"I've got you," he says.
He pushes in slow. Inch by inch. Watching my face. And the feel of him — the stretch, the fullness, the heat of his body inside mine — I'm present for every second of it. This specific person. These specific hands. This mouth that called me murder girl and meant it as a term of endearment.
He moves. Slow. Deep. He rolls his hips and pulls back and pushes in and each stroke hits something deep that makes my breath catch. His forehead drops to mine. Our noses touching. Eyes open. I can see him — really see him — and what's in his face is terrifying in its simplicity.
He's here. All of him. No walls. No armor. Just Leo. Scared and present and looking at me like I'm the realest thing in his world.
"Harder," I whisper.
The pace picks up. His hand finds my hip — grips, tilts, changes the angle — and the next stroke makes me gasp. He does it again. Again. His breathing is ragged. Mine is gone entirely. The tension is building — a coil tightening at the base of my spine that connects to every point where his skin meets mine.
"I need you to come," he says against my mouth. "I need to feel it."
The coil breaks. I shatter around him — silent, mouth open, no sound, just my body locking down and pulsing. He follows three strokes later — his hips stuttering, his face buried in my neck, my name the only word left in his vocabulary.
We lie there. His weight on me — heavy, real, grounding. His heart slamming against my chest. My hands on his back, feeling his breathing slow.
He lifts his head. Looks at me.
"You're not a murderer," he says. Quiet. Certain.
"You don't know that."
"Yeah I do. You want to know how?"
"How?"
"Because you're crying."
I am. I didn't notice. Tears running from the corners of my eyes into my hair and I didn't feel them start. The fear and the gold eyes and the sixty-to-seventy percent and Gray's rejection and Leo's hands and the feeling of being held by someone who isn't afraid of what I am — it all broke through at once and my body is doing the thing it never does. The thing I trained out of myself in my second foster placement when I learned that crying doesn't make the world softer, it just shows people where to hit.
I'm crying and he's inside me and his thumb is wiping the tears off my cheekbone and I have never in my entire life been this vulnerable with another person.
"Murderers don't cry about it," Leo says. "Trust me. You're not one of them."
He rolls off me. Pulls me into his side. My face against his chest. His arm around me.
"Whatever happened in that basement," he says into my hair. "Whatever the blood says. You're still you. Alex. The girl who looked at a feral wolf and leaned toward it instead of away."
I press my face into his chest. Feel his heartbeat. Slow. Strong. Human.
"Don't look at me like I'm safe," I say. Echoing his words back.
"Why not?"
"Because I might not be."
His arm tightens. "Good thing I don't need you to be safe. I just need you to be mine."
Chapter seventeen
Gray
The routine is the only thing holding.
Five-thirty: wake. Dress. Make the bed — corners tucked, pillow centered, sheet pulled taut. Because the act of making it means I chose to. Every morning, the bed is proof.
Six: breakfast. Oatmeal. The same oatmeal every morning. Consistency is control.
