I cannot look away. He holds my gaze, unblinking. Without ever breaking eye contact, his thumb slides over my knuckles, slowly stroking the slick paste deep into my raw skin.
An electric shiver shoots straight down my arms, bypassing my logic to gather hot and thick directly between my thighs.
My eyes widen as the heavy flush hits my bloodstream. Kol instantly goes still. His head tilts, his nostrils flaring wide as he drags in a slow breath. The instant he inhales, his pupils expand. A sudden flare of gold strobes across his broad chest, and still he does not look away. Warmth bleeds from his thick hands into my fingers and my throat locks up.
I will not whimper. I willnot.
Kol huffs out a breath that sounds too much like a pleased, possessive growl.
I lock my spine, biting the inside of my cheek hard enough to taste blood. My knees actively threaten to fold.
“Kol.” I pull at my hands.
He still does not let go. His grip is incredibly gentle, but wrapping my fingers in his feels exactly like a trap snapping shut. The sheer power leashed in his golden arms should be terrifying. In fact, Iamterrified, which is the only logical reason the inside of my mouth just went dry.
A textbook fear response.
He ignores my protest completely, his attention shifting to the hot strips of hide draped over his forearm. He slides the first strip around my palm, binding the firebloom to my knuckles.
The leather is practically blistering. He pulls the binding tight, and the rough slide of his thumb over my inner wrist sends another shiver down my spine.
“Kol, it is just a scrape,” I blurt out, my voice embarrassingly high in the quiet tunnel. “It is nothing. I do not need this.”
He drops my wrapped hand and takes the other, applying the blue-orange paste with the exact same slow, agonizing care, before wrapping the second hot hide strip around it. He is focused on the mechanics of the knots.
I cannot breathe.
The warm buzz traveling up both of my forearms is drowning out everything else, causing a flush of heat to creep straight up my throat.
He secures the final knot. But instead of letting my hands fall, his thick thumbs slide from my wrapped palms down to press directly over the frantic, hammering pulse at my wrists.
He steps forward.
I am instantly caged against the rough stone of the cavern wall. He is an actual mountain of dark, heavily-ridged muscle surrounding me, blocking out the daylight and the rest of the cavern. The overpowering scent of hot, sun-baked stone and pure masculine musk rolls off his skin, making my belly tighten.
He lowers his head.
I freeze. His face stops a fraction of an inch from the curve of my neck. I can physically feel the hot, ragged rush of his breath against my collarbone. He inhales, taking a slow, heavy drag of air so deep his broad chest expands against mine.
His glow strobes violently. A low, vibrating rumble starts deep in his throat. The raw sound rattles straight through my ribs, overpowering the frantic hammering of my own pulse.
Even the lingering edge of my panic evaporates under the sheer, suffocating weight of the sound. The vibration pushes directly into my bones, bypassing my logic and replacing my fear with a liquid ache that pools low in my belly instead.
He pays no attention to my trembling knees. His body simply cages me tighter against the stone as he drags his rough thumb over my inner wrist, grinding his thick, spiced musk directly into my skin.
Then, he pulls back just enough to look at my face. His amber eyes are almost swallowed by blown-out black pupils.
“Huh-rrt?” The question scrapes out of him, rough and guttural. He physically forces the human word up through his throat, punishing his vocal cords.
“It does not hurt,” I say quickly.
It does. The raw skin has been burning like fire since dawn. But I will not show physical weakness to a predator this powerful, not when my body already feels completely at his mercy.
“Let go,” I say, internally cursing the breathy tremble in my tone. “Do you not have a clan to run?”
He stubbornly holds my wrists for one more heartbeat. The heat of his hands is distracting. I need him to leave right now before my knees actually give out.
He exhales another rumble. I can visibly see the terrifying amount of tension locking his broad shoulders, as though he has to manually override his own biology just to force his fingers open.
