Chapter 6 I’d Steal Anything For You #2
“They like you,” I say after I’ve finished my meal. I carefully bundle the trash together and put it in a pile at my side. I’ll throw it out later.
Sorren traces me with his eyes, smiling softly. “They like you too.” He points as a tiny butterfly lands on my bent knee. Its wings are aqua and iridescent, with black dots that look like a second set of eyes.
I hold still, not wanting to scare it away.
“It’s so beautiful,” I breathe out, wishing I could touch the tiny creature but knowing I would only harm it. Wipe away some of the powder on its wings that helps it fly. Like fairy dust.
“It is,” Sorren agrees. “The most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”
I glance up to see his eyes are on me.
Not the butterfly.
My breath catches. We move toward each other, while the butterflies startle. They lift off us and scatter into the air. Fly into the rafters and trees that arch over our heads.
My mouth finds his, warm and soft. His hand comes around my waist, pulling me closer.
I lean into the kiss, suddenly desperate for him. Overwhelmed with a need to know him, every detail. To feel him. I want to touch him, kiss him everywhere.
His lips part against mine, answering with the same passion. The same urgency.
“Why do I feel this way?” I pull back and ask softly, “Consumed with wanting you and yet strangely comfortable around you? Like I’ve already known you a lifetime?”
I’ve been wondering about it all day. Turning it over and over in my mind during the boat ride away from the hunters, when he was still a rabbit in the bag at my feet.
“It’s the bond,” he says, pulling me into his lap.
He settles me there with my back to his chest, the heat of his body warming me. I can feel the steady beat of his heart vibrate against my spine.
“I know how this sounds. How rushed it must feel to you,” he says quietly. “We met two days ago. By any reasonable measure I should barely know you.”
He presses a kiss to the tender spot where my shoulder meets my neck.
“But the truth is that your soul recognizes mine. It always has. Some part of you has known me for much longer than today.” His voice lowers. “I’ve bitten you five times. With every bite, the bond deepens. With every bite we fall further in—”
His words stop abruptly, as if they’ve run into a wall.
The unspoken word lingers between us until I give it voice.
“Love?” I whisper.
I’m glad I’m facing away from him. I’m scared to see his expression. Afraid I’ll find regret there. Or doubt.
“The bond says I should love you, and I do,” he says quietly. “But not because the bond commands it.”
His hands slide under my hips, turning me until I’m facing him.
“I know we still have a lot to learn about each other, Nora, but I’ve already seen your strength. You didn’t freeze when the hunters chased us. You didn’t falter.”
His thumb brushes along my arm.
“I’ve seen your kindness too. The way you teach the children. The way you hug them when they cry, encourage them when they’re scared.”
His eyes soften.
“And I’ve seen your loyalty. How you love your mother. The way you’d do anything for her.”
I open my mouth to respond, but he raises a hand gently.
“I don’t expect you to feel the same,” he says. “But if we fail inside the egg…” His voice lowers. “I didn’t want to leave this world without telling you.”
“You don’t think we can do it?” I ask, willing my chin not to tremble. “That we won’t win?”
He sighs and looks away. “I don’t know what will happen,” he admits. “Only that it will be difficult. That it will test us both.”
His hand slides slowly down my arm.
“I do know how I feel, and that’s why I had to tell you.” He smiles at me, small and tinged with sadness.
His eyes trace my face like he’s trying to memorize every detail.
“You’re my mate. Our bond has no beginning and no end. In every world, I love you always.”
His hand comes up to cup my face, as if the words themselves weren’t enough.
I almost say it back, I love you too, but the words catch in my throat.
My mind rebels at the impossibility of it. The sheer absurdity of feeling something this big so fast.
I don’t know him. I can barely comprehend that he’s real. That his world is real.
How could I love someone so different from me?
And yet, something inside me already does.
I’m not brave enough to say those words, not yet, but I can show him how I feel. I reach up and comb my fingers through his hair. “If there’s a chance we won’t make it, if tonight is the last night we have together, then I want to be with you, Sorren. Really be with you.”
I take his hand and bring it to my breast. He sucks in a startled breath.
“Are you sure?” he asks. “We don’t have to—”
I don’t let him finish.
I kiss him hard, letting my tongue slide into his mouth. I wrap my arms around his neck and swing a leg over his lap, straddling him.
“I’m sure,” I murmur against his lips. “Give me tonight. No regrets. No thought of tomorrow. I just want to be here with you. Together.”
His eyes search mine with quiet desperation, like he’s trying to read my mind. “Nora…”
“Shh.” I press a finger to his lips, then replace it with my mouth. I test the bond, sending my need for him—the love I can’t put into words—down to him.
He kisses me back, his hand sliding up to cradle the side of my neck. His thumb brushes beneath my jaw as he tilts my head, deepening the kiss.
I press closer, my hands tangling in his hair, while his other arm tightens around my waist, pulling me firmly against him. Heat blooms wherever our bodies touch.
The kiss grows hungrier. Rougher. Soon we’re both breathing hard.
Clothing becomes an obstacle. We break apart long enough to drag at buttons and tug fabric out of the way. His fingers fumble at the hooks of my bra while I push his jacket from his shoulders.
We’re clumsy with it. Impatient.
Gasping, pulling, tugging at fabric, tripping over each other as we undress.
Once it’s all been stripped away, once we’re naked, there’s no hesitation left.
No embarrassment. No wondering if I look okay or if he minds the shape of my hips, the softness of my belly.
Sorren runs his eyes and then his hands over the length of me, murmuring about how beautiful I am, how lovely, how stunning, how he’s never felt like this before, and even though I know that we’re in danger.
Even though everything in my world has been turned upside down.
I don’t think I’ve ever been this happy.
I’ve definitely never felt this adored.
Sorren spreads his shirt out on the hard floor with a frown. “I’m sorry. This doesn’t seem very comfortable. We don’t have to—”
I push him onto his back and move over him. “It’s fine,” I tell him, my hands tracing each of his ribs, and he sucks in a breath. I hold myself over him, delicately, and then slide down, taking his shaft into me inch by slow aching inch.
“Nora.” Sorren hisses my name like it pains him, the intensity of this moment, and I feel it too. The minute he slips into me, the barrier between our minds weakens, shakes, shatters. So that now I feel him in my body but also in my soul.
“Oh, my, I, don’t.” Words bubble out of me, meaningless because there’s no way to describe this sensation. This melding of us into one. His hands go to my hips. Sorren lifts me up and drops me back down and I can feel him in me, deliciously stretching and sliding, but I can also feel him around me.
No. Wait.
That’s me around him, but I can feel it too.
How my walls close over his shaft, how they grasp him, squeeze tight, friction with each thrust. It’s like he described earlier—there’s no end and no beginning to us now.
He’s me, and I’m him, and together we’re moving.
We pump our hips, move toward each other.
Collide. Retreat. Repeat. His hand is on my clit, rubbing and brushing.
I stroke the soft skin at the base of his shaft, and he moans my name.
I brace my hands on his chest to lift myself up and then slam down as hard and quick as I can.
He matches the movement with sharp upward jerks of his hips.
The butterflies dance and spin, suspended in the air between us, and it builds.
It burns. His mind shows me flashes of running through a field, long green grass.
Wiggling into a burrow, the dirt soft and sun-warmed.
There’s a ballroom with mirrors on the walls where rabbits hop between gowns studded with jewels.
A band plays the most beautiful tune on instruments I’ve never seen before as dancers spin and dip.
This is his home. His world. His memories.
I give him mine back. My mom laughing on the couch while I dance in my PJs. My dad when he was alive, how he would light up when I walked into the room. The kids’ sticky hands when they hug me after recess.
We’re sharing our bodies and also our minds.
Merging to become something new.
Not two but one.
“Is it always like this?” I ask, struggling to open my eyes so I can see him.
“I don’t know,” Sorren says, pushing deeper into me.
His eyes have gone feral; his lips pull back.
Suddenly he pulls me off, flips me onto my stomach, and rams into my pussy from behind.
I cry out because it felt amazing when I was on top of him, but this is beyond that.
This is glorious, mind blowing. Sorren holds me with one hand wrapped around my chest and the other on my clit.
He flicks his fingers and ruts into me wildly.
He’s lost all control, and I revel in it. Meeting him with each thrust.
“I’m going—going to bite you,” he warns behind me, but I know it’s more than that.
It’s him asking for permission.
“Yes.” I slam back into him, my pulse spiking.
I’m needy for it, his mouth on me. The animal in him to finally come out.
He sinks his teeth into my shoulder. Not gentle.
Not holding back. He rends into my flesh, and I shout in pleasure.
So hard it strains my throat. He holds me to him with his bite as I come grinding and rolling beneath him, screaming his name.
He still bites me as he comes too, with one last deep grunt, his legs scrambling for purchase on the hard floor so he can stay seated within me. I can feel him spasm hard as he comes.
We collapse together. Panting. A sweaty mess.
He releases my shoulder and seals his mark with a kiss.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers in my ear as he shifts me into his arms, so that my head rests on his arm. “Did I hurt you?”
I do ache, a low throbbing, but it’s a good feeling. Satisfied.
“No, rabbit king.” I turn my head to kiss his cheek. “You didn’t hurt me.”
His mind retreats from mine, now that we aren’t joined. I can still feel him there, but it’s duller. Not merged into one like it was before.
“That was…” I trail off, shaking my head. “I can’t even describe what that was.”
“I could hear you. Feel you. In me. Around me,” he says.
I twist in his arms to better face him. His hair is tangled over his forehead. I brush it aside. “Me too.”
He searches my expression. “Did it scare you? To be so close? Here,” his hand brushing over my chest, where my heart is finally slowing down, then up to my forehead, “and here?”
I grab that hand, bring it to my lips so I can kiss the back of it, followed by his fingertips. I kiss each one, which makes him smile.
“No, I liked it.” I release his hand. “All my life I’ve felt just a little lonely.
That was the first time I’ve ever felt complete.
” I run my finger over his lips and sigh.
“Maybe because I’ve been searching for you all along and I never knew it?
Maybe I felt a little bit empty because you weren’t here to fill me up yet. ”
“You were complete before me,” he says. “And you’ll be complete without me.” His voice goes rough. “No matter what happens tomorrow, you’re already perfect. Please know that.” A beat. “Promise me.”
I pause, surprised by his words. How he just phrased that, but then I remember how much danger we’re in and how it’ll all come to a head tomorrow. He’s trying to reassure me, I realize, in case it goes wrong.
“I promise.” I lift my lips to his, wanting to quell the fire, the fear I see there. “I’ll remember. No matter what happens.”
For a second, I almost see a single tear glitter in his eyes, but he buries his face in my neck before I’m sure. He whispers something too low for me to hear.
It’s not until later, after we’ve made love for a second time, this time softer, slower, and I’m drifting off to sleep that I realize what he said, even though it makes no sense.
It was something like…
“No. You won’t remember.”