Chapter 16 #2
He laid her down with a gentleness that betrayed the tension in his frame. He was shaking. Not from uncertainty, but from holding back.
Then he was over her. Not crushing, not looming…there. Filling the space with muscle and gravity and need, dark hair dripping around his face, eyes so locked onto hers she thought she might drown in them.
“I need…” he rasped, voice ragged. “Let me…”
She nodded, breathless, unable to form the words. Her hands rose, desperate to touch him, to sink into his hair, to clutch his back, but he caught them midair.
He captured both wrists with one hand, drawing them behind her back, arching her body into his mouth as he lowered his head.
She gasped.
His lips closed over her nipple, and a thick knot of lust coiled low in her belly.
The restraint, the helpless stretch of her body beneath him, made every nerve thrum harder.
His tongue swirled over the swollen peak, teasing, then roughing it with the scrape of his teeth until she cried out, back bowing, thighs clenching.
The sensation was sharp, exquisite, too much and not enough.
She couldn’t touch him.
Couldn’t stop him.
Couldn’t do anything but feel.
His mouth was heat and hunger, tugging strong and deep, and the pull of him reverberated through her womb like a slow, relentless drumbeat. Her skin flushed. Her vision blurred. Her body stopped obeying anything but instinct.
She wasn’t struggling anymore.
She was flying.
He released her wrists only when he was ready to move lower.
Her arms fell limp against the sheets, useless with pleasure as his mouth trailed a hot, open line down her belly.
She felt his hair brush her skin, felt the air shift, felt the storm gather between her thighs, and then he was there, sinking to his knees, dark and devastating as he pulled her to the edge.
She cried out as his tongue swept over her, a bold, blistering stroke that made her whole body jolt. His hands gripped her hips, locking her open, pulling her down onto his mouth like he was starving.
“Bear—” she choked out, but the rest of the words evaporated as he closed his mouth over her clit and sucked.
She shattered.
Her hips bucked, but he didn’t relent. His tongue plunged deep, fucking her in slow, ruthless rhythm, every stroke pulling a deeper cry from her lips. She couldn’t stop it. Couldn’t think. Couldn’t breathe.
The orgasm rose like a storm inside her, rolling through her in a wave of light and fire, wracking her with such intense release her thighs trembled violently, and her vision went black at the edges.
She screamed his name as she came, every breath a prayer to the man who worshipped her body like it was holy ground.
When she finally came back to herself, panting and stunned, his hands were no longer holding her.
His head rested on her thigh, eyes closed.
Like a man who had given everything.
Like a warrior who had laid down his weapon.
Guilt struck her, swift and aching. He hadn’t meant to break his own rule. He had only wanted to make her feel. She had let him.
She rose onto her elbows, looked down at him.
Then she moved.
She pushed at his shoulders, and his eyes opened in surprise as she nudged him back onto the bed. He didn’t resist. Just let her guide him. Let her crawl over him, straddle his hips, her thighs still quaking as she braced herself over the length of his body.
His cock pressed hot and heavy against her, slick with pre-come, and she wrapped her hand around the base of him.
His breath left him like a punch.
“You said take,” she whispered, voice rough and wrecked. “So I’m taking.”
She sank down onto him, slow and unyielding, until her body sheathed his, until he was seated fully inside her and the breath left both their lungs.
His hands gripped her thighs, his chest rising like a tide beneath her, and his eyes locked onto hers, wide and dark and reverent. Not demanding. Not claiming. Just seeing her.
She moved.
A slow grind of hips. A ripple of muscle. Her body taking him in again and again, and her heart cracking wider with every stroke. He arched beneath her, his hands roaming her waist, her hips, up to cup her breasts, thumbs brushing her nipples in slow, worshipful circles.
He was so deep. So hard. So good.
Still, it wasn’t enough.
She wanted more. Not just of his body. Of his soul.
How could she even think about letting this man go?
How could she live in a world where he breathed, and she couldn’t have him?
Her past ached inside her. It controlled her, haunted her, shaped the cage she carried. She had run. She had vowed never to return. But this? This was more than she’d ever imagined.
This man.
This warrior who went to war not for glory, but to support his family.
Who gave his mother a safe place to live.
Who taught his brother the old ways and made room for new ones.
Who carried his grandfather’s prayers like weapons and walked in silence not because he had nothing to say, but because what he said mattered.
He was sacred masculinity. Grounded in responsibility. Steeped in spiritual strength. Woven into the earth like roots too deep to ever tear loose.
She moved faster, harder, her hands braced on his chest, sweat trailing down her spine.
He met her thrust for thrust, his jaw clenched, his gaze never leaving hers.
She fell for him in every thrust.
Every inch.
Every cry.
She fell for the way he wielded strength for the collective good. For his generosity. His quiet fire. His goddamned honor.
Tears blurred her vision.
She didn’t just want to fuck this man.
She wanted to keep him.
Her movements slowed, deepened. She rolled her hips, letting him feel every trembling ounce of her need, letting the rhythm carry her higher. In that motion, the truth built behind her ribs like a storm.
They weren’t just fire and flesh.
They were two halves of a sacred whole.
Ancestors help her, she wanted to be worthy of such a man.
Could she find the courage to go home for him?
Could she face the ruins of her childhood, the shattered pieces of her faith, the guilt of losing Taryn, the shame of abandoning the path?
Could she fit those pieces back together and make them mean something?
If she wanted Bear, she had to go home.
If she wanted to heal, she had to go home.
If she wanted forgiveness, purpose, understanding…
She had to go home.
If she wanted to deserve him, really deserve him—
She had to face herself.
She had to choose.
Her pace faltered, hips trembling, and he surged up beneath her, bracing on his elbows, his mouth capturing hers. The kiss was messy, wet, gasping. His hand slid to her jaw, held her there as he used his big, beautiful body to roll her beneath him.
He gasped, pushing up with his hands, breaking the kiss. Water dropped from his hair, splashing against her nipple, her belly, erotically hot.
“Bailee.” He cried, then a stream of so many beautiful words in their language, declaring himself hers, her climax detonated. Fully seated in her, and even as her climax pulsed around him, he made a sound that trembled through her, deep, guttural, claiming, a predator’s growl, primal and basic.
There was no gentleness left in him. No patience.
No restraint. Just a raw, aching desperation that drove him into her with a force that bordered on fury, only it wasn’t anger.
It was everything else. Years of silence.
A lifetime of hunger. All the parts of him he’d locked down, shoved deep, sealed beneath grit and discipline and survival, now pouring into her with every savage thrust.
She clung to him, legs wrapped high around his waist, back arched into every driving, punishing stroke.
Her nails scraped down his spine, not in pain but in grounding, as if she could feel the storm unraveling inside him and wanted to anchor him to something real.
Something that didn’t hurt. Something that whispered you’re not alone anymore.
His body moved like it was burning from the inside out, hips grinding, pumping, his jaw clenched tight like he was holding back a roar that would break the world in two.
But she didn’t look away. She took all of him.
Met him stroke for stroke. Matched his fire with her own until the rhythm between them blurred, then fractured.
He shattered and she captured his mouth, taking that cry into her like sacred smoke.
She felt it in the way his breath caught, in the brutal shift of his hips, in the way he suddenly buried himself deep and ground down like he could crawl inside her and never have to come out.
His voice broke open against her throat, a sound so savage, so full of everything he’d never said, it ripped through her like a second climax.
She gasped as pleasure overtook her again, unexpected and fierce, her body arching as her second release slammed into her.
He followed with a broken growl, grinding so deep into her it felt like he might tear through time itself.
His body seized, bucked, then collapsed, crushing her beneath the full weight of his need, his grief, his surrender.
He didn’t move. Didn’t speak. Just buried his face into the curve of her neck and held on like he’d finally found home in a world that never gave him one.
For the first time, he didn’t hide.
Bailee couldn’t breathe, not from the weight of him but from the truth of him. Of this. Of the way his body trembled against hers like he’d finally let go of something that had been holding him hostage for years.
She wrapped her arms around his back, fingers threading through the damp hair at the base of his neck, and closed her eyes.
No one had ever given her this before. Not just the intensity. Not just the body. But the breaking. The way he had poured himself into her like he wasn’t trying to take anything, only give. Everything. All at once. Every dark corner. Every wound. Every ounce of fury and fear and longing.
He hadn’t just claimed her. He had trusted her.
That undid her more than anything else.
She swallowed hard, her voice unsteady but clear as she whispered the only truth she could speak out loud. The one that didn’t terrify her.
“You feel like something I’ve been aching for… and didn’t know how to want.”
He didn’t lift his head. Didn’t move. Just let her words settle over him like the first rain after drought, quiet, steady, soul-deep.
Something she’d been aching for.
Great Spirit.
His breath stuttered, and for a long, raw moment, all she could feel was the thunder of his heart against her chest.
Then he spoke. Low. Rough. Unshakable.
“You’re the only thing I ever wanted that didn’t make me hate myself for wanting it.”
His voice broke at the edges, not from weakness, but from too much honesty. Too much finally. The air between them thickened, not with fear, not with the threat of falling apart, but with the sharp, sacred stillness of two people who were desperately trying to find a way to stop running.
Her breath caught at his words, not for the heat in them, for the pain. For the way he said didn’t make me hate myself like that had always been the price of desire. As if anything he wanted had to come with shame. As if he came with shame.
Great Spirit and the beyond, she knew all about shame and how debilitating it was.
She felt it then, not just the aftermath of their bodies, still joined, still trembling, but the echo beneath it. The wound he never let anyone see.
She eased her hand up, cupping the back of his head, her palm cradling the weight of him like she could hold every broken thing he hadn’t said. Her voice barely rose above a breath.
“You just showed me some powerful truth, now speak it, Dakota. Give it to me so that I can take it into my body just as you’re seated in me now.”
He lifted his head, waves of pain and starvation broke behind his eyes, they filled, a tear sliding down his cheek.
“My dad used to drink. Said I would never amount to anything, just like everyone who lived in this cage.” He pulled in a breath that shook as it left him.
“If I cried, he hit harder. If I stayed silent, he told me I was weak for not standing up for myself. I couldn’t win.
So I got quiet. I got small. Then I got gone. ”
Bailee’s heart cracked, not in pity, but in recognition.
“For the better part of my life, he was either belittling me or absent. I got to love the absent parts, but it took a toll on my mother. For her sake, I didn’t ask for a damn thing, and she was so tired, she just didn’t notice.
I measured my worth by not speaking what I needed, stifled my voice, and hid my truth behind a calm, silent wall. ”
She had her own versions of those silences. Those no-win rooms. That sense that love was conditional, respect was earned only through obedience or invisibility.
He shifted slightly, still inside her, as if the connection between them was the only thing keeping him grounded to the moment.
“I never told anyone that,” he said, voice rough. “Not the team. Not Flint. Not even Ayla before she disappeared.” A long pause. “But you needed to know why I don’t touch whiskey. Why I don’t raise my voice. Why I never say I want unless I already know I can’t have it.”
She couldn’t speak for a long moment. Her throat burned. Her eyes stung with fury, with grief.
With that impossible ache that came from realizing the boy she’d fallen for had learned to survive by vanishing himself.
She pressed her lips to his temple. Not as comfort. As promise.
“I see you now, Dakota,” she whispered. “All the way through. Your truth lives in me, and I’ll never look away from it. I’ll hold it until my eyes dim and I breathe no more.”
With a choked sound, he buried his face in her throat, tethered to her by both body and soul, and his quiet release heaved in his chest and sent slow, aching, salty trails down her skin.
They stayed that way for long moments. Shaking. Clinging. Breathless.
In the hush, her head pressed to his chest, his heart thundering against her cheek, one truth rose in her like a vow.
She wasn’t lost.
Not if he was her way home.