Chapter 18 Mira #2
Lucian’s jaw tightened. He set the gauze down, picking up the antiseptic instead. “At least let me clean the cuts on your hands. You carved trail markers into trees with a dagger. Your palms are shredded.”
I shoved my hands behind my back. “Stop.”
“Stop what?”
“Stop being calm or patient. Stop acting as if this is just another problem you need to manage.” My voice cracked and I hated it. Hated the way the words splintered on their way out, exposing the guilt underneath. “Percy is lying hurt because I dragged all of you to that festival.”
“Mira...”
“And now you’re standing here with your first aid kit and your calm voice and pretend everything’s under control because that’s what you do. You control things.” My eyes burned. “But you can’t control this. Percy got hurt and it’s my fault.”
Lucian set the antiseptic down. His hands gripped the edge of the desk behind him.
“You’re bleeding,” he said. Still measured. But the cracks of his exhaustion were forming now. “You have blood on your dress and are shaking so hard you can’t hold your own hands still, and you won’t let me help you.”
“Because I don’t deserve help. Percy took that dart because of me.”
“Percy took that dart because he chose to.”
“Because I put him in a position where he had to choose.”
His grip on the desk tightened. A muscle in his jaw jumped. The patience was fraying, thread by thread, and I watched it happen in the way his shoulders climbed toward his ears and his breathing went deliberate.
“Then what the hell were you thinking?”
The question landed between us. His voice had shifted, raw with frustration. The sound of a man who’d spent the last six hours caging fear.
I turned to face him.
Lucian pushed off the desk. His eyes burned into mine, storm gray lit with gold at the edges, and his jaw was set.
“You think I don’t realize what you did?” He stepped closer. “You were planning this all along. That’s why you were so insistent on going to the dance.” Another step. “That’s why you trained so hard. That’s why you took the dagger. You fooled me and I trusted you.”
My guilt twisted into anger so fast I tasted metal.
“You used yourself as bait, Mira.”
“I’m tired of doing nothing!” The words ripped out of me. “I’m tired of hiding in this cabin and waiting for him to find me. I’m tired of letting three men rearrange their entire lives to babysit me because I’m too weak to handle my own problems!”
“You’re not weak.”
“Then stop treating me that way!” I spun on him. “Stop having rotations to guard me and stop wrapping me in bubble wrap. You’re wasting your time because he always finds me. And this time I wanted to be ready.”
“You should have told me.” Each word was a controlled detonation. “You should have trusted me enough to tell me, and not set a trap that risked you. Why would you do that without telling any of us?”
“Because you would have stopped me!”
“You’re damn right I would have stopped you!” He was close now and I could see the vein pulsing in his neck, the tremor in his jaw. “What if it wasn’t just Percy? What if that dart hit you instead? What if you were the one who bled in that forest?”
“Then I’d be bleeding. I’ve bled before.”
“Percy is a lycan, Mira. His body heals.” He stepped closer. His voice dropped, and the rawness in it scraped against my ribs. “You’re human. You don’t heal or regenerate. Stop being stubborn about asking for help.”
“I know what I am, Lucian.”
“Do you? Because you walked into those woods carrying a dagger as if that makes you invincible. One wrong step, one second slower. That dart could’ve been a bullet aimed at you and we wouldn’t be having this argument because you would be gone.”
“Then at least it would have been my choice!” The words tore out louder than I intended. “I’m done letting other people decide for me. Whether it’s for my safety or not. I’ve spent two years letting a man control my life. I am done!”
“We’re not him. This isn’t just about Hudson. This is bigger than that fucking bastard.”
“I know it’s bigger than Hudson! That’s exactly why I can’t just sit here!
” I shoved his chest. Both palms, full force, and he barely moved.
“I’m used to it, Lucian. Pain, fear, bruises, broken things.
I don’t need three supernatural bodyguards deciding which dangers I’m allowed to face. I need to fight my own battles.”
“Not battles that can kill you!”
“Every battle I’ve ever fought could have killed me!” My voice hit a pitch I didn’t recognize. “Every time Hudson locked a door or raised his fist or showed up in a city I’d run to, that could have killed me. And I survived it alone. Without anyone.”
“You’re not alone anymore!”
“Then trust me enough to let me stand on my own!”
“That is not your decision to make!”
“It is my decision! It’s my life, Lucian!”
“And what about ours?” He closed the distance I’d created when I shoved him. Right back in my space, chest heaving, gold swallowing the gray in his eyes. “What about what it would do to Solomon if you bled out in those woods? To Percival? To me?”
“Stop making this about you!”
“It is about me!” His voice cracked open, full volume. “You are our mate. Every threat to you is a threat to us. When he had his hands on your throat tonight, we felt it, Mira. Through the bond. Your fear, your pain. And I couldn’t get to you fast enough.”
I was startled as his voice turned softer again. But my mind is still reeling, still drowning in self-blame and destructive tendencies.
“I need you to listen to me.” My voice shook. Tears burned down my cheeks and I hated them. “I need you to understand that I can’t be the person who hides while everyone else bleeds. I can’t. It will destroy me faster than any weapon or injury.”
“And I need you to listen to me.” He closed the last inch between us.
His chest pressed against mine, his breath ragged, his eyes fully gold.
“You may not believe it but I need you to understand that losing you will destroy us. Not might. Will. There is no version of my life, no kingdom or throne, no future that exists without you in it.”
Neither of us moved back.
His chest heaved against mine. My fists were clenched at my sides, his were clenched at his. Tears streaked my face and his eyes burned gold and we stood there, wrecked, stripped raw, two people screaming the same fear in different languages and refusing to hear each other.
Slowly, his hand came up. Still shaking, clenched with frustration. But his thumb found my cheek and dragged across the wetness there, gentle despite our argument, wiping tears away with fingers that trembled from effort.
Lucian did it again. The other cheek. His jaw locked so tight the muscle jumped, and his breathing refused to slow, chest rising and falling against mine.
Furious and tender at the same time. Wiping my tears while his eyes burned with everything he wanted to say but couldn’t anymore because his hand was on my face and the argument had run out of words.
“Gods, you are the most impossible woman I have ever met.” Through his teeth. “The most stubborn, reckless, infuriating...”
His thumb stilled on my cheekbone as his gaze dropped to my mouth.
Mine dropped to his.
The anger didn’t fade. It shifted.
His breath landed on my lips and mine landed on his. Lucian’s hand was still cradling my jaw, still damp with my tears, and the half-inch between us caught fire.
My mind was fuzzy from everything that escalated but it happened without thinking. We moved at the same time.
I grabbed his face with my hands and he grabbed mine. Our mouths collided despite our fight, mid-breath, mid-fury, and the kiss was nothing gentle.
It was teeth and desperation and every word we’d screamed at each other finding a different way out.
“Fuck,” Lucian breathed against my mouth. His hands gripped my hips hard enough to bruise and he walked me backward until my spine collided with the bookshelf. “I wanted to kiss you so bad. All night. The whole time you were yelling at me.”
“Shut the hell up and keep doing it then.”
He kissed me harder.
His mouth was hot and demanding, tongue sliding against mine, and I moaned his name into the kiss without meaning to. “Lucian.”
The sound changed him.
His grip tightened. His composure, whatever shred remained, disintegrated. Lucian pinned me harder against the shelf and a growl built in his chest that I felt in my bones.
Books rained down around us, spines cracking against the floor, pages fluttering.
I didn’t care. Couldn’t care.
The noise in my head went quiet. Every spiraling thought, guilt and fear and self-loathing that had been screaming since the clearing, silenced in one brutal sweep and replaced with a fog that tasted of him.
His body pressed against mine, solid and burning, and his tongue swept deeper into my mouth and I arched into him, fingers clawing at the fabric of his shirt. My brain had been drowning for hours. The kiss pulled me deeper into a different kind of madness, one that felt good.
I yanked the remaining buttons of his shirt open. They scattered across the floorboards. My palms found his chest, muscles tensing beneath my touch, and I dragged my nails down his torso.
Lucian growled against my mouth, a sound that vibrated through my teeth and sank directly into the ache building between my thighs.
“You drive me mad, Mira.” His mouth broke from mine just long enough to get the words out, rough and wrecked against my jaw. “You make me lose my fucking temper. No one has ever...”
“Good.” I pulled him back by the hair. “You drive me just as nuts.”
Lucian’s hands slid from my hips to the backs of my thighs and he lifted me off the ground in one effortless pull. My legs wrapped around his waist, ankles locking behind his back, and the position pressed every inch of me against every inch of him.
The hard ridge of his cock settled between my thighs and my entire body clenched.
“Shit… Lucian.” My head fell back. His name left my mouth as a moan, dragged out of me by the pressure and the heat. The way his fingers dug into the muscle of my thighs.
“Say it again.” His mouth dragged down my jaw, my neck, his teeth grazing the bruised skin of my throat with a possessiveness that made my spine arch off the bookshelf. “My name. Say it again.”
“Lucian.” Half moan, half breath.
His hips rolled against mine in response, the friction sent lightning crackling through my entire body. My fingers raked through his hair and pulled.
He groaned against my neck, the sound guttural and half-wolf, and ground into me again, harder this time. Intentional.
A rhythm that made my vision blur and my thighs clench around his waist.
“Wanted to tame you.” His breath scorched my skin. His tongue traced the hollow of my throat, tasting, claiming, while his hands shoved the hem of my dress up my thighs. “Such a stubborn girl. Screaming at me with those eyes and that mouth and expecting me not to...”
“Not to what?” I rolled my hips down against him. Watched his jaw go slack and his eyes flutter shut, the gold beneath his lids burn brighter. “Not to lose control?”
“I don’t lose control.”
“You’re losing it right now.”
His gold eyes snapped open. The wolf staring out at me through the man’s face, and the intensity of it should have scared me. Instead, it made every nerve in my body burn brighter.
“Yes,” he said. “I am.”
I kissed him again. Open-mouthed, desperate, my teeth catching his lower lip and pulling. He snarled into the kiss, a sound that rumbled from his chest through mine, and his hands tightened on my thighs hard enough that I knew there’d be marks tomorrow.
Good. I wanted the marks.
His hips found a rhythm against mine, grinding me into the bookshelf with a pressure that was just enough and nowhere near enough at the same time.
Each roll sent heat pooling lower and lower until I was panting against his mouth, my ankles digging into his back, pulling him closer, needing more contact, more friction, more of him.
“More,” I managed between kisses. “Lucian, more.”
“Careful.” His voice was wrecked, barely recognizable. His forehead pressed against mine, his breath coming in ragged pulls. “I might not stop, Mira.”
I don’t think I want him to stop.
Lucian’s mouth found mine again, hungrier this time, messier, all teeth and tongue and the taste of desperation. His hand slid higher up my thigh, fingers pressing into the soft skin, and I whimpered against him, feeling his whole body shudder in response.
We broke apart to breathe.
Foreheads pressed together. His chest heaved against mine, our breath mingling in the narrow space between our mouths. My legs still locked around his waist. His hands still gripping my thighs, fingers trembling against my skin.
His shirt hanging open, red lines from my nails tracked across his chest. My dress bunched at my hips.
Both of us were wrecked. Burning.
Neither of us moved or spoke.
His gold eyes held mine, and in them I saw the war between the king and the wolf.
My thumb traced his jaw. “We should fight more often.”
Lucian chuckled and he closed his eyes at the contact and turned his face into my palm, pressing his lips against the center of it.
Tender. After everything. The yelling, and the teeth, the grinding and the fury.
Suddenly, our short-lived fantasy was interrupted.
The office door opened.
Solomon stood in the doorway. His gaze swept the scene. Me wrapped around Lucian, books everywhere, shirt destroyed, both of us wrecked and breathing hard.
He didn’t blink or react. Whatever Solomon was carrying into this room was so much worse than walking in on a makeout session that his brain had simply skipped over it entirely.
His expression was grim. I didn’t have a good feeling.
“Something is wrong.” His voice was flat, his jaw tightened. “Percival’s wound reverted.”
He meets our eyes. “He’s not healing.”