Eleven
Mason’s voice, that was honey. When I touched my tongue to the roof of my mouth, I could nearly taste it. My whole mouth hurt. His fingers flexed in my sleeves, imploring.
“Come on,” he said, finally begging, just not the way I’d planned. “Come on.”
Traitorously, I thought, One bite won’t ruin me.
We were pressed so close, I felt Mason’s heart beating inside my chest. It was slow but powerful. It gripped me the way a current gripped a capsizing boat, every pulse the roar of a breaking wave. It would slow even more when I tasted him. It would make such sweet music.
And it would keep slowing. Rallentando. It would weaken to a forest stream, then a trickle, and finally, still water.
The thought of retracting my fangs already seemed unbearable. Buried in his flesh, flooded by his sunlight blood, it would be impossible.
One bite wouldn’t ruin me, but it might ruin him.
I tried to push off of the wall. Mason dug in with his fingertips, keeping me there.
Suddenly, he felt stronger than me. At the least, he had the stronger conviction.
Mixed signals muddled together in my head.
The furthest I got was to press my face to his shoulder, so my mouth and nose touched the polyester of his jacket instead of his neck.
The fabric muted the smell. I squeezed my fists, anchoring myself in the sting of my nails against my palms until I found the resolve to force my teeth back. It hurt.
“Why won’t you?” Mason asked, a low rumble I felt more than heard.
“I might kill you.”
“You might not.”
“I’m not taking that risk.”
His fingers loosened but didn’t let go. My ear was at his neck. The steady increase of his heart rate counted me down: I would move back in five beats, four beats, three . . .
Four. Three. Two . . .
One, five, four . . .
Minutes ticked by.
When his pulse was back to its regular drumbeat—hypnotic in its own right, threatening to throw us right back to where we started—I finally backed away. I met no resistance from Mason.
I wiped my mouth with my sleeve as though I had actually bitten him.
“Sorry,” I said toward the floor. The velvet tongue had chafed my throat, and the denied drink had left it feeling dry. The voice that came out was rough. “I don’t know what’s happening. It shouldn’t feel like this.”
Mason cleared his throat. He was still blinking slowly, but he seemed more like himself. “You’re just hungry.”
“Yeah. You’re right.”
“No, I’m not.” He took a long step across the space I’d put between us.
“I really wouldn’t,” I warned. I saw his foot twitch backward and said, “Listen to your instincts. They’re there for a reason.”
“I’ve got a lot of conflicting instincts when it comes to you.”
“I feel like that defeats the whole purpose of instincts,” I said, hypocritically.
Mason took hold of my wrist and pressed my palm to the left side of his chest. A tormented noise ripped from my throat, and I tried to wrench my hand away, but he held fast. I threw up a panicked glare. His face was calm, curious.
“You’re insane,” I gasped. His pulse was faster than I’d last heard it, flying between his ribs, battering my palm.
“That’s me,” he said. “What about you?”
I kept licking my gums, trying to soothe them. “My heart doesn’t do that. It’s slow.”
“You’ll just have to tell me, then.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“How about . . . tell me why you didn’t bite.”
I swallowed painfully. “What?”
Mason pulled on my wrist, and I stumbled forward. I turned my cheek before he could search my face up close.
“If you’re not feeling something like this”—he squeezed my wrist to emphasize his thundering heart—“why won’t you do it? What does it matter to you if I get hurt?”
“It’s basic decency. And have you already forgotten about the truce?”
“Is that all?” Mason asked, then cut me off when I started to respond. “If you’re going to tell me you don’t care about me, look me in the eye when you do it.”
“I . . .” I drew my tongue over my lip. Everything felt so dry. “ . . . can’t.”
“Because . . .” he pressed. I bristled, feeling made fun of.
“Because,” I snapped, “if I look at you, I really might bite you. And I won’t stop.”
“Then don’t stop.”
When I did look, Mason wasn’t laughing.
“Kieran,” he urged gently, sliding his hand over mine. I was pretty sure the trance had worn off, but I felt dazed all the same. “Don’t stop.”
I surged into him.
I didn’t bite. He hadn’t really been inviting me to.
My hand on his chest pushed, and he hit the wall again. I felt his pulse skip a beat. He was ready for me when I crushed our mouths together.
Mason kissed to bruise, either my mouth or his own.
It didn’t matter. He held my face with both hands as if afraid I would second-guess.
The curl of his fingers on my jaw kept me firmly in place so that I could only be kissed and try to keep up.
I allowed it, softened into it, sagged against him, dropped my mouth open when he pried with his tongue. Mason took his fill. He had his way.
My hands braced on the wall above his shoulders.
I didn’t trust myself to touch anywhere else.
Mason’s own skimmed down my neck, dipping under my shirt to trace my collar before continuing over my chest. He slid one wide, beneath my jacket, dislodging the shoulder as he wrapped his fingers around my bicep.
The other hand dragged down my chest, over my core.
Either he couldn’t decide on what to touch, or he wanted to touch everything.
He slipped under my shirt to hold my bare waist and sighed against my cheek, his other hand flying down to join the first.
“Cold,” he murmured. “I had a feeling.”
“Been thinking about this?”
Mason flipped us around, hands pushing my hips into the wall. “Isn’t it obvious?”
He pulled my lip between his teeth, then slid into the space he’d opened for himself. I clawed at his shoulders to stay upright. I felt weak. I felt close to alive.
Mason was a dream, formless, everywhere. He was everything I’d been missing all week and longer.
I wound a damp curl around my finger and thought I might be obsessed. My fingers scraped through the shorter hair at the back of his head, and Mason hummed encouragingly, and I was definitely obsessed.
There was an odd hum. Then another. It took three for me to realize the noise was coming from his phone, buzzing in his jacket sandwiched between our stomachs.
“Shit,” I said, tearing from his mouth. His next kiss landed below my ear. “Shit.”
Mason chased me, kissing across my cheek to my mouth, coaxing me to turn back to him. I was helpless to resist. He nipped my lip, satisfied. Mason Kane was bitey.
His phone rang again. The buzzing finally burst through the cloud around us, letting the rest of the world in: the noise from the football field, the flickering lights, my family, Mason’s, the girl waiting for him in the stands—all at once. My fingertips pushed at his shoulders.
“It’s just the team,” he mumbled. For a horrible moment, I worried that he was still charmed. But his eyes were clear, dark with intent. “Probably time for debrief.”
“You should go to that.”
“Little busy.”
I kept my hands firm. “We can’t.”
“We can.”
He kissed me again, and I opened to him again, distracted for another minute.
“No, we can’t,” I said with effort. “We shouldn’t be trying. You’re—”
“A wolf. Haven’t forgotten. And you’re a vampire. If that’s out of the way—”
“This isn’t supposed to happen,” I stressed.
“Well, it’s happening.” Mason squeezed my hips impatiently.
“It goes against everything . . . Oh.” I sighed, dropping my head onto the brick, as he trailed light kisses down my neck.
“That a yes?” he asked against my shoulder.
On his way back up, he paused beside my throat.
One wet kiss was the only warning before he sunk his teeth in like we’d switched places, hard enough to leave indents around my vein.
He dragged his tongue over the bruise like he was licking a wound.
Deliriously, I wished I could slow my healing, keep his mark a little longer like he had kept mine.
“Tell me yes,” he murmured.
I couldn’t.
But I couldn’t leave, either, and not just because I had maybe lost feeling in my legs. The last dregs of blood circulating through my body had abandoned my limbs at truly shocking speed.
“I’m not asking you to love me.” Mason spoke into the skin beneath my ear. “I’m not getting down on one knee. I know what I want and that you want it too. That’s all.”
“You’re messing with my mind,” I said.
“That’s really more your thing.”
“This is . . . wrong.” But my body said something different, arms wrapping around his neck. He worked along my jaw to the corner of my mouth, and I indulged him with a filthy kiss.
“Doesn’t feel that way,” Mason said. I wound my arms tight and let it last until the count of five. Really, this time.
Then I pushed again. Caught off guard, Mason shuffled backward.
“No,” I said, final. “This isn’t happening. It can’t. I can’t.”
Mason dragged a rough hand down his face, stopping over his mouth and squeezing.
“You,” I said, moving away without showing my back. Unsteady feet carried me backward toward the edge of the awning. “You need to go to your debrief. And—and you need to go see her. First.” I wiped my mouth again. “You kept her waiting. We . . . This is so fucked-up. I won’t, okay? I won’t.”
Mason shut his eyes and stood there, breathing heavily, gripping his mouth. He nodded, and as I fled to the parking lot, he was stumbling toward the stadium.
***
I came home quietly through the back door.
Sneaking around is no easy feat when everyone in your house is an actual stealth monster, but I was set on seeing exactly no one in the time it took to get a drink and go to my room.
If a single person asked me, How was your night, I would go straight out back, dig myself a grave, and crawl into it. Literally speaking.
Metaphorically speaking, I’d already done that half an hour ago.