Chapter Five #2
The admission sends heat spiraling through my veins. I should be scared. I should turn around and walk away. But instead, I take a step closer. “Are you saying I should be afraid of you?”
“Yes.” The word is barely more than a whisper.
“You should be terrified of me, Tessa. Do you know what it takes for me to sit in that booth every morning and not touch you? Do you have any idea how much restraint it requires to keep my distance when every instinct I have is screaming at me to claim you?”
My breath catches. “Then why do you?”
“Because you deserve better than a monster.”
“Maybe I get to decide what I deserve.”
The air between us crackles with tension, thick and electric. His eyes have gone white again, glowing softly in the darkness, and I can see his fangs pressing against his lower lip. He looks feral. Dangerous. Beautiful.
“Go back to your room, Tessa.” His voice is strained, barely controlled. “Please.”
I should listen. I should turn around and walk away before this goes somewhere neither of us can come back from. But my feet won’t move, and my heart is pounding so hard I can barely hear anything else.
“No.”
Something in him snaps. I see it happen, the last thread of his control fraying, breaking. Then he’s moving, closing the distance between us in a heartbeat, and suddenly his hands are on my waist, burning cold through the thin fabric of my sleep shirt.
“You don’t know what you’re asking for,” he growls, his face inches from mine.
“Then show me.”
For one perfect, agonizing second, he hesitates. Then his mouth crashes down on mine, and the world explodes.
The kiss is nothing like I imagined. It’s brutal, claiming, all teeth and tongue and desperate hunger. His hands grip my waist hard enough to bruise, pulling me against the solid wall of his chest, and I gasp at the shock of how cold he is. How strong. How utterly inhuman.
I should be scared.
I’m not.
I kiss him back with everything I have, my fingers tangling in his hair, and he makes a sound low in his throat that’s pure animal. His fangs scrape against my lower lip, not breaking the skin but close enough that I taste danger, and heat pools between my thighs, slick and shameful.
Then, just as suddenly as it started, it’s over.
Vex tears himself away from me, stumbling back like I burned him. His chest is heaving, his eyes wild and white, his fangs fully extended. He looks wrecked. Ruined.
“Fuck,” he breathes. “Fuck, Tessa, I can’t—we can’t—”
“Vex—”
“Go back to your room.” His voice is raw, desperate. “Now. Before I do something we’ll both regret.”
I want to argue. Want to close the distance between us again and make him admit that he wants this as badly as I do. But the look on his face stops me. He’s holding on by a thread, and if that thread breaks, I don’t know what will happen.
So, I turn and walk away, my lips still tingling from his kiss, my body aching with want I don’t fully understand.
But I feel his eyes on me the entire way back to my room.
And I know, with absolute certainty, this is far from over.
I close the door behind me as quietly as I can, leaning against it and pressing my fingers to my mouth. My lips feel swollen, tender. Claimed. I can still taste him, cold and dangerous and so addictive.
Hannah is still asleep, oblivious, and I’m grateful for that. Thank god, I don’t think I could form words right now, even if I wanted to. My heartbeat is a snare drum against my ribs when a soft deliberate tap sounds against my door.
I pray it’s Vex.
It isn’t.
Blade fills the doorway when I open it, broad shoulders blocking the hall light. His gaze goes straight to Hannah.
“I need her,” Blade says, voice low.
Moving back, I open the door wider. Blade moves past me, gentle in a way that feels unreal for a man guilt like a glacier. He crouches bedside the bed and slides his arms under Hannah with absurd ease, lifting her as if she weighs nothing at all
Her eyes flutter open. Sleepy. Soft.
Then she sees him.
A slow smile spreads across her face, dreamy and warm. “Blade,” she breathes gaze locked on him. “It’s good to see you, my mate.”
The word mate vibrates through the room, through me, through him. I see the moment it hits him, not shock, not confusion only recognition and acceptance. Something fierce and ancient settles behind his eyes. Blade’s mouth curves, tender in a way that shouldn’t be possible for a monster.
“It’s good to see you too, babe,” he murmurs.
And fuck the softness in his voice is almost painful to witness.
Hannah rests her head against his chest without hesitation, fingers curling around his neck. He adjusts his hold around her, cradling her as though she’s precious.
The air thickens around them, humming with a bond I don’t understand but I can feel pressing against my skin. It’s intimate in a way that has nothing to do with sex. Something older and deeper.
Blade glances over his shoulder at me once, a silent thank you or maybe a warning, I honestly can’t tell, then carries out with slow steady steps. His door closes a moment later, soft but final.
And I’m left standing in the doorway, breath caught in my throat.
I should be horrified.
I should be terrified.
Instead, I understand.
For the first time, I really understand.
Because all I can think about is Vex, his eyes on me, the hunger in them, the way his hands felt on my skin. The way he looked at me as though he wanted to tear the world apart just to get closer.
The mark on my shoulder burns suddenly, cold fire racing down my arm, and I bite back a gasp. It’s been doing that more and more, reacting to my emotions, to my fear, to my... arousal.
Shit.
I move to the bed, and lie down on my back, staring at the ceiling. My body is thrumming with unfulfilled need, every nerve ending alive and aching. I shouldn’t. It’s wrong. Dangerous.
But my hand is sliding beneath the waistband of my sleep pants before I can stop it.
I’m so wet it’s almost embarrassing. I bite down on my lower lip, hard, as my fingers find my clit, circling slowly.
In my mind, it’s not my hand but his, cold and sure and knowing exactly what I need.
His mouth on mine again, his fangs scraping against my throat, his body pressing me into the mattress.
My breath comes faster, and I have to press my free hand over my mouth to keep quiet. The walls are thin. He said the walls are thin. He’ll hear.
The thought should make me stop.
It doesn’t.
I work myself faster, chasing the release building at the base of my spine. My hips rock against my hand, and I imagine it’s him between my thighs, his mouth replacing my fingers, his eyes glowing white in the darkness as he takes me apart piece by piece.
The orgasm hits me like lightning, sharp and devastating, and I have to bite down on my palm to keep from crying out. Pleasure crashes through me in waves, leaving me gasping and shaking and utterly wrecked.
When it finally fades, I lie there in the darkness, my heart still racing, and I swear I hear it.
A sound from the room next door. Low and guttural and full of barely restrained violence.
A fist slamming into a wall.
And I know, with absolute certainty, Vex heard every second of it. He’s in his room right now, fighting every instinct he has not to break down the door between us and finish what we started.
The walls are thin, he said.
God help us both.
Because I don’t think either of us is strong enough to resist this much longer.
And when we finally give in, when the last threads of control snap, the world is going to burn.
I don’t sleep the rest of the night.
Neither does he.
I can hear him pacing in the room next door, restless and feral, the floorboards creaking under his weight. Every sound is torture, a reminder of how close he is. How much I want him. How dangerous that want is.
When dawn finally breaks and pale light begins to filter through the curtains, I sit on the edge of the bed and stare out at the compound below.
A knock sounds on the door. Firm. Controlled. I know who it is before he speaks.
“Blade wants everyone in the common room in twenty minutes,” Vex says through the door, his voice carefully neutral. “Club meeting.”
“Okay,” I call back, proud of how steady my voice sounds.
Silence. Then: “You okay?”
No. Not even close.
“I’m fine.”
I climb out of bed, grabbing clean clothes from my duffel bag. Twenty minutes.
The bathroom is next to my room. I open my door and peer out.
No one is lurking in the shadows so I quickly pad into the bathroom.
It’s surprisingly clean for a clubhouse full of men or monster or whatever they are.
The hot water on my skin does little to wipe the memory of Vex’s hands on my waist, his mouth on mine, the sound of his fist hitting the wall.
This is going to destroy us both.
And I’m not sure I care anymore.