Chapter 15
FIFTEEN
Simon
The power didn't just flicker this time. It died with a violent, final clunk that sounded like a heavy coffin lid slamming shut.
The hum of the refrigerator, the whir of the backup generator, the faint buzz of Anders’ server stack, all of it was severed in an instant.
The silence that rushed in to fill the void was deafening, broken only by the gale-force wind howling around the glass corners of the house and the relentless hammer of rain against the roof.
"Well," I whispered to the dark living room. "There goes the power."
I was sitting on the floor near the massive slate hearth, crumbling a piece of charcoal between my fingers, turning my skin black. It was a nervous tic. A grounding mechanism. If my hands were dirty, they felt real. If they were clean, I felt like I was floating.
A match flared in the darkness, a tiny, sputtering star.
I looked up.
Tessa was kneeling by the fireplace, her face illuminated by the sudden burst of yellow light. She touched the flame to the stack of kindling Daniel had laid out earlier, because of course Daniel had prepared a perfect, architectural log cabin of dry wood just in case.
The fire caught instantly, growing from a spark to a roar, throwing long, dancing shadows against the glass walls.
The sudden warmth hit me, smelling of cedar and wood smoke. But it was the sight of her that knocked the air out of my lungs.
The firelight painted her in strokes of frantic orange and deep, velvet shadows.
It caught the curve of her cheekbone, the hollow of her throat, the wild, escaping tendrils of her hair.
Without the harsh, clinical lighting of the kitchen or the grey gloom of the storm, she didn't look like a victim.
She looked like a Renaissance oil painting, something precious, heavy with emotion, and frozen in time.
She sat back on her heels, watching the flames. She was wearing leggings and one of those massive, swallow-you-whole sweaters she clearly used as armor. But right now, the armor looked soft.
"You're staring," she said.
She didn't look at me. She kept her gaze on the fire, but her voice wasn't angry. It was just factual. Tired.
"I’m an artist," I said, my voice sounding rough in the quiet room. I wiped my dusty hands on my jeans, ruining the denim for the hundredth time. "It’s a professional hazard."
"You're not just looking," she murmured. She turned her head slowly, colliding with my gaze across the few feet of rug that separated us. Her eyes were dark pools reflecting the flames. "You're dissecting."
I flinched. The accusation hit close to the bone.
"I’m trying to memorize the light," I confessed. "The way the orange hits the angle of your jaw. It’s… warm. You’ve looked cold for so long."
Tessa shifted, pulling her knees to her chest. "I saw your book."
The breath seized in my throat. I felt a cold flush of panic wash over me, tasting of bile and burnt sugar. The sketchbook. The black book I had left in the bedroom like a loaded gun.
"Tessa, I—"
"You didn't just draw the bad parts," she interrupted softly. "You drew… everything. You drew me sleeping. You drew me looking out the window."
She paused, licking her dry lips.
"You drew a girl I don't recognize. Someone strong."
I couldn't stay on the other side of the rug. Gravity was pulling me toward her, inevitable and terrifying. I scooted closer, moving into her orbit until I could feel the heat radiating off her skin, mixing with the warmth of the fire.
"I drew the truth," I whispered. "I drew what I saw from the bleachers. Everyone else saw a breakdown. I saw a girl fighting a war against her own body and losing with grace."
I reached out, my hand hovering in the space between us. My fingers were black with charcoal dust, scarred with ink. They were dirty, grasping things.
"I haven't just been drawing you for a few weeks, Tessa," I admitted, the secret tearing its way out of my chest. "I’ve been drawing you for years."
Her eyes widened slightly, catching the firelight, as though she hadn’t expected me to admit what she already knew, at least what she knew if she’d looked through the whole book.
"From memory," I said. "In coffee shops. In boring meetings. On the back of napkins at 3 AM when I couldn't sleep."
I looked down at my hand, trembling in the air.
"I couldn't get your face out of my head. The way you looked when you grabbed that mic stand… it haunted me. I tried to exorcise it with graphite, but it just made it worse. Every sketch was a way of touching you when I knew I never could."
She looked at my hand. Then, slowly, she looked back up at my face. The scent of old parchment and blackberries spiked in the air, not sour with fear this time, but sweet. Heavy. Curious.
"You were obsessed," she whispered.
"I was devoted," I corrected. "I was the spectator who fell in love with the tragedy."
I moved then. I couldn't stop myself.
I shifted until my knee bumped hers. This time I didn't recoil, but pressed into the contact. I reached out and tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear. My fingers were rough against her soft skin, the contrast sending a jolt of electricity straight to my groin.
"You saw the panicked sketches," I murmured, my thumb tracing the line of her jaw, leaving a faint smudge of charcoal on her skin like a brand. "From last night."
She shivered, leaning into my touch instead of pulling away. Her eyes fluttered half-shut.
"I saw them," she breathed.
"I hated myself for drawing them," I told her, my voice dropping to a husky rasp. "But I couldn't stop. Just like I couldn't stop touching you."
"Simon," she gasped.
It was the first time she had said my name without venom. It sounded like permission.
I cornered her. Gently. Deliberately.
I shifted my weight, boxing her in against the stone hearth, creating a cage with my body. I wasn't the biggest Alpha in the room, that was Daniel, and I wasn't the most powerful, that was Anders. But I was the focused one. I was the one who noticed every micro-expression.
"Why do I get the feeling that you liked seeing my drawings of you?" I whispered, sliding my hand around to the nape of her neck, my fingers tangling in the hair at the base of her skull. "When you saw the drawing of my hand inside you, did your scent change? Did it make you hungry, Tessa?"
She let out a soft, broken whimper and surged forward.
She didn't run. She collided with me.
She buried her face in the crook of my neck, inhaling sharply, dragging the scent of dark chocolate and smoke into her lungs. Her hands bunched in the fabric of my hoodie, pulling me closer, erasing the distance.
"I am disgusting," she sobbed into my skin, but her hips bumped against my thigh. "I shouldn't want this. You watched me fail."
"I watched you survive," I swore, wrapping my arms around her waist, hauling her bodily into my lap.
She came willingly, a tangle of soft limbs and desperate heat. She straddled my thighs, her knees digging into the rug on either side of my hips. We were fully clothed, layers of fabric between us, but the friction was instantaneous and explosive.
"Make me forget," she begged, grinding down on me.
It wasn't the frantic, hallucinogenic grinding of the fever dream. This was lucid. This was Tessa Kane, the woman, deciding she needed friction to ground herself in the here and now.
"Yes," I hissed.
I ran my hands down her back, pressing her closer, molding her body to mine. I gripped her hips, my fingers digging into the soft flesh through her leggings. I bucked against her, meeting her rhythm, the hard ridge of my erection straining against the zipper of my jeans.
"You feel so good," I groaned, burying my face in her hair. "God, you're real. You aren't just a drawing anymore."
She smelled like a library on fire. The scent of her arousal was no longer tinged with rot, it was pure, sharp brine and berries, sweet enough to make my teeth ache.
"Simon," she panted, her hands coming up to cup my face, smearing charcoal across my cheek as she stared at me with wild, dilated eyes. "Don't just look. Do something."
I did.
I grabbed her thigh, dragging my hand upward until I hit the junction of her legs. I pressed the heel of my hand against her mound, right through the fabric of her leggings.
She screamed, a stifled, throaty sound that she caught in her own throat.
Her body seized. Not a cramp. A spike.
I felt it happen. The air in the room seemed to pressurize instantly. The emotional rawness of the confession, the friction, the firelight, it catalyzed.
Her scent exploded. It went from 'aroused' to 'critical' in a heartbeat. It was the secondary spike. The emotional bond hot-wiring her biology, bypassing the recovery phase and dumping her straight back into the heat.
"Oh," she gasped, her eyes rolling back. "It's… it's hotter."
"I know," I whispered, frantic now. "I know, baby. Ride it out."
I ground the heel of my hand against her, rubbing in slow, heavy circles, trying to give her the outlet she needed. She clawed at my shoulders, her nails digging in, her body bowing backward in my lap.
We were breathless, messy, desperate animals in the firelight. I was seconds away from ripping those leggings off. I was seconds away from forgetting that we were trapped, that she was recovering, that I was just the artist who was supposed to stand back.
"Simon," she keened, biting her lip until it bled. "Please. I need—"
"Get away from her!"
The shout came from the darkness of the hallway, sharp and cracking like a whip.
Light flooded the room, not electric light, but the harsh, white beam of a tactical flashlight cutting through the gloom.
Anders.
He stood at the edge of the rug, his chest heaving, his silhouette looming large and terrifying in the beam. He smelled of Ozone and Winter Air, sharp with fury.
"Separate!" Anders roared, striding forward. "Now!"
I froze, my hand still pressed between her legs, her body trembling in my arms.
"It's the spike," I choked out, shielding her with my body, my instincts screaming at me to snarl at him. "Anders, she triggered a secondary spike. She needs—"
"She needs to not be mauled on the living room floor while her system is rebooting!" Anders snarled. He reached down, grabbing me by the shoulder of my hoodie and hauling me backward.
Tessa tumbled off my lap onto the rug, gasping, her hands flying to cover herself even though she was still fully clothed.
"You idiot," Anders hissed, turning the flashlight on me, blinding me. "You didn't fix it. You just poured gasoline on the fire."
He shone the light on Tessa. She was flushed deep crimson, panting, curled on the rug. The scent of her heat was rolling off her in waves, thicker and heavier than before.
"The emotional connection," Anders noted, his voice dropping to a horrified whisper as he assessed her. "You bonded. You idiot. You initiated a pack bond response before her cycle was clear."
He looked at me, then down at her.
"The heat isn't gone," he said grimly. "It just reloaded."