Something instantly shutters.
“I am not.” He tries to pull back from the mapping stone. I know he can break my grip effortlessly, but when I tug his hair, he stops moving.
We stay perfectly still, our foreheads pressed together. His breath is harsh, tearing in and out of his lungs and my body is burning. Every screaming nerve ending demanding that I close the distance.
“Prove it,” I whisper.
I let go of his hair, slide both hands down his neck, and grip his broad shoulders. I pull him down. I don’t give him a chance to think or shield. I just kiss him.
He doesn’t know what to do with it. His mouth crashes clumsily against mine, all pressure and no technique, his teeth scraping my lower lip. He tastes like heat and sunshine with something sharp and alien underneath. I angle his jaw with my thumb, slowing him down, and when I open my mouth wider against his, he figures it out fast. His tongue finds mine and a low, guttural sound vibrates through his chest into my teeth.
His hands tighten on my hips. He lifts me higher onto the edge of the stone, stepping flush between my thighs.
Oh.Oh.
Something pulses against my center through my clothes. Not hard. Not the way I expect. A deep, rhythmic throb, radiating searing heat through the fabric between us. Something shifting and swelling beneath his skin, responding to me, pressing up in a rolling pulse that grinds against the seam of my pants.
My hips roll forward before I can stop myself.
A rough, broken sound tears out of his throat. His fingers dig into the curve of my ass and he rocks forward, dragging that deep, pulsing heat along my center in one long, slow roll.
I stop breathing. My spine arches off the cold stone.
He does it again and my fingernails rake down his back. He does itagain, harder, his fangs catching on my bottom lip while he swallows the sound I make. My legs lock around his waist. I can’t help it.
He sets a rhythm. Slow. Brutal. Each thrust pins me flat against the stone slab and rocks my entire body backward. My hands span across his broad back and hold on. That pulsing heat between my thighs is swelling, throbbing harder with every grind, coiling the pressure in my belly tighter and tighter.
The cave is gone. There is just the scrape of stone under my shoulder blades, the wet heat of his mouth on mine, and the grind of his hips pushing me toward something I am not going to be able to stop.
“Kol.” His name comes out shattered. Fuck. I am right there.
He growls against my lips, shifting his stance solidly onto his right arm to bear down for another deep thrust.
And his entire right side seizes.
It isn’t a micro-flinch this time. The dense muscle under my left hand goes rigid, spasming harshly. He sucks in a ragged breath, ripping his mouth away from mine.
He staggers back from the mapping stone, his chest heaving, his golden eyes gone so totally black it should scare me.
I am breathless, my chest rising and falling rapidly as I stare at him, my body still throbbing.
He brings his left hand up, gripping his right shoulder. The raised veins along his bicep are pulsing furiously.
The haze clears from my brain like a bucket of ice water.
“Youarehurt,” I say, sliding unsteadily off the stone to land on my feet. I reach a hand toward him and he flinches.
“Noh,” he grinds out.
“Kol-”
“Noh.” He shakes his head and takes another staggering step backward, retreating into the shadow of the side tunnel.
I watch him go, my knees shaking, need still pooling between my thighs and a sick unease settling low in my gut.
Chapter 10
FOR YOU
