifts. The kiss deepens, becomes more urgent. His hand slides into my hair, gripping slightly, and I feel the tension in his body, the adrenaline, the relief, the desperate need to connect.
I press closer, my leg hooking over his hip, and he groans against my mouth. His hand slides down my side, under the t-shirt, palm hot against my skin.
“Emma,” he breathes, pulling back slightly. “We should sleep. You need to rest, and your ankle?—”
“I don’t care about my ankle,” I whisper, dragging him closer. “I care about having your cock inside me.” He groans. “Fuck me, Bones. And don’t you dare be careful.”
26
BONES
Christ.
I kiss her hard, pouring everything into it like maybe I can fuse the broken places between my ribs and hers if I just hold on tight enough. I press her down into the mattress, the weight of me pinning her to earth, and I swear I hear her heartbeat thumping through skin and bone, wild as a moth in a jar. Her mouth is fire—she bites my lower lip, hard, and I don’t even realize I’ve got her wrists above her head until she moans into my mouth.
The right thing here would be to stop. Or at least to be careful, take it slow. But we both know that’s not going to fucking happen. We both need this. We need to fuck away all the darkness as if it’ll somehow cleanse this night from our souls.
I hook my hand under her thigh, lift her good leg up around my hip and rock against her, the heat of her bleeding right through all the fabric in the way. She’s groping my back, nails scraping tracks that sting and make the blood race louder in my ears. Ican’t get enough of her, can’t get close enough, can’t keep myself from wanting to swallow her whole.
“I need you,” she pants, desperate and shaking. “Need you to ruin me.”
I grip the backs of her knees, open her up, and shove her shirt to her armpits. Her tits are perfect, rose nipples hard already. I suck one into my mouth, teeth scraping just enough to make her gasp, then run my tongue across the bite so she feels it everywhere. My dick is aching, and I grind against her, the friction almost too much through my boxers. I want to take it slow, savor her, but the way she claws at me is begging for now, now, now.
She’s not some fragile porcelain, not the girl I had to carry through the woods. She’s feral, wild, a bare animal need that matches my own. She yanks my hair, pulls my face up, swallows my moan with a kiss and bites my lip until I taste metal. I rut against her, can’t stop, can’t think.
Her hand slips inside my waistband and grabs me, and I nearly blow right then, just from the feel of those long, elegant fingers and the heat in her hungry little noises and the sweat-slick heat of her skin. She rolls her hips up, hungry, unashamed. Even now, with her ankle all fucked and her body hurting everywhere, she’s the only person I’ve ever known who can make need look like power, like the only danger in this bed is me not keeping up with her.
I breathe against her neck, lips grazing, and she shudders, clutching me in a vice-like grip. “God, Bones,” she whispers, and there’s nothing in my head but the frantic throb of her pulse and the ache in my cock, hard enough to fucking hurt.
I jerk her shorts down and she kicks them away with her good foot. My boxers follow. I pause a second to look at her, and it’s almost too much.
Emma Armstrong, spread out beneath me, flushed and wanting, naked except for my T-shirt bunched above her tits, her pale skin marked from my teeth. Her dark hair spilled across the pillows like a goddamn painting, and when she looks at me with those eyes—hungry, desperate, alive—I almost forget the night I just had. Almost forget the feeling of a knife sliding between ribs, the way a body drops, the sound a man makes when he realizes he’s not getting out alive.
“What?” she asks, her voice raspy.
“Nothing,” I whisper. “Just looking at the most beautiful fucking thing I’ve ever seen.”
She reaches for me, pulls me down until I’m hovering over her, my weight on my forearms. “Stop looking and start fucking,” she says, and it’s not a request.
I grab her injured leg and hook it over my shoulder, the position opening her completely while keeping the ankle out of the way. She’s so wet I can feel it against my thigh, and when I line myself up, she tries to pull me in with her good leg wrapped around my hip.
“Bones—”
