Not the shard, the demons, or the war barreling toward us.
Only her.
Selena. My face was buried in between her inner thighs, warm and shuddering against my cheeks. My tongue traced slow circles, then darted between her secret folds, tasting salt and sweetness, feeling her pulse quicken beneath my lips. Her fingers tangled in my hair, gripping tighter with each gasp until she cried out my name like a prayer. How could I deny her this pleasure when her every shudder was my triumph?
Her desperate pleas to take her—breathless, raw, my name spilling from her lips like she'd been holding it captive for two years—woke something inside me I didn't know existed. Something primal. Something ancient. A predator that recognized its mate on an instinctual level no amount of denial could override.
I'd been with other women. I wasn't going to pretend otherwise. But none of them—not a single one—had ever made me feel like this. Like I would tear the world apart with my bare hands if it meant keeping her safe. Like I would burn down everything I'd built and everything I'd lost just to hear her say my name like that one more time.
This was different. She was different.
And the part of me that had spent two years running from this truth finally went quiet.
I pulled away from her and stared down at her body, my chest rising and falling like a tide. Her skin glowed alabaster in the half-light, the hollow of her throat pulsing with each breath. I tore at my jeans, fingers clumsy with urgency. My arousal strained against fabric, aching with need, ready to claim her depths. She reached her trembling arms up, eyes liquid with desire.
"Take me," she whispered again, her voice husky and raw, scraped down to something honest that no mask could hide.
I crawled into her embrace, and the heat of her skin scorching against mine nearly undid me. I settled my hips between her parted thighs, and she wrapped around me like she was afraid I'd disappear. Her fingers dug into my shoulders, her breath hitching, her body quivering beneath mine—not from fear, but from the same desperate, aching need that was tearing me apart from the inside out.
I kissed her again. Slower this time. Deeper. Pouring everything I couldn't say into the press of my mouth against hers.
Then I pulled back just enough to look into her eyes. I needed to see her—needed to know she was still with me, still choosing this, still choosing me.
"I want you, Selena." My voice was rough. Wrecked. I barely recognized it. "I claim you. You’re mine.”
The words left me and something shifted in the air between us—something ancient, something that had been waiting two years to be spoken. The bond roared to life in my chest, so fierce it stole my breath.
She gasped. Her lips parted, her eyes widening, and tears spilled down her temples into her hair. Not quiet tears. The kind that broke free from somewhere deep—somewhere locked and guarded and bruised from years of waiting.
My heart seized. "What's wrong?"
She shook her head, a broken laugh tangling with a sob. "Do you know how long I've waited to hear that?"
The words hit me like a blade between the ribs.
Guilt swelled inside me—hot, suffocating, relentless. Two years. She'd carried this bond for two years while I'd pretended it didn't exist. While I'd called her a disgrace. While I'd walked away and left her alone with a connection she couldn't sever and a wound she couldn't heal.
And she'd waited anyway. Through all of it. Through the lies and the silence and the years—she'd waited for me. I pressed my forehead against hers, my eyes burning like I'd stared too long at the sun. "I'm sorry," I said, the words cracking apart in my throat like drought-parched earth. "I'm so sorry, Selena."
She cupped my face in her hands, her thumbs brushing away the hot tears that had escaped without permission, trailing down my cheeks in silent rebellion.
"Show me," she whispered, her breath warm against my lips. "Stop telling me and show me."
I lifted my hips and pushed into her welcoming heat, the sensation making my breath catch.
Selena
"Yes. Yes."
The moment I'd been waiting for had arrived. He filled me completely, and my whole body melted into his, a gasp tearing from my throat. My muscles stretched and contracted around him as he pressed deeper. The sweet burn of fullness stole my breath, my fingers gripping his shoulders as our bodies found their rhythm together.
His mouth found the curve of my throat, lips and tongue and the hot press of his breath against my hammering pulse—as I pressed into him, every nerve in my body singing. I shivered with pleasure, goosebumps racing across my flesh like electricity. The frenzy between us built to something primal and uncontrollable, our breathing ragged and synchronized. It was as if our bodies recognized each other from some ancient memory, desperate to eliminate even the whisper of space between us.
Rocco's teeth sank into the tender flesh where my neck met my shoulder, and I dug my nails into his muscled shoulders hard enough to break skin. The sharp sting melted into liquid pleasure that radiated through my core like molten gold. It ignited a cascade of sensations that overwhelmed me—my skin electric, my breath ragged— driving me to move my hips in an increasingly desperate rhythm against him. I slid one handdown the sweat-slicked plane of his back and cupped his balls, feeling their weight in my palm.
He moaned against my throat, his hips snapping forward with renewed vigor. He pulled away, his dark eyes boring into mine. "You're mine, Selena. Forever.”
My chest constricted with an emotion too vast to name.
