Chapter 12 Angie
ANGIE
Warmth blooms where our foreheads touch, a fragile point of contact against the cabin’s deepening chill.
His breath ghosts across my mouth, uneven, shallow.
Still braced for retreat. My fingers slide from his hand, tracing the rigid tension corded in his forearm instead.
He tenses further. Muscle ripples under skin like stone shifting.
He’s terrified.
Not of me. Of the thing coiled inside him.
I shift fractionally closer on the bench. My lips brush his jaw, feather-light. A tremor runs through him. I kiss the hinge, the tight line beneath his ear where his pulse hammers. Salt skin, the damp edge of his hairline. His breath catches – a sharp, arrested sound.
“Angie…” Barely a whisper. A warning.
I answer with another kiss, higher this time, on the strong angle of his cheekbone.
My hand drifts upward, fingers sliding into the thick waves at the nape of his neck.
Touching him feels like tracing the contours of something vital, something ancient and untamed barely contained.
My palm presses flat against his chest. His heart drums a frantic rhythm against my touch.
He makes a low noise, almost pained. “Don’t.”
“I’m not afraid of you, Cassian.” My voice is steadier than I feel. My other hand finds his waist, the rigid muscle beneath layers of worn fabric. I lean in, brushing my lips against his. A question. An offer. A demand.
He doesn’t pull away. He doesn’t yield. It’s a stasis charged with raw want and sharper fear.
Slowly, agonizingly slow, I fit my mouth fully to his. His lips are cold, unresponsive for a heartbeat, two. Then… a fracture. A sigh escapes him into me, warm and defeated. His lips soften, moving tentatively against mine.
Tentative becomes insistent. A hand, large and calloused, sinks into the wild tangle of my hair, anchoring me.
The kiss deepens. Heat ignites, fierce and sudden, chasing the icy dread from his frame.
My jacket hangs open and I shrug it off, feeling the chill air kiss my collarbone before the heat from his body radiates outward.
His hands find the hem of my sweater. A silent question. I lift my arms. The sweater joins my jacket on the floor. The firelight paints shifting gold on his skin as he looks at me, his gaze heavy with wonder and that ever-present struggle.
My fingertips slide down the hard plane of his chest, over the ridged muscles of his abdomen, unfastening the button of his trousers.
He gasps when I slip my hand inside the rough fabric, gripping the hard length of him already straining against confinement.
His cock pulses under my cautious touch. Hot. Velvet over iron.
He groans, a broken, guttural sound that vibrates against my mouth. “Please… need to be careful.” Each word thick with strain.
“I trust you,” I murmur against his lips, stroking him slowly, feeling the power beneath my palm barely leashed.
His hips buckle towards my touch. His hands drop to my hips, bunching my thermal shirt, pushing it up.
His mouth finds the curve of my neck, teeth grazing skin, a promise that makes my breath hitch.
He yanks off my base layers. The cold air hits bare skin, making me shiver until his hands are on me, rough and reverent, cupping my breast, thumb stroking my nipple to a sharp peak.
“Cassian…”
He kneels before me on the hearth rug. Strong hands glide down my sides, gripping my hips to pull me forward to the edge of the bench, then sliding behind me.
He pushes my leggings and underwear down my legs in one roughed motion.
His eyes are dark, almost black, the bear-shadow prowling deep within his pupils as he looks at my naked thighs. I arch my back, offering myself openly.
His breath stutters. There’s no hesitation when he buries his face between my legs. His tongue finds my pussy with a low growl that rumbles through my bones. Hot, demanding. Anointed pressure, teasing my folds apart to glide firmly, searchingly, over my clit.
A ragged cry tears from my throat. My hands fly into his hair, holding on as his tongue works me, lathing me with long, deliberate strokes that coil tension deep in my belly.
He finds my entrance, the tip of his tongue circling, dipping inside me slightly before returning to pay relentless attention to my swollen clit.
Pleasure streaks through me, sharp and brilliant as lightning.
My hips buck against his mouth, riding the wave he builds with each knowing flick and suck.
He pins my hips down with steady hands, forcing me to take the intensity he delivers.
A shuddering climax crashes over me, sudden and overwhelming. My vision whites out as I cry his name, pulsing around the slick thrust of his tongue still driving me higher.
As I tremble through the echoes, he lifts his head.
His lips glisten. He pulls back, rising, fists clenched at his sides, breathing hard.
Watching me with predatory stillness. Hungry.
The wildness is close to the surface now, a halo of barely contained force.
But his eyes stay locked on mine – human, desperate, pleading silently.
I slide off the bench onto the rug with him. My hand wraps around his cock again, thick and straining purple-tipped. I guide him to me, positioning him at the wet, aching entrance of my pussy. His body locks. Tremors rack him.
“Can’t… control if…” Gritted teeth. Fear wins a fraction.
I press my forehead to his chest, my heart hammering against his ribs. I push my hips back against him, feeling that blunt head stretch me open as I sink down onto him. Slow. Determined. Taking him, inch by thick inch, inside my heat.
He throws his head back, a strangled roar tearing from his throat as he sheaths himself completely inside me. Filled. Possessed. Muscles in his arms stand out like cables, holding himself rigidly still. “Angel…”
I clamp my legs around his hips, arching, locking my ankles at the small of his back. This time, it’s my command. “Move.” It’s barely a whisper.
He breaks. A low, possessive snarl rips from his chest as he drives into me. Deep. Hard. Pulling almost all the way out before thrusting back in with a force that steals my breath.
The rhythm is raw, urgent. No finesse, just this desperate, consuming joining. Each deep, perfect slide of his cock inside my slickness sparks showers of sensation. Hips snap against hips. The sounds are wet, guttural, the raw grind of bodies pushed beyond caution.
The bear holds the leash. Just. Savage want vibrates through every powerful thrust that drives me against the rug, forcing gasps and moans from me on each full stroke. Every movement sings along nerve endings already overwhelmed.
My inner muscles flutter wildly around him, gripping hard as he surges deeper with each snapping motion of his hips. Tremors begin low in my stomach again, a deeper, more demanding pressure coiling tight.
He grunts my name with each deep penetration, voice cracked and unrecognizable.
His thrusts lose rhythm, turning frantic.
The coiled tension inside me snaps. My second climax explodes, arching my back off the floor, my pussy clenching rhythmically around his relentless cock.
My cry is smothered against his shoulder.
He stiffens above me. Buries himself so deep I feel him pulsing hot and thick inside me. A long, low groan escapes him, part alarm, part abject surrender, as heat floods my core with throbbing jets.
He collapses over me, crushing me into the rug, his weight a possessive anchor. His face is buried in the hollow of my neck, damp hair plastered to my skin. His breath rasps against my collarbone, ragged and harsh as the surf after a storm.
His hands frame my head, fingers clenching then slowly relaxing. The tremors that run through him now are exhaustion, not restraint. A heavy, profound stillness settles over him – not sleep, but the quiet aftermath of a battle where only one victor remained: us.
The fire crackles, painting shifting gold patterns across the sweat-slick skin of Cassian’s back where he lies heavy and spent against me. He’s a collapsed mountain, his massive frame pinning me deliciously to the hearth rug, the rough wool scratchy against my spine.
His breath steams warm and steady against my throat now, no longer that frantic rasp of battle and desire. Deep, even. Asleep. The crushing weight should feel like entrapment; instead, it feels like the strongest shield imaginable.
I wiggle carefully, trying to ease a tingling arm out from under him. A low, rumbling sigh vibrates through his chest into mine, but his eyes stay closed. Slack jaw, long lashes brushing the high plane of his cheek. In sleep, the harsh lines etched by guilt and penance finally smooth out.
He looks… younger. Less burdened by the specter haunting him. One of his hands, calloused and scarred, rests possessively on my bare hip, fingers loose now, not gripping.
Shadows flicker in the hollows beneath his cheekbones, the scar cutting through his eyebrow.
I trace it lightly, carefully, with my gaze, not daring to touch and wake him.
The bear might be quiet, but the man underneath…
the fierce, grieving, ferociously protective soul he tries so hard to bury…
that’s what burned brightest in our joining. That’s what surrendered last.
That’s what I crave whenever I lift my camera lens, searching for truth in a frozen wasteland. It’s not the myth of the beast. It’s this impossible, stoic tenderness barely surviving in the harshest environment. Him.
His chest rises and falls, a deep, anchoring rhythm against my own. The crackle of the fire is the only other sound. I lean my head back against the rug, feeling the steady thud of his heartbeat beneath my palm.
My lips brush the rough crown of his head, the scent of pine and snow somehow still clinging to his hair. The words form in the quiet, soft but deliberate, meant for the sleeping man and the watchful dark, leaving no room for doubt where the bear ends and he begins.
"I see you, Cassian." A whisper, almost lost in the crackling fire. "Just you. Not the monster."