FORTY-THREE #2
“With you?” His voice is rough. “More than once. I saw threats and made choices around them like your voice was just another thing to slot in after the fact. I figured if I kept you alive, then that would be enough.”
I turn back to him and tilt my head slightly. “And now?”
He eyes me for a long moment, and I feel it sucker punch me in the chest. Then he says, “Now I know a cage can still keep someone breathing.”
My breath catches harshly in my lungs.
His eyes hold mine, never once looking away or even blinking. “But that don’t make it safety.”
For a second, the only sound is the tarp billowing softly in the wind and my heartbeat pounding harshly in my chest. Because there it is. The protection without control. A shield without bars.
My body reacts before my brain approves the paperwork, heat dipping low in my stomach. It’s not sudden, and it’s not sweet. It’s a slow burn through a room full of ash.
Fletcher sees it, because of course he does. His nostrils flare once right before cedar and leather thickens in the air, steady and warm. My body answers in a way that makes me both furious and relieved at the same time.
“Don’t,” I say.
He goes completely still. “Don’t what?”
My jaw clenches before I answer. “Don’t look like you’re about to apologize for noticing.”
His throat moves. “I wasn’t.”
“Liar.”
His mouth pulls at one corner. Barely. “All right.”
I step away from the lumber, toward him, and he does not move. I hate that he does not move, and I love that he does not move.
“Ask me, Scar,” I demand carefully.
His stormy blue eyes darken a little more. “Ask you what?”
I walk closer, close enough now that I can see the flecks of shadow in the depths of his eyes. Close enough that his scent wraps around me and makes both bites on my throat ache. “Ask me if I want you.”
His chest expands on a slow inhale. “Dakota.”
“No,” I say, shaking my head. “Ask me.”
His jaw tightens like the words hurt on the way out. “Do you want me?”
I should make some kind of joke. Maybe roll my eyes or bite back or act like my pulse isn’t currently trying to split my skin open and run for freedom.
Instead, I tell the truth. “Yeah.”
Fletcher doesn’t reach out to touch me, not even after that confession. His control feels like a living, breathing thing that hovers between us.
“What do you want?” he asks.
“You.”
“That ain’t enough.”
My eyes narrow on him then. “I’m sorry, what?”
His gaze doesn’t drop, not even an inch. “That ain’t gonna work tonight, darlin’.”
The irritation that sparks in my chest is familiar enough to steady me, to keep me stable and here and in control of my own damned body. “Careful, Scar.”
“You said you wanted me,” he says, pushing on despite my irritation. “I need to know how.”
My mouth goes completely dry then, all of the irritation bleeding away from me and pooling on the floor at my feet. Because that sentence isn’t said for theatrics. It’s not some weird little performance. And it’s definitely not an Alpha making a show out of consent.
This is just Fletcher refusing to assume something and possibly get it wrong. This is the same man who once made choices like shelter could be built out of commands, standing in front of me and making me draw him a damned map.
I swallow and answer, “I want you to touch me.”
“Where?”
“My waist.”
His hands lift slowly, and then they stop. He waits for my nod of approval and only then do his hands settle on my waist, broad and warm and so careful I almost hate him for it.
“Harder,” I say.
His fingers flex, but it’s not enough.
“Fletcher.”
His grip tightens, enough that I can feel the sheer strength in them. In him. It’s enough that my breath stutters from my lungs with a tremble I have no hope of hiding from him.
“There,” I whisper, and his eyes sharpen.
I put my hands on his chest and push, and he does nothing but let me. And honestly? It’s that more than anything that hits me the hardest. So I push again, and he steps back because I asked with my body. Because he understands me without me needing to say the words out loud.
Again.
And again.
And again, right up until his back meets one of the thick wooden support beams that are holding up the roof.
He could easily stop me, there’s no question about it.
He just chooses not to, because that’s what this is.
This is him handing the reins over to me.
It’s him proving he won’t stuff me in a cage, even if that cage is labeled as protection.
I reach for his belt and it’s then he makes a move. Only a small one. His hands twitch on my waist just as he utters my name with that drawl of his. “Dakota.”
“Don’t.”
He stills so I look up at him with clear eyes and a thrumming pulse. “Don’t warn me away, not from something I’m choosing.”
Something crosses his face and I know then that my words have hit their intended target.
So much so that he doesn’t stop me when I undo his belt slower than necessary, his breathing changing every time my knuckles brush across him.
Because his restraint isn’t cold. It’s scalding hot.
It’s practically burning him alive, yet he’s still just standing there letting me set the pace.
When I get his pants open, I don’t hesitate, slipping my hand inside and wrapping my fingers around him.
Fletcher’s head tips back against the post and a rough sound tears from his throat.
It’s not loud, but it’s certainly deep. The kind of sound that rattles through bones and shakes up everything in your mind.
It’s literally one of the best sounds I think I’ve heard, right up there with the sounds I’ve heard come from Xeon, Ewan, and Kaito.
His hands grip my waist harder, but he’s still not moving me. He’s not taking, even as I stroke him once, my hand dragging up and down on his hard length slowly and firmly.
His hips jerk like they have a mind of their own, and then they stop. He locks himself down so fast it makes my pulse trip and my heart hiccup a beat that seems vital to my health.
“Look at me,” I say.
His head lowers slowly and he peers down at me with dark eyes that are filled with too many emotions for me to count, almost black under the shitty yard lights. The scar on his cheek is pale through the shadow, clear and sharp enough to make him look harder than he is.
Or maybe that’s exactly how hard he is and I’m just now seeing how much he’s been holding back. For me.
“That,” I whisper. “That control. I want that.”
His breath leaves him hard and I rise onto my toes and kiss him. There’s nothing gentle about it, either. Fletcher doesn’t kiss like Ewan, bright and starved around the edges. He doesn’t kiss like Kaito, all restraint molded into the sharpest blade that could cut with barely a touch.
Fletcher kisses like the ground under bare feet.
Solid.
Hot. There.
His mouth opens under mine, and when I bite his lower lip, his hands drop from my waist to my hips, holding me with a strength that should feel like a warning but doesn’t.
Because the very second I press back, his grip loosens.
And that’s who Fletcher is to me. He’s a wall with a door.
He’s my fucking door, and that thought makes my chest ache with something I’ve only felt three times before.
I drag his shirt up, and he only helps when I make a frustrated little sound against his mouth. The fabric hits the ground with a whoosh and then his heated skin is under my palms, scars and muscle and tension pulled tight over bone.
Leaning in closely, I kiss his chest and his breath stutters. When I kiss lower, he curses prettily. “Darlin’.”
The word is absolutely wrecked, haggard and strained and everything I want to hear from him.
I peer up at him from where I am sinking to my knees, watching the very moment his entire body goes rigid. Then I raise an eyebrow and ask, “No?”
His eyes flash with heat and something else I don’t have the mental margins to name right now. “You don’t gotta kneel just because you think you owe me something.”
My throat tightens, because there it is again. The difference.
“I’m not kneeling because I owe you,” I say. “I’m on my knees because I want to watch you fall apart and know for certain that you still won’t use your hands to make me stay.”
I’m pretty sure Fletcher stops breathing. Then, very slowly, he puts one hand on the post above him and the other behind his own back.
My stomach flips, because I haven’t been blessed with very many sights that make me melt on the inside until recently, and this one right here is one I wish I could take a photo of and make it my background on my old iPhone.
“Like that?” he asks then, and I’ll be damned if my thighs don’t clench, an ache appearing so deep inside me that I almost forget how to breathe.
“Yeah,” I answer, right before I take him into my mouth.
Fletcher’s entire body shudders the moment I sink down on him, my tongue dragging over the underside of his thickened length.
The hand above him slams flat against the post, the wood groaning under his palm.
His other hand stays behind his back, fingers curled into a fist so tight I can practically hear the strain of his knuckles, and the sight of him holding himself there for me makes heat flood through every part of me.
With slickness pooling between my legs and my heartbeat drumming in my ears, I take him deeper.
His hips do not move, not even once. A small tremor runs through his thighs, though, proving he’s not unaffected at all.
His clenched jaw does the same thing, and I love it. I hate that I love it. No, I don’t.
Fletcher’s chest works with every breath he pulls in, his head dipped while he watches me with such fierce focus that I feel seen in a way that should be impossible from my knees.
Not small.
Not owned.
Powerful.
I pull back enough to breathe, hand replacing my mouth. While I stroke him up and down, I instruct, “Touch my hair.”
His hand above him flexes.
“Only my hair,” I add quickly.