3. Gracie
Gracie
Basir’s handsome face was the first and only thing I could focus on when my vision cleared. My heart thumped in my ears, my pulse erratic, but he held the center of my attention. He still knelt at the side of the bed, and now that my head was no longer swimming…I could actually see him.
Truly see him.
There were dark circles under his eyes. He was still dressed in the clothes from dinner, decorated now with blood—mine or maybe the assassin’s Nyxarra mentioned.
The rigid set of his shoulders made him look like a statue—afraid to move a muscle, afraid to react.
His emerald eyes, red-rimmed and raw, stared back at me with equal parts relief and devastation.
I could feel everything he felt, a wave of turmoil and grief that was threatening to drown him.
The room was silent around us. I tried to sit up gingerly, surprised by how easy it was. Basir watched the action, his jaw tightening as if it would shatter.
I felt good, though. Better than good, which didn’t make sense given that less than…how long had it been? I guess I didn’t know. Time had disappeared between being shot and walking the realms of the gods.
But whatever had happened to me in the divine space had strengthened me. Now, a second pulse, warm and steady, moved through me as my wolf shifted eagerly under my skin. Ready and prepared for anything.
Except for how upset our mate was. She didn’t know how to deal with that.
“Glow…” Basir’s hand had barely lifted from the mattress before he stopped himself, curling it into a fist against the sheets instead of reaching for me.
That wouldn’t do. I could practically feel the walls he was constructing between us and I wasn’t going to allow that. I knew that wasn’t what Basir wanted.
My mate wanted to touch me.
I could see it in every line of him, in the tension he held in his body, in the way his eyes followed even my subtle inhale.
I could see just as clearly that he was refusing to let himself, his fist tightening on the sheets to hold himself back.
It was why he wasn’t on the bed, why he had probably been kneeling at my side on the floor for hours.
I wouldn’t let him refuse what we both wanted, not after all of this.
Pushing back the covers, I moved to the edge of the bed to close the distance between us. I knew why he felt guilty. If he’d felt remorse for what had happened outside of the Solspire, me deciding to take a bullet for him would definitely leave lasting effects.
Basir went stock still as I reached out to him. I’d slowly grown used to that, the way he fought himself every step of the way, even now. When I touched his face, my fingers grazing his jaw, he let loose a slow, shaking exhale.
“Basir, I—”
My mate surged forward, his hand sliding over the back of my neck as his lips sealed to mine. It was like saying his name alone had been too much for him.
He kissed me in a way that felt both amazing and almost punishing to him, like he was holding back while trying to give me every ounce of love that pressed through our bond. His other hand curled around my waist as my legs slid to either side of his chest, the two of us finally eye to eye.
I deepened our kiss, matching his desperation and need, my fingers tightening against his chest and twisting the fabric there. Despite his erratic emotions, the contact between us grew from a raging, chaotic inferno to a warm electric current, as if our closeness was draining his panic.
The echo of everything unsaid still existed between us, but the relief of just being held by him was indescribable.
I hated when he pulled back from our kiss. My forehead dropped to his and his rough hands tightened on my waist as if he was afraid I would put distance between us.
“You will never do that again, Gracie.”
Basir’s voice was so tortured, so filled with pain that I didn’t register what he said at first. Instead, I was trying to memorize the low, fractured way he rasped out his words, a tone I’d never heard from him before.
“Do you understand me?” He pleaded. “Never.”
I pulled back enough to look at him, holding his devastated gaze and speaking clearly. “I would do it again, Basir. Every time.”
My words lit his emerald eyes with fire. “Gracie…”
“Every. Single. Time,” I interrupted, needing him to hear it. To truly absorb what I meant. I needed him to understand that what I’d done hadn’t been an accident.
It had been a choice, and it was one I didn’t regret. One I would never regret.
“Why?” he snarled, his gaze jumping over my face. “Why would you —”
“Because I love you.”
My words detonated between us. Basir flinched back, surprise and shock filling his face.
Just a week ago that reaction would have sent me into a tailspin of insecurity, but not today.
Today I could feel Basir. I could feel how my words hit him, feel them blasting away at the remnants of the fortress that had been separating us, the weight of our bond finally pushing past its limit.
“I love you, Basir.”
The second time drew a broken, desperate noise from him as I dipped my head and pressed a gentle kiss to his lips. The touch broke whatever had been holding him together.
Emotion flooded our bond first, then flashes of something else entirely.
The weight of his guilt, enormous and suffocating, so deep it had calcified and become part of him. Memories of Grimfur Skulk. The Cinder Ring. Basir running with shaking hands, soaked from the rain, carrying a backpack of shockdust.
There was a shame so ingrained it had become his blueprint for how he moved through the world. Quietly, carefully. A shadow at the edges. Convinced that anything he touched would be ruined.
There was something more, though.
A glow. A warmth that softened the edges of all of it. My love. His love for me.
I held his gaze as tears leaked down my face, riding the waves of his pain and trying to take it onto myself.
“I’m here. I’m alive. I love you.”
Basir was afraid, the fear overriding anything else he felt—the guilt, the way he was torturing himself, the conflict of holding himself back from his own mate. He wanted this. Wanted us.
But my words had brought something forward he didn’t know how to face.
My hands moved to his jaw, his hands loosening and then tightening on my waist as I held his gaze. “I can feel everything you’re feeling right now.”
He closed his eyes in shame. I hated that.
“Which means you can feel everything I’m feeling too.”
He looked up, and my throat tightened with a flutter of panic. My wolf insisted that we needed to convince him of what we felt. “Tell me what you feel.”
Basir’s expression shifted. Slowly, like he was afraid of what the answer would be, Basir let himself actually feel what was there. His breath left him in a long, unsteady exhale.
“You don’t blame me for what happened…and you’re not afraid of this, of us,” he said quietly. Almost like he didn’t believe it.
“I’m not afraid of you,” I confirmed. “Not even a little.”
“Glow.” My nickname was a rough, tortured whisper. “If it wasn’t for me—”
“If it wasn’t for you—if it wasn’t for the three of you…” I paused for a long moment. “I wouldn’t be here. I would be dead. Instead of feeling whole and loved.”
Basir’s eyes closed as he savored my words. When he looked at me again grief and guilt still painted his expression, but underneath it sat a sense of growing surety. His gaze dropped to my mouth.
Then he moved.
Basir kissed me differently this time. Slower, more deliberate, and deeper. I could feel how starved he was for my touch and I didn’t hesitate to give it, running my fingers through his hair as his hands moved from my waist up my ribs in a rhythmic pattern.
There was a reverence in his touch that made my heart ache. A low rumble broke from his throat as my fingers reached for the buttons on his bloodied shirt. Heat pooled low in my stomach as he shifted closer to make it easier for me.
Reaching the last few buttons, I took a moment to appreciate the way the fabric fell from his muscular shoulders, the gold-lined tattoos across his skin catching in the low light of the room.
I traced one with my fingertip, watching him inhale sharply before admitting, “I’ve always wanted to touch your tattoos, from the first time I saw you.”
Basir let out a low sound as his fingers ran up my spine. “I wanted to touch you so bad I stalked you to the bathroom.”
A smile tugged at my lips, the memory of our first meeting bringing lightness to his expression too.
I wasn’t sure what I would do if he ever gave me a full smile—he was already beautiful in a way that felt unfair.
It still baffled me that Basir looked at me like he couldn’t quite believe I was real.
When his hands moved to the hem of the oversized shirt I’d been changed into, he paused.
“Please,” I whispered, and he tugged the shirt up and over, leaving me in only cotton undergarments. His gaze moved over me and I saw him almost shift back, his fingers hesitating over my skin.
Basir never denied me anything I asked for but he never took what he wanted, his internal war obvious with every careful touch.
“Stop holding back.” I held his gaze, the flutter of shyness in my gut not enough to stop me. “I want all of you.”
I could see realization hit Basir as he understood what I was asking for, and despite my cheeks warming pink, I wasn’t embarrassed.
“Gracie, I’ve never—” He stopped, my eyes widening at the unspoken end of the sentence.
“I’ve never done this either.” I pushed gently at his chest until he sat back on the floor, then I closed the distance between us, straddling him. His breath left him in a rush at the contact.
Basir’s mouth was a breath away from mine.
I could count his lashes, visible against the shadows beneath his eyes.
His chest rose and fell in a rhythm too controlled, too deliberate—like he was holding a leash on something he didn’t trust. I could also feel how hard he was underneath me, his body coiled in an effort to keep himself from moving.