I may not be like my calmer brother, but I found myself hovering at the borders of peace.
My fingers didn’t itch for a knife.
My mind didn’t drift toward the idea of wounding myself to feel alive.
In wonder, my eyes found Lucy’s face, her attention locked on Fallon.
I never thought anything could replace the security I felt from my knives. Even if it did happen against odds, I’d never have expected their replacement to be an impossibly small creature with silver-white hair and acid eyes.
FALLON.
I approached Lucy the way you approach anything that you feel unworthy of—with reverent caution. My pack brothers had already diverged, giving me my moment in the sun.
I’d slept next to her in her bedroom, but this was different. This was something I thought may never happen. There were no covers separating us now, no worries I might take things too far. And, yet, I still hesitated. When I’d been with women in the past, it had been mostly transactional. I calculated every touch; I planned every moment. I knew the precise moment they’d scream in ecstasy and I’d demand my due. I controlled things. I took my pleasure from women paid to fulfill my fantasies. Women cuffed to ceilings and floors. Women who didn’t turn away my requests, even when they might want to.
Here, I knew I’d bow down to Lucy. I’d let her take control.
I had no plan. I didn’t need one.
I wanted each caress, each kiss, each second to come as naturally as breathing. If she said stop, I’d stop. If she said go, I’d go. If she said to ride my bike off a bridge, I’d rev the engine and say a prayer.
At the center of the large bed that had never been used before this claiming, Lucy looked angelic. Her alabaster skin was pinked with pleasure; her pale hair was splayed like a crown around her head. The evidence of my brothers’ touches marked her body—the slight redness at her hips where Xander's hands had gripped, the faint impressions of Asher's teeth along her collarbone, the precise pattern of fingertip bruises from Nitro's hungry touch. I’d left many of my own brands, one of which was hidden in her mouth. The soft palate bruised by the repeated plunge of my cock.
Lucy thought the scar on her stomach made her lesser. The years of drugs, needles, isolation.
Rather than diminishing her beauty, the marks enhanced it, telling the story of a woman who’d survived. A woman who was thoroughly desired, thoroughly claimed. A woman who had three bonds already formed, with two more yet to forge.
The tapestry of her skin was a goddamn masterpiece. And I was about to add fresh strokes to its surface.
The idea was overwhelming.
It made my head feel hazy and my vision blur.
"Fallon," she whispered, her voice hoarse from cries of pleasure, my name a delicate thing on her lips. “Is something wrong?”
Our gazes collided, my vision focusing.
"Absolutely nothing," I assured her, settling between her thighs with slow, deliberate movements. It was difficult to choose where to touch first, because every inch of her body called out to me. Part of me wanted to flip her over. I wanted tosee her ass in the air, curved and soft, her glistening womanhood presented to me in all its glory. Ready to accept every inch of me.
Start small. Start slow.I told myself.
I leaned back, tracing the top of her foot with my fingertips, traveling over her ankle and up her shin. Waves of need shot through me as I watched goosebumps rise in the wake of my touch.
"You're a miracle,” I told her, my voice pitched low, intimate.
Her eyes—those remarkable, spotted irises that had captivated me from the very first moment, long before I admitted that truth—met mine. Sleepy. Drained. Not ready to stop.
“I used to hate that word,” she said, voice breathy. “I like it when you say it though.”
“Our miracle,” I emphasized, a soft smile curving my lips.
“Prove it,” she challenged.
The pink had begun draining from her pale skin. Retreating up her chest, her neck, settling back to live only in her cheeks. I wanted to watch it flush down her body again.
I moved up her body eagerly, my hands skimming along her legs, her hips, and her waist with feather-light touches. Curving my hands around her hips, I squeezed firmly, then I moved my hands up and inward. Closer, closer to that divine place. The wet glory between her legs.
I didn't go straight for the prize. Instead, I played with already teased and sensitive nerve endings, building upon the foundation my brothers and I had already built. I wanted her entire body to buzz with sensations by the time I sank my cock into her slickness. I didn’t want a single inch of her glorious body to be neglected.
