Chapter 32 #2
He’s sitting on the step, the rubber ball in his hand, turning it over in his fingers.
He’s dressed now, in borrowed clothes that don’t quite fit, a shirt of Conner’s that’s tight across the shoulders because Garrett is built bigger than his brother.
His hair is damp. He’s washed. The last of the bruising is fading, the yellow-green going pale, and in the sunset light he looks—
I’m not going to finish that thought.
“Briar.” He’s seen me. Of course he has. His wolf tracks me the same way mine tracks him: constant, involuntary, the awareness of exactly where the other one is at all times.
I should keep walking. My cabin is fifty yards past his. I should nod, keep moving, close my door. Put a wall between us.
I sit on the step beside him.
I don’t know why. My legs make the decision, and my body follows. Then I’m next to him with six inches of space between us and the evening cooling around us.
He turns the ball in his fingers. Doesn’t look at me. “The chained man. The one we brought out. How is he?”
“Sable is working on him. He’s bad. Been in there a long time.”
“Will he make it?”
“Sable doesn’t lose patients.”
He nods and turns the ball.
“Can I ask you something?” he says.
“Depends.”
“The storage room. After we—” He stops. Chooses. “I touched your hip. Said something was different about you. You pushed my hand away.”
My body goes still.
“I’m asking now,” he says. “What’s different?”
“Not yet.”
“Not yet meaning not ever?”
“Not yet meaning I’ll tell you when I’m ready.”
He nods. Accepts it. And then he looks at me, and whatever patience he’s been wearing for three days slips. What’s underneath it is not patient at all.
“You came into a Syndicate facility for me.”
“I came in for all the prisoners.”
“Bullshit.”
“Excuse me?”
“You crawled through a drainage culvert and ripped out a man’s throat to stop him putting a needle in my neck. That wasn’t for the prisoners, Briar.”
“Don’t flatter yourself.”
“I’m not flattering myself. I was in that chair for two days. Ribs broken. Eye shut. And you came through that door and the look on your face—”
“Stop.”
“The look on your face was not operational.”
“I said stop.”
“No.”
He stands up. I stand up. We’re facing each other on the porch, and the six inches is gone because he closed it, and his scent hits me. Wolf and clean skin and underneath it, healed, strong, three days of rest doing exactly what Sable said it would. My wolf strains forward so hard my hands shake.
“You won’t tell me what’s different,” he says. Close. Low. “Fine. You won’t tell me why you came for me. Fine. I know why.” His eyes find mine. “But I’m done pretending, Briar. And I think you are too.”
“You don’t know what I’m pretending.”
“I know you’re standing inches from me and you haven’t backed up.”
He’s right. I haven’t.
“Back up,” I say.
“No.”
“Garrett—”
“Make me.”
Two words. His mouth twitches on them. A dare. The kind of challenge that would’ve gotten him a fist in the throat three weeks ago. But tonight it makes heat flood between my thighs so fast my vision swims.
I shove him. Both hands on his chest. Hard.
He catches my wrists and pulls me forward.
I slam into him, and his mouth finds mine.
The kiss is exactly what we are: rough, angry, honest. His teeth on my lip.
My hands fisting the front of his borrowed shirt.
The sound I make against his mouth is involuntary and raw. I don’t care.
He walks me backward through the cabin door. My back hits the wall. His hips pin mine, and I can feel every inch of him through his jeans, thick and hard. I’m reaching for his belt before I’ve finished thinking about it.
What are you doing, Briar?
I’ve spent the past three days keeping my distance because I can’t think straight around this man.
“We shouldn’t—” I start.
“Shut up.” He pulls my shirt over my head. His hands find my breasts, and the grip is everything I need. Firm, rough, the hands of a man who knows I don’t break. I arch into his palms, and his thumbs drag across my nipples. The noise that comes out of me isn’t dignified.
He lifts me. My legs around his waist, his hands under my thighs, and we go down on the narrow cot together. The frame groans beneath us.
“The cot’s going to collapse,” I say.
“Then it collapses.”
He’s pulling my jeans off. I’m working his. The tangle of limbs and denim in the tiny space should be clumsy, but it’s not. It’s frantic and messy and real.
His mouth finds the bite mark on my neck. His lips trace the scar, and the contact there sends a jolt through me that makes my hips buck.
“You’ve been wanting this all day,” he says against my skin. “I could smell it in the barn.”
“You’re delusional.”
“You were watching me shovel straw and getting wet and pretending you came for a halter.”
“I did come for the halter.”
“You stood there for half an hour.”
“The halter was hard to find.”
“It was on the third hook. Right in front of you.” His hand slides between my thighs. Finds what he already knew he’d find. “Hard to find. Sure.”
“I hate you.” It’s a line I say out of habit now.
“Mm.” His fingers move, and I gasp. “Tell me more about how much you hate me.”
“So— so much. Deeply. Profoundly. I — oh — I have a list.”
“Read me the list later.” He does something with his thumb, and my back arches off the cot. I grab his hair and pull, and the sound he makes is half pain, half pleasure, and entirely satisfying.
“Now,” I tell him. “Stop playing.”
“Ask nicely.”
“I will end you.”
He grins. Crooked, wicked, the face of a man who’s enjoying the hell out of this.
And something about the grin — the realness of it, the way it makes him look younger, the way it makes him look like a person who can laugh during sex — cracks something in my chest that I didn’t know was still intact.
“Please,” I say. Not because he asked. Because I want to. Because the word tastes different when I choose it.
His grin softens. The wickedness doesn’t leave, but something else joins it. He positions himself against my entrance. I feel the pressure.
“Look at me,” he says.
I look at him. The face I’ve been trying to hate for weeks and failing, failing, failing.
He pushes in.
Slow. The stretch is— God. I know his body now. Know the exact dimensions of him, the way he fills me. My body knows him and opens for him, and the recognition is its own kind of intimacy, my muscles remembering what my mind keeps trying to forget.
“Eyes on me,” he says. Because I’ve started to close them. Because the intensity of this — his face this close, his body inside mine, the eye contact — is more than I’m built for.
I keep my eyes open. Watch his face while he moves in me. Watch the way his jaw loosens when he pushes deep. The way his breath shakes on the exhale. The way his pupils dilate when I clench around him. I can see what I do to him, and seeing it is devastating.
His rhythm builds. Not punishing. Purposeful. Deep strokes that reach something inside me that isn’t physical. I’m gripping his shoulders, my legs are locked around his hips, and we’re breathing each other’s air.
“Harder,” I say.
He goes harder, his hand gripping my hip. The other slides down my side, across my ribs, and settles on my stomach. It rests there. Light. His palm flat over the warmth.
My breath catches. His eyes change, something shifting behind them. A question he’s been holding for days, a knowledge his wolf has been carrying that the man is reaching for.
“Briar.” My name. Not a demand. A discovery. His hand warm on my belly while he moves inside me. His eyes searching mine for confirmation of something he already knows.
“Don’t stop,” I say quietly. “Don’t stop.”
He doesn’t stop. He moves in me, and his hand stays where it is.
And I come apart… but different from before.
A slow unraveling, my body shaking around him, my hands on his face, my eyes on his because he asked me to look at him.
I’m looking, and what he sees on my face is something I’ve never shown anyone.
He follows. His forehead drops against mine, his breath ragged, his hips pressing deep. The sound he makes is quiet and torn, and his hand on my belly presses. Not rough. Just there. Holding what’s underneath.
Afterward, we lie in the cot, which has not, against all odds, collapsed. His arm is around me. His hand on my stomach. His thumb doing the thing — the small, idle stroke. Back and forth.
Neither of us speaks.
His thumb moves. I watch it. Back and forth. Back and forth. Waiting.
“You know,” I say.
His thumb pauses. Resumes.
“I know.”
I close my eyes. His hand stays where it is.
“Is this the part where we talk about it?” he says.
“No. This is the part where you shut up and hold me.”
“I can do that.”
He does. But not for long.
“Tomorrow,” he says after a while.
“Yes, tomorrow. The hearing. Are you ready for it?”
He nods. “Bern will be ready too.” He’s looking at the ceiling. “He’ll have prepared for it. His people will try to contain the hearing before it reaches him.”
“And your testimony.”
“Is the part they can’t contain.”
I look at the ceiling too. The cabin is dark. His thumb is still moving.
“Just tell the truth,” I say.
“That’s the plan.”
I believe him. Because if there’s been one thing I’ve been learning about this man, it’s that he keeps his word. And despite everything he may be guilty of, that matters.
He pulls me closer, and for the first time since any of this started, I don’t pull away. I lie in his arms with his hand on the place where the word I haven’t said is growing alongside the thing I haven’t told him, and I let him hold me.
It’s a choice I make with my eyes open. Not because my wolf demands it. Not because my body needs it.
Because I want to be here. In this cot. With this man.
It doesn’t feel like surrender. It feels like the beginning of something.
I’m not ready to name it. But I’m done running from it.
His hand. My belly. The things unspoken.
I close my eyes.