“What did you do.” Not a question. A verdict. Delivered in a whisper against the pillow while my knot holds us locked together and my mark throbs on her skin.
“What I couldn't stop.” My mouth is still against the bite, I kiss the wound, and her pulse pounds against my tongue—fast, erratic, furious.
“You had no right.”
“No.” My hands are still on her hips, still gripping, because if I let go I might actually fall apart. “I didn't.”
She's trembling. Not from pleasure. Her trembling is grief and rage and the seismic aftershock of a woman whose proudest principle—that her body was hers to govern—just got overruled by the man she despises most.
I did this. I, who built legal frameworks to protect the world from biological chaos, just succumbed to biology more completely than any man in my family's history. My father would understand. That's the worst part. He'd look at me with those hollow, broken eyes and nod, because he knows exactly what it's like to have your body override everything you built, everything you believed, everything you swore.
I swore this would never be me.
The knot holds us locked together. I count every second, cataloging the silence, the small adjustments her body makes around mine, the gradual evening of her breath from ragged to controlled. She's already rebuilding her walls. When the knot finally releases, she pulls away immediately. Rolls to the far edge of the bed and puts as much distance between us as the mattress allows. My body screams to follow, to pull her back, to wrap around her and bury my face in her neck and breathe her in until the world makes sense again. I grip the sheets instead and force myself to stay.
She sits up with her back to me. My eyes trace the line of her spine—the dark, flawless skin, the curve of her shoulders, the wild explosion of her curls—and land on the bite mark at the junction of her neck and shoulder. It's already darkening, the edges swollen, visible and permanent against her mahogany skin.
My mark. On her body. For the rest of her life.
The satisfaction that rips through me is so fierce and so wrong that I have to close my eyes against it.
She stands. Her legs aren't steady—I catch the slight wobble, the half-second pause as her weight settles—but her head is high and her shoulders are squared. She crosses the room toward the bathroom, spine straight, chin up, already planning the next battle. The door clicks shut.
I lie in the wreckage of the bed for a count of ten. The line of light under the bathroom door is a challenge. Every beat of my heart is a command; Go.
I get up. The sheets are a ruin, the scent of us—her heat, my rut, sex and sweat—is thick in the air. I cross the room without hesitation. The cold knob turns under my hand. I don't knock.
She’s standing before the wide mirror over the double vanity. Her back is to me, but I see her face in the glass. Her eyes are on the mark. Her expression is stripped of everything but a cold, burning rage.
My feet stop on the cold tile. The air is steamy from the hot water she ran.
“Get out,” she says, her voice flat. Her eyes never leave the reflection of the bite.
I don’t move. My gaze is locked on it, too. The raw, bruised flesh. The teeth marks. My teeth marks. “No.”
She turns. Fast. She has a washcloth in her hand, damp and twisted. “I said, get out.”
I take a step closer. “We need to clean it.”
“I’ll clean it.” She lifts the cloth to her neck, and I see the tremor in her hand.
My hand shoots out, catches her wrist. “You’ll make it worse.” The cloth drops to the floor with a soft slap. We’re close now. Her scent is a physical force. The jasmine is gone. This is all her. Raw. Real. And under it, the faint, metallic tang of her blood. My own blood roars.
“Let go of me, Vaughn.”
“Look at it, Jaleesa.” My voice is rough. I turn her, gently but without room for argument, back toward the mirror. I stand behind her, my front pressed against her back, my hands on her shoulders. We stare at our reflection. Me, bigger, darker, caging her in. Her, defiant, trapped, and marked. “Look at what we are now.”
“This is what you did.”
“This is what I did,” I agree. The admission is gravel in my throat. My thumb comes up, traces the swollen edge of the bite. She flinches, but doesn't pull away. A gasp escapes her. “And I’d do it again.”
Her eyes blaze in the mirror. “You son of a—”
My mouth is at her ear. “I would do it again,” I whisper, my breath stirring her curls. “I’d bite you in my sleep. I’d bite you across a courtroom. My body knows yours now. There is no going back.”
I lower my head. My lips touch the wound. She goes rigid. I don’t kiss it. I taste it. A slow lick, dragging my tongue over the broken skin. She tastes like iron and honey. She tastes like my own damn soul.
A sob breaks from her. A sound of pure fury and unwilling pleasure. Her hands come up, press against the cold marble of the counter, her knuckles tense.
