Chapter 2 #3
Then Rowan gunned the engine, and they pulled away from the curb, racing through the narrow streets toward her apartment near Tulane Medical Center.
Summer couldn’t shake the feeling they were being watched; someone in the crowd of costumed revelers was tracking their movements with predatory interest.
Behind them, the French Quarter blazed with light and celebration, but Summer knew something was hunting in plain sight, wearing the mask of Halloween festivities. The game had begun, and she wasn’t sure any of them were ready for what was coming.
The Blood Moon wasn’t until the end of the month, but its pull was already in the air, making her skin tingle like shots of static. And somewhere in the city, creatures that shouldn’t exist were getting stronger, bolder, more desperate.
Halloween was just getting warmed up.
The water beat down as if it were scouring away more than dirt. Summer stood, eyes closed, head tilted back, letting it hammer against her skull, her shoulders, the lingering ache between her ribs. The city still clung to her skin—its violence, its fear, its ugliness. She wanted it gone.
Rowan stepped in behind her, massive and silent, bringing his own heat that had nothing to do with the shower. For a moment, he let the spray strike his chest while he watched her. When his fingers finally brushed the claiming mark on the side of her neck, she felt the tremor in them.
Not possession this time.
This was far more dangerous.
Summer didn’t flinch. Instead, she tilted her head further to the side, deliberately offering the scar he’d once set into her flesh in a moment of raw need. The gesture was quiet but intense.
A low sound left his throat. The same man who tore through nightmares without blinking shuddered and clung to her. He bent his head and pressed his mouth to the mark, not in triumph, but in reverence.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered, the words hot against her wet skin. “I took. I didn’t ask. This mark… it was supposed to mean I was yours as much as you were mine. My strength, my control—I’m laying it at your feet, Summer. Take it. It’s yours.”
She turned in the circle of his arms. Water streamed down both their faces. When she looked up at him, there was no fear in her eyes, only a fierce certainty.
“I know what you are,” she said softly, laying her palm against his jaw. “And I’m still here. I’m choosing this. I’m choosing you.” Her thumb stroked over the hard line of his cheekbone. “I trust you with everything I am. My body. My heart. All of it. It’s given, Rowan. Not taken.”
His restraint shattered.
He kissed her, surrendering the wolf which made him dangerous. There was no choreography or submission. Only the raw, messy collision of two people who had seen hell and still chose each other.
His hands moved over her as if he were afraid she might break. As if he no longer trusted his own strength and was terrified of harming her.
Summer clung to him; his lethal muscle and barely leashed violence.
She experienced his body not as a threat, but as what he was willingly laying down.
He trembled when her hands explored him.
Groaned as if it hurt when she wrapped her fingers around his cock and stroked him with slow, certain reverence.
They barely made it out of the shower.
Wet skin, desperate mouths, stumbling steps—none of it was graceful. By the time her back met the bed, they were still dripping with water, breathing hard, eyes locked. When she straddled him, it wasn’t seduction. They met in the middle of the wreckage they carried.
She lowered herself, taking him slowly, watching his face the entire time. His jaw clenched, and his hands gripped her hips hard but immediately gentled, as though it was too much control for him to keep. His chest heaved beneath her palms.
“Oh, Summer…” he groaned.
She let her body welcome every last inch of the wolf who had once claimed her so fiercely. He let her set the pace, let her take what she needed, until the pleasure and the trust and the aching love became too much. Then—and only then—did he rise to meet her, hips rolling up in deep strokes.
Their rhythm was messy, imperfect, heartbreakingly intimate. Every time his control slipped further, every time another wall inside him crumbled, she gave him more of herself. She wrapped her arms around his neck, pressed her forehead to his, and whispered, “I’ve got you,” as he shook beneath her.
When release finally tore through them, it felt like annihilation.
As every horror they’d survived, every reason they shouldn’t fit together was burned away in the same white-hot moment.
He buried his face in her neck, his lips tight against the mark, and let himself break in her arms. She held him through it, trembling, coming apart with him, giving him the last of her trust as he came inside her.
Afterward, they lay tangled together, breathing each other in. His heavy arm lay across her. Her fingers traced slow circles on his back, grounding him.
In the quiet, with their heartbeats slowly syncing, Rowan pressed one last kiss to her claiming mark and whispered against her skin, “I am yours, witch.”
Summer closed her eyes, safe in the wreckage of him, and answered the only way that mattered.
“You are mine, wolf.”