Chapter 26 – Rex
REX
The mask comes off.
Click-click-click.
Clean. Fast. Three magnets releasing in sequence and the performance mask is in her hand and the fog hits the prosthetic skull underneath and I can't breathe.
Can't think.
Can't—
"See?" Bells says, holding up the mask like a trophy. "Easy."
My whole body is shaking.
Every nerve ending from my scalp to my feet is firing at once, adrenaline dumping into my bloodstream like someone opened a floodgate, because my mask just came off and there's air on my face around the thin white skull prosthetic and someone is looking at me and—
She's not looking at me.
She's looking at the mask in her hand, turning it over, examining the magnetic contacts. Deliberately, obviously, giving me time.
"Putting it back," she announces.
Her fingers find my face. The prosthetic, technically—the skull that's still covering everything—but her fingertips brush the edge where it meets real skin at my hairline and my whole body jerks.
Her legs tighten around my waist. Steadying us both.
"Easy," she murmurs. "I've got you."
The performance mask presses back into place.
Click-click-click.
The magnets engage and the familiar weight settles against my face and I can breathe again.
Barely.
"Again," she says.
"Bells—" I bite out.
"Again, Rex."
I want to smash through the wall behind her and jump off this fucking roof. Every instinct is screaming at me to flee, to hide, to put as much distance between myself and her as physically possible.
She knows what's under the fucking prosthetic.
She saw the pictures.
She knows.
But my knot is locked inside her and my legs are shaking and I literally cannot move without—
She reaches up.
Click-click-click.
The mask comes away.
My breath punches out of me. A sound rips from my throat that I'd be humiliated by if I had any capacity left for humiliation, which I fucking don't, because this woman has systematically destroyed every defense mechanism I've spent a decade building and she's doing it while impaled on my cock.
"Good," she says softly. "That's good. Putting it back."
Click-click-click.
Safe.
"Again."
"Fuck—Bells, I can't—"
"You can. You're already doing it."
She pulls.
Click-click-click.
This time the panic doesn't hit as hard. Still there. Still that ice-water rush of exposure and vulnerability that makes my hands clench and my vision tunnel.
But it's duller. Manageable.
She puts it back.
Pulls again.
My breathing is ragged and I can't even see clearly because my brain isn't getting enough oxygen anymore. I'm panting against her shoulder, my forehead pressed to the brick beside her head, my arm still banded around her waist while my free hand braces against the wall.
Again.
Again.
Again.
Each time, the terror recedes a fraction of an inch. Each time, my body's response dampens slightly, the adrenaline spike a little less sharp, the urge to bolt a little less overwhelming.
Because it's her.
Because her fingers are sure and steady and she's humming something under her breath—a melody I don't recognize, maybe even her own—and her thighs are warm around my waist and her heartbeat is steady against my chest.
"Last one," she says on what might be the tenth pull.
Or the fifteenth.
Twentieth, even.
I've lost count.
Click-click-click.
The mask comes away.
I hold still.
Not because the panic is gone. It isn't. It's coiled in my chest like a fist, tight and cold and waiting. But I hold still because my body has finally accepted that the mask comes off and goes back on and nothing catastrophic happens in between.
"There you go," Bells whispers.
She puts it back.
Click-click-click.
The magnets engage and the weight settles and I sag forward with an exhale that feels like it's been trapped in my lungs for a decade.
My legs give out.
It's a slow, stupid folding, my knees buckling, my body sliding down the wall with my palm scraping against the brick with Bells still wrapped around me. She yelps as my knot pulls inside her but adjusts, her arms finding my neck as we sink together to the rooftop.
I end up on my back, somehow.
Bells ends up on top of me.
Still locked together.
The fog rolls over us in slow, cold waves. The tar paper is damp and gritty beneath my shoulder blades. Above us, Seattle's light pollution turns the mist an otherworldly amber.
I'm shaking.
Full-body tremors running through my muscles like aftershocks from an earthquake I didn't realize I was having. My hands are on her back—when the fuck did that happen?—fingers splayed wide, pressing her against my chest like she's the only thing keeping me from flying apart.
She is, probably.
Bells shifts, settling her weight more comfortably on top of me, her elbows bracing on either side of my head. Her white hair falls forward, long enough now to curtain us in.
"Hey," she says.
I stare up at her.
Her face is flushed. Her lips are swollen. There's a smudge of brick dust on her cheek and her honey-gold eyes are soft and warm in a way I've never seen on her before, none of the usual sharp edges or wicked grins.
"You did good," she says quietly.
I don't respond. Don't trust my voice. Don't trust anything right now except the weight of her on my chest and the steady thrum of her heartbeat against mine.
She cups the unmasked side of my face. Her thumb traces my cheekbone, feather-light, and I turn into her palm without meaning to. Her skin is warm and slightly rough from callouses from instruments and she doesn't pull away.
She leans down and kisses me.
Soft.
Not the desperate, teeth-and-tongue aggression from before. This is gentle. Careful. Her lips press against mine and hold there, and I feel something crack and settle inside my ribcage that I don't understand, let alone have fucking words for.
I kiss her back.
My hand finds the back of her head. Fingers threading through damp white hair, cradling her skull, holding her mouth against mine. She tastes like that radioactive energy drink and something sweeter underneath that I've been trying to pretend isn't the most perfect scent I've ever encountered.
We break apart by millimeters.
Her forehead rests against mine. Our breath mingles in the cold air, visible in small clouds that dissipate into fog.
Her eyes search mine. Back and forth, back and forth, like she's reading something written in a language she's still learning.
"Rex," she murmurs. "There's something I—"
I kiss her again.
Because I know what she's about to say.
I've known for weeks, probably.
Some deep, pre-verbal part of my brain has been circling the truth like the first stupid wolf that became the first stupid dog circling a campfire.
Drawn to it, terrified of it, unable to look away.
And if she says it out loud right now, on this rooftop, while I'm still shaking from the unmasking practice and locked inside her and more vulnerable than I've been since I was sixteen and burning alive in twisted metal…
I'll fucking break.
So I kiss her instead.
Deep and slow and thorough, my hand in her hair, my other arm wrapped around her waist, and she melts into me with a soft sound that I feel in every cell of my body.
Her fingers trace the edge of my mask where it meets my jaw, the seam between who I am and who I pretend to be, and she doesn't try to pull it off again.
We lie there.
Somewhere below, the city keeps existing with its cars and its lights and its millions of people who have never knotted anyone on a rooftop who is simultaneously the most important and loathed person in their fucking life while having a panic attack.
Lucky bastards.
My shaking slows. Occasional tremors rippling through my arms and legs, spaced further and further apart as Bells's warmth seeps into my chest.
She's running her fingers through my hair, nails scraping my scalp.
I don't tell her to stop.
My knot throbs once, twice, and then I feel it begin to soften. The swelling eases gradually, pressure releasing in increments, and Bells shifts slightly on top of me as the lock between us loosens.
"Oh thank fuck," she mutters.
"Eloquent."
"We've been stuck for—" She reaches for her phone, which is somehow still clutched in one hand. She holds the screen above my face and I squint at the dozens of unread messages scrolling past.
RAF
I told Carmine you're doing rooftop meditation
he does not believe me
PHOENIX
GUYS PLEASE
carmine is asking if we have a drug problem
RAF
I said maybe
PHOENIX
THAT DID NOT HELP
RAF
well it got him to start asking WHICH drugs
and that slowed him down because I started naming Phoenix's favorite spices
now he's busy Googling them
PHOENIX
he's pacing
RAF
like a literal zoo animal
PHOENIX
just tell us you're alive
RAF
or at least tell us if you finished because this is getting embarrassing for all of us
PHOENIX
RAF NO
RAF
what? I'm being practical
AND
if I'd known we were taking a fuck break I would've wanted one too
considering I got, you know
cockblocked
by a giant viking
PHOENIX
I mean
I could get away from Carmine for a minute
RAF
I last longer than a fucking minute dumbass
Bells is shaking on top of me.
For a horrifying second I think she's sobbing, think she's realized she just let a disgusting monster fuck her, but then the sound escapes. A wheeze, then a snort, then full hysterical laughter that makes her whole body convulse against mine.
"Carmine—Carmine thinks—Phoenix's spices—and Raf—"
The names do the trick and my knot finally deflates the rest of the way.
I pull out with a grimace and a low growl.
Bells rolls off me onto the rooftop, groaning but still laughing. She lies there on her back beside me, jeans around her thighs, hoodie rucked up, mascara smudged, cackling at the fog.
"Get up," I mutter, sitting up and reaching for my belt.
"Phoenix cockblocked…"
She wheezes.
"Get dressed, Bells."
She sits up, still giggling, and yanks her jeans back into place. Stuffs her hand down the front to rearrange whatever needs rearranging. The prosthetic is somewhere on the rooftop, I realize, launched into the fog at the start of this insanity.
"Shit." She looks around. "Where's my dick?"
"I'm not helping you find it."
"Rex, I can't go downstairs without—"
"Over there." I nod toward a dark shape near the HVAC unit.
She scrambles over on hands and knees, scoops up the silicone cock, wipes it on her pants and smears a streak of dick-shaped dirt all over the white, and shoves it back into place, laughing her ass off again at how you can see the ball print on her outer thigh now.
I'm already at the fire door. Belt buckled. Shirt tucked. Performance mask seated firmly over the prosthetic, all three magnets engaged.
I straighten my jacket.
Bells's handprints are all over it.
She bounds over, still flushed, still grinning, radiating the chaotic energy of someone who just got knotted and practiced an unmasking stunt simultaneously and found both experiences equally thrilling.
"Don't worry," she says, leaning up on her tiptoes to kiss my cheek through the mask. What's fucking left of it anyway. "We still hate each other. I promise."
"Good," I mutter.
Yeah.
Hate.
That's what this fucking is.
Just hate and nothing unimaginably worse.
I push the fire door open and she ducks under my arm.
But on the way through, her hand catches mine. Her fingers slide naturally between my knuckles, finding the gaps, fitting there like they were designed for exactly this, and she tugs me toward the stairs.
I let her.