"He'll tell Miguel," she says quietly.
"Probably."
"This is going to explode everything."
"Definitely."
She turns to face me, and there's something wild in her eyes. "I should care more about that."
"But you don't?"
"I'm tired of being careful," she says, pulling her shirt over her head in one fluid motion, revealing black lace that makesmy brain short-circuit. "I'm tired of being good. I'm tired of choosing everyone else's happiness over mine."
"Lena—"
"Prove you want this," she challenges, backing toward her bedroom. "Prove this is worth burning everything down."
I follow her, already pulling off my cut, my shirt. "All night long," I promise, catching her against the doorframe. "I'll prove it until you forget every reason this is wrong."
"That's a lot of forgetting," she breathes against my lips.
"Good thing I'm thorough," I tell her, lifting her so her legs wrap around me. "Obsessively, destructively thorough."
"My favorite kind of disaster," she murmurs, and then we're falling onto her bed, into each other, into something that has no exit strategy except complete annihilation.
Her sheets smell like lavender and chaos.
Perfect. Just like her.
Chapter twenty-five
First Claiming
Lena
Six weeks of foreplay made the first time volcanic.
We don't even make it to the bedroom initially. He has me against the hallway wall, my legs wrapped around his waist, and I'm making sounds I'll deny later—something between a medical emergency and a religious experience. My scrub top is somewhere near the door, his shirt joined it moments ago, and my body is running a fever that would typically require immediate medical intervention.
My internal monologue is having a whole board meeting:This is definitely not CDC-approved contact. You're about to fuck someone your brother would use for target practice. Your risk assessment skills have filed for disability. Your hippocampus iscomposing resignation letters while your vagina has started a grassroots campaign for terrible decisions.
But then his mouth finds that spot where my neck meets my shoulder, and I taste him when I gasp—salt, danger, and something distinctly male that makes my hindbrain purr. My rational brain flatlines into one long beep of want.
"Bedroom," I manage against his mouth, because if I'm going to make catastrophically bad decisions, I'd prefer to do it on sheets with a thread count that suggests I have my life together.
He carries me like I weigh nothing, and I can feel every shift of muscle against my inner thighs, the controlled power that could probably break me if he wasn't being so deliberately careful. He drops me on my bed with enough force to make the headboard crack against the wall—a sound my neighbors will definitely recognize. Music filters through my speaker—Hozier, because apparently my algorithm knows I'm about to do something that requires a soundtrack for beautiful disasters.
"I need—" I start, but he's already pulling my shorts off with an efficiency that makes my brain short-circuit into static. The cool air hits my overheated skin and I shiver, everything hypersensitive.
"I know what you need," he says, and the arrogance in that statement should trigger my fight response. Instead, it triggers something significantly less professional. I can feel my pulse between my legs, each heartbeat a liquid throb that's probably visible from space.
"Presumptuous," I accuse, but my voice breaks when his hands slide up my thighs, rough calluses catching on soft skin.
"Accurate," he corrects, his hand sliding between my legs, finding me embarrassingly, desperately wet. His fingers are gentle at first, exploratory, then firm when I arch into the touch. "Jesus Christ, Angel. You're fucking soaked."
"Your fault," I manage, then stop managing anything coherent as he slides two fingers inside—slow, deliberate, stretching me carefully like he knows it's been a while. My internal muscles flutter, clench, trying to pull him deeper. His thumb finds my clit with the precision of someone who's been thinking about this for weeks. "Oh god—"
"Not god," he murmurs against my neck, and I can feel his pulse against my throat—140 BPM at least, hammering hard enough that I could take his vitals through skin contact alone. "Just me. The disaster you chose."
