6. Sky #2
There it is again. The line I keep stepping over because I cannot see it until I am bleeding on the other side.
"I cannot unmake the bond," I say.
Her hand tightens on the doorframe. A tremor moves through her wrist. "Tell me to leave," I say.
"Skylor—"
"Say the words. Not anger. Not pride. Not a clever human insult that makes me want to kiss you and break a wall. Tell me to leave, Beatrice."
Her throat works. The fever rolls through the bond, hers answering mine, mine answering hers.
She sways. Only a fraction. Anyone else might miss it.
I do not. I step forward and catch her waist before she hits the jamb.
The contact ruins us. Heat spikes up my arms. Her body softens for one traitorous second, her forehead nearly dropping against my chest before she stiffens again.
Her scent blooms, slick and fever and the desperate relief of skin finding skin.
Her hands clutch my shirt. There is the answer neither of us trusts.
I lift her. She makes a furious little sound and grips my shoulders as I carry her inside.
The door shuts behind us with my heel. Her apartment reaches me in fragments: books stacked beside a chair, papers on a small table, a bra thrown over the back of a chair, mugs in the sink, lavender detergent, radiator heat, the fierce little world she built without me. Human. Small. Hers.
Then her bedroom opens in front of us. The nest waits on the bed.
It is not the elegant thing I made in my quarters.
No weighted royal weave. No Layn thermal cloth tuned to an Omega's skin.
No careful structure, no proper scent layers, no abundance.
Hers is smaller, rougher, built from what she had.
The blouse she wore out of my bed. Her notebook near the pillow.
A folder from Athena. My shirt folded into the center like a relic.
Survival from scraps. The sight strips the last polish from me.
"Skylor," she says, warning in my name.
I set her on her feet beside the bed, not in the nest. My hands stay at her waist because she is shaking and because I am no better. "You needed me."
Her chin lifts. "I handled it."
"You endured it."
"I was fine."
A growl tears out of me before I can stop it.
Her pupils widen. The robe shifts with her breath, and the scent of slick thickens, hot and honest and humiliating for both of us.
"You are standing in a fever nest made from stolen scent and office paper.
Do not lie to the male whose body is failing in rhythm with yours. "
Her hand rises, palm to my chest, either to push me away or hold me there. She does neither. The heat of her skin brands me through my shirt. "You don't get to come in here and take over."
"I am not taking over." I strip off my coat and drop it on the floor. The jacket follows. "I am giving your body what it needs."
Her gaze drops as I unbutton my shirt. My fingers shake with fever and restraint.
One button slips. Then another. The fabric pulls free of my trousers and slides from my shoulders.
Cool air hits overheated skin. Beatrice's breath catches.
Her scent changes again, and my cock hardens with painful speed.
"May I add my shirt to your nest?" I ask.
Each word scrapes. The question should not feel like a battle.
It does. There is a part of me that wants to put her in the center of the blankets, cover her in my scent, and dare the universe to try reaching her through me.
There is another part, newer and weaker and apparently the only one with sense, that knows this is exactly why questions matter.
Her eyes flick to the ruined little center of blankets and stolen scraps. "That is manipulative."
"Yes, if I use it to get inside." I hold the shirt out. "No, if I give it because you need it."
She snatches it from my hand and presses it to her chest before pride can stop her. The relief that crosses her face lasts half a heartbeat, but it is enough to push me closer to the edge.
"Bed," I say.
Her eyes flash. "Excuse me?"
"Get in the nest, Beatrice."
"Do not order me, Prince Blueberry."
"Then obey your body and pretend it was your idea."
For one dangerous second, she looks ready to slap me. Then another cramp grips her. Her arms curl around her stomach, and her mouth goes pale. Every protective instinct in me becomes a weapon. I have to close my hands into fists to keep from making her choice for her with my body.
"Tell me," I say. Her eyes lift to mine. "Tell me wait, and I will wait. Tell me leave, and I will go into the hall and suffer there. But do not stand in front of me pretending you are not in pain because you think pain proves independence."
Her mouth trembles before she firms it. "You are so annoying."
"Yes."
She exhales, shaky and furious. "Stay."
I lift her again, slower this time, and place her in the center of the nest. She curls around my shirt immediately, then glares at me as if I forced her to do it. I kneel beside the bed and wait.
Her brows draw together. "What are you doing?"
"Waiting to be invited."
"Skylor."
"Invite me in, Beatrice."
The room holds its breath. Something in her face shifts. Not surrender. Not forgiveness. The smallest, angriest mercy.
"Get in the bed."
I don't waste a nanosecond.
The space barely holds me. Her mattress was built for one human woman, not a Layn prince with a failing bond and shoulders designed by an unreasonable planet.
I arrange myself around her anyway, one arm beneath her shoulders, one leg bracketing hers, chest to chest as I pull her robe open enough to bring our skin together.
She gasps. I do too.
Relief crashes through me, immediate and violent, like water over fire. The fever quiets first where our bodies touch. Her shaking eases. Mine recedes into a tremor. Her forehead drops against my throat, and for several breaths, neither of us speaks.
This should be enough. Skin. Scent. Warmth. Proof that she is alive and I am not exiled from her entirely.
It is not enough.
Her cheek rubs against my chest, not a decision, not seduction, only a fevered search for scent. The motion drags a sound out of me I have no chance of disguising.
"Bee."
She lifts her head. "Skylor."
"I am going to make the fever stop." My hand rises to her jaw, light enough for refusal, steady enough that she cannot mistake what I want.
"I am going to put my mouth on you until your body remembers relief.
I am going to give you my scent, my skin, my tongue, my knot if you ask for it.
And then I am going to ask for one truth. "
Her eyes darken. "What truth?"
"That this is real."
The words enter the room and change its temperature.
Her hand fists against my chest. "Don't."
"Not forgiveness. Not surrender. Truth. I will not let you pretend the bond is imaginary because the terms frightened you."
"The terms matter."
"I know."
"You don't."
No. I do not. Not fully. Some cleaner part of me recognizes the danger. The rest of me has her shaking beneath my hands in a nest made from my scent, and my restraint has become a thread pulled too tight.
"You are my wife," I say.
Her eyes flash. "That word is not a leash."
"No." I lower my mouth to the corner of hers. "It is a vow."
"Not if only one of us understood it."
That should stop me. It almost does.
Then another cramp moves through her, her breath hitching against my mouth, and the bond surges with both our pain. I kiss her because my body knows how to answer pain faster than my mind knows how to respect it.
She stiffens for one breath. Then melts with a sound that goes straight to my blood.
Her hands seize my shoulders. Her mouth opens under mine, angry and hungry, and the bond quiets from scream to song. I keep my tongue back at first because the aphrodisiac is a weapon if I use it carelessly. She bites my lower lip hard enough to sting.
"Do not be noble now," she says against my mouth. "It's insulting."
That permission is not clean. I know it. I take it anyway.
My tongue sweeps over hers. The response hits her fast. Her spine arches, slick scenting the nest in a hot rush.
She moans, then curses as if pleasure has personally offended her.
I roll her under me, careful with my weight, ruthless with my mouth.
My hands learn her again with the hunger of a male who has been denied water and then offered a sea: the lush curve of her breast, the warm dip of her waist, the soft strength of her thighs spreading around my hips.
She is fever-hot beneath me, trembling harder now for a better reason.
"I hate how much this helps," she pants.
"I know."
"I hate you a little."
"You can hate me while you come."
Her laugh breaks on a moan when I close my mouth over her nipple through the gap in her robe. I suck hard enough to make her hips jerk. Her fingers fly to my ear, and the first stroke along the sensitive ridge sends pleasure down my spine so violently my cock jerks against her thigh.
"Careful," I growl.
Her eyes flash. "No."
Then she strokes again.
The room whites out at the edges. I pin her wrist to the mattress, not hard enough to hurt, enough to stop the touch before I spill like a boy. She stares up at me, breathless and furious, and every old instinct in me rises to meet her.
"My ear will make me lose control."
"Maybe I want that."
"You do not."
"You don't know what I want."
"I know you are slick through your panties and still arguing."
Her mouth opens. No words come. Good.
I drag the panties down her thighs, slow enough to punish both of us. She lifts her hips. My control fractures at the small cooperation. The scent of her opens fully, rich and wet and fever-sweet. I push her thighs wider and settle between them before she can hide from me or from herself.
"Look at me."
Her gaze snaps to mine.
"This is not an apology," I say.
"No, it's worse. It's effective."
"Yes."
Then my mouth is on her.