Chapter 23
IRIS
Cassian’s breathing slows, evening out into an exhausted rasp. I keep my face pressed to his thigh, desperate for the solid heat of his muscle to calm me, but it doesn’t work.
The adrenaline that kept me moving through the tunnel, that kept my hands steady while I packed his wound, is beginning to curdle. The shock is wearing off. The reality of the night is creeping in like frost under a door.
I close my eyes.
I see the black bore of the suppressor aimed dead at my chest. The spray of blood hitting the stone wall. I feel the cold draft of the grave I almost walked into. I hear the deafening crack of gunfire in the confined tunnel.
My body starts to shake. It starts in my hands, then spreads to my core. I’m shivering. A deep, bone-rattling cold that the gray wool blanket can’t touch.
I lift my head.
Cassian is watching me. He must have felt me shivering, because his eyes are open now. They are half-lidded, clouded with the pain in his shoulder, but the fire inside them hasn’t gone out. It smolders, dark and dangerous. He looks at me not like a victim he saved, but like a necessity he craves.
“Iris,” he murmurs. His hand pauses in my hair. His voice is a low rumble that I feel straight through the mattress.
I don’t answer. I can’t speak. The words are stuck behind a wall of panic.
I scramble up to my knees between his legs. I look at him. The stark white bandages on his shoulder contrast against his blood-drained skin. The soot smudged on his jaw.
“I can still feel it,” I whisper. “The cold. I can’t get it out.”
His gaze sharpens. He understands. He knows this feeling—the crash after survival. The desperate, animalistic need to prove that the heart is still beating.
“Come here,” he says softly.
I collapse into him.
I press my chest against his uninjured side, bury my face in the crook of his neck, and inhale sharply, filling my lungs with the scent of him. Iron, salt, smoke, and the sweat of a man who has fought for his life.
“Make it go away,” I beg, clutching his right shoulder. “Cassian, please. Make me forget.”
He is drained, bleeding, and running on nothing but fumes. An exhausted tremor vibrates through his muscles, his body trying to shut down. But at the desperate break in my voice, a dark, possessive spark flares in his heavy eyes, dragging him back from the edge.
His arm slides up my back, his fingers tangling in my hair, gripping the roots tight enough to sting. His skin is clammy with the lingering edge of shock, but he forces his grip to be absolute iron. He pulls my head back, forcing me to look at him.
“I’ll make you forget everything but me,” he vows.
He kisses me hard.
He kisses me like he’s trying to breathe for me, devouring my panic and replacing it with his own dark fire. His tongue sweeps into my mouth, demanding, rough, tasting me like he’s starving and I’m the only sustenance left in the world.
I kiss him back with everything I have. I bite his lower lip, tasting blood. I claw at his back, needing to feel the muscle shift under my skin. I need to feel him solid and real and here.
He groans against my mouth.
He shifts, trying to pull me closer, but the sudden movement yanks the torn muscle in his chest. He winces, breaking the kiss. His jaw locks tight as his left side protests. His breathing is already turning harsh.
“Careful,” I whisper, pulling back slightly. “Your shoulder.”
“I don’t care about my shoulder,” he pants, his eyes dark and stripped of restraint. “Touch me. Just touch me.”
He curses softly, a rough sound of surrender.
His hand drops to the hem of my sweater. The gray wool ruined by the night, stiff with dried blood. He bunches the fabric in his fist.
“Take it off,” he growls. “I want to see you.”
I pull the sweater over my head, ripping it free of my arms, and throw it to the floor. It hits the concrete like it never mattered.
I’m wearing only a black tank top underneath. The air in the bunker is cool, goosebumps rising on my arms, but Cassian’s gaze is heavy and direct, scorching my skin.
He reaches out. His thumb traces the line of my collarbone, right over my racing pulse. His skin is rough, calloused, creating a friction that makes my heart pound against my throat.
He hooks his finger under the strap of my top and slides it down. Then the other. He tugs the fabric down until it pools at my waist, leaving my breasts bare to him. My nipples instantly tighten, peaking under his stare.
“Mine,” he rasps.
He leans forward and presses his mouth to my chest.
I freeze for a second and gasp, arching into him. His lips are hot, wet. He bites gently at the curve of my collarbone, marking me, replacing the memory of death with the sharp sensation of his teeth. He trails his mouth down, closing his lips over my nipple, sucking hard.
“Cassian,” I moan, my hips rocking instinctively against his leg.
I need more. The stiff denim feels like a cage.
I pull back, gasping for air. I reach down, shoving the boots off my heels and letting them hit the concrete. My hands drop to the waistband of my jeans.
I pop the metal button and shove the denim down my thighs, kicking free of the pants until I’m wearing nothing but lace panties.
Then, I scramble up to straddle his lap.
I keep my weight entirely clear of his left arm, my bare thighs bracketing his hips. I’m sitting high, looming over him.
The power shift is dizzying. He’s always been the one in control. Here, I’m the one climbing him. I’m the one demanding this.
“Do it,” I whisper.
His jaw is tight with a fierce, hungry tension. He looks at me like I’m a miracle he dragged out of the fire.
“You represent everything I can’t have,” he says. “And I’m going to take you anyway.”
“Take me,” I say. “I’m yours. You said I was yours.”
“And you are,” he growls.
His hand shoots up, catching the fragile lace of my panties between us. He doesn’t bother sliding them off; he simply closes his fist and rips the fabric away from my hips, tossing the ruined scraps to the floor.
His bare hand covers my pussy.
He palms me, his fingers thick and hot against my bare flesh. I cry out, my head falling back. He finds me dripping wet. Soaking wet, betraying exactly how much my body needs this release.
“So fucking wet for me,” he growls, thumbing my clit through the slickness.
“Yes,” I gasp, my hips bucking into his hand. “Only you.”
I’m kneeling over his thighs. He reaches between us, sliding two thick fingers inside me.
I shudder violently. He stretches me, curling his fingers upward, hitting a spot deep inside that makes my breath catch hard in my throat. He pumps his fingers in and out, rough and fast, his thumb grinding a punishing rhythm against my clit.
“Cassian, please,” I beg, my inner walls clenching around his fingers. “I need you inside me.”
He withdraws his hand.
He fumbles with his pants, shoving them down enough to free his cock.
It shouldn’t be physically possible after losing so much blood.
But the sheer, primal adrenaline of survival—and the obsessed, burning hunger in his eyes—defies logic.
He’s hard, thick, and demanding. His skin is slick with a cold, shock-driven sweat, but the heat radiating off his cock is absolute. The sight of it makes my mouth water.
He grips my hips, his fingers digging into the soft flesh, positioning me over him. He leans back against the cold concrete wall behind the bed, planting his feet firmly to brace himself, carefully adjusting his posture to keep the pressure completely off his bandaged shoulder.
“Look at me,” he commands.
I do.
His face is a mask of strained control. Sweat beads on his forehead.
I guide his blunt cap to the tip of my pussy and lower myself onto him.
The sensation is overwhelming. I sink down slowly, my pussy stretching to take him inch by inch. He’s huge, filling me completely. I gasp, my hands gripping his right shoulder for balance, my nails digging into his skin.
When I’m fully seated, hilted on him, I stop.
We’re fused.
“Fuck,” he chokes out, his head falling back against the cold concrete wall behind the bed. “Iris.”
I feel him pulsing, thick inside me. I feel the tension in his thighs beneath mine.
I begin to move.
I ride him, grinding my hips, rolling my clit hard against his base. My breasts brush against his chest, my nipples hardening against the rough wool of the blanket behind him.
He takes over the rhythm. His right hand grips my waist, guiding me while he snaps his hips up from the mattress to meet my downward thrusts.
He keeps his left side rigid, his jaw clenched against the tearing pain in his chest, driving the brutal force entirely from his core. He grinds up into me, hitting nerves I didn’t know I had.
With every hard thrust, the bunker fades. The cold disappears.
“You’re alive,” he growls against my neck. “Feel that? You’re alive.”
He bites the sensitive cord of my neck, sucking hard enough to leave a dark bruise.
“Mark me,” I whisper. “Do it again.”
He bites harder. The sting mixes with the pleasure, a heady cocktail that makes me dizzy.
I pick up the pace. I ride his cock hard, the bedsprings creaking loudly under us. The wet friction echoes in the small room.
His chest is heaving, his breathing a harsh, broken rasp.
He’s pushing himself way past his physical limits, bleeding for this, bleeding for me.
His bandage spots with fresh crimson. He falters for a fraction of a second, a sharp hiss of pain escaping his teeth as the torn muscle protests, but he locks his jaw and keeps fucking me.
He’s lost in this. Lost in me.
His hand slides over my thigh, my hip, my waist, squeezing, bruising. His grip is so hard it feels like he’s trying to leave prints. Like he’s making sure I know who I belong to.
He moves his hand between us, finding my clit. He rubs it, circling the swollen nub rapidly while he thrusts up deep into me.
“Cassian!” I scream.
I can’t breathe for a second. The fullness of his cock inside me, the sharp friction of his thumb, the heat of the room—it pushes me right to the edge.
“I’m close,” I gasp, my nails digging into his skin. “I’m close.”
“Let go,” he says, his voice strained. “Give it to me, Iris. Give me everything. Come for me.”
He thrusts harder, deeper, battering my cervix.
I shatter.
My pussy clamps down hard around his dick, pulsing wildly. The orgasm rips through me as everything goes blank. There is no Syndicate. No death.
There is only Cassian.
I scream his name, burying my face in his shoulder, sobbing through the climax. It rolls through me in waves, shaking me apart.
Feeling me milk him, he loses his control.
He groans, a raw, broken sound, and drives up into me hard, burying himself as deep as he can go. He shudders, his cock jerking inside me as he blows his load into my pussy.
I feel the warmth of his release filling me, claiming me in the most primal way possible.
I collapse against him.
Resting my forehead on his good shoulder, I gasp for air. My lungs burn, and my pulse throbs against his skin. Our sweat mingles, slick and cooling in the bunker air.
He wraps his arm around me, holding me tight. He buries his face in my hair, breathing hard.
“Iris,” he whispers.
It sounds like a vow.
We stay like this for a long time. Tangled together. Vulnerable. Exposed.
I lift my head.
He’s watching me with a possessive intensity that should frighten me. He reaches up and brushes a damp strand of hair from my forehead.
“You chose this,” he says softly. “You chose me.”
“I know.”
And I do.
I chose the criminal. I chose the monster.
Because when the darkness came for me, he was the only one who burned bright enough to keep it back.
I ease my head back down against his uninjured side, listening to the steady, exhausted beat of his heart.
I close my eyes and let the sleep pull me under.