11. Fable
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Fable
I didn’t close the door.
The realization hits me approximately three seconds after I burst into my apartment, when I turn around and see the doorway standing wide open behind me, a rectangle of stairwell light spilling into my dim living room, an invitation I didn’t consciously issue but can’t bring myself to revoke.
You left the door open. You ran away from him and you LEFT THE DOOR OPEN.
This is either the most significant gesture I’ve ever made or the most catastrophic lapse in judgment.
Given that my brain is currently operating at approximately fifteen percent capacity, the rest of it occupied by the image of his bare chest and the memory of his voice saying I can smell it, I genuinely cannot tell which.
Heavy footsteps on the stairs. Slow. Deliberate. Each one measured, giving me time to close the door if I want to.
I don’t close the door.
Orion appears in the doorway, and my breath catches in my throat.
He’s still naked, of course he’s still naked, it’s not like he had time to stop for pants between exploding through my door and chasing off a would-be predator, and his eyes are still that impossible gold, and he’s looking at me like I’m something precious and edible and his.
“You left the door open,” he says.
“I noticed that.”
“Was it intentional?”
“I don’t know.” The honesty slips out before I can stop it. “I panicked. I ran. And then I didn’t close the door.”
“You could close it now.”
“I know.”
“I wouldn’t be offended.”
“I know that too.”
He steps inside. Doesn’t close the door behind him, leaving me an escape route, I realize. Giving me the choice he keeps insisting on giving me.
“I’m not going to apologize,” I blurt out, “for having a body that does things when you’re around. It’s not my fault you have…” I wave my hand vaguely at all of him. “That. The muscles and the jaw and the eyes and the smelling. It’s not fair to expect me to be unaffected.”
“I don’t expect you to be unaffected.” He takes another step closer. “I’m not unaffected either.”
“That’s different.”
“How?”
“Because you’re…” I struggle for words. “You’re ancient. You’re experienced. You’ve probably been with more people than I can imagine…”
“I haven’t.”
That stops me. “What?”
“I haven’t been with all those people you’re imagining.” His voice is quiet. Serious. “I’ve lived a long time, Fable. But I’ve spent most of it alone. Waiting.”
“Waiting for what?”
He doesn’t answer. Just looks at me with those gold eyes, and something in my chest cracks open.
“I want you to know,” he says slowly, “that whatever happens tonight, whatever you want, whatever you don’t want, it’s an honor.”
“What’s an honor?”
“That you want me. That your body does things when I’m near.” Another step. “I’ve been wanted before. But not like this. Not by someone who looks at me the way you do.”
“How do I look at you?”
“Like I’m the most interesting thing in any room. Like you’re cataloging me. Like you want to know everything, every secret, every truth, and you’re willing to wait until I’m ready to tell you.”
Oh.
Oh, that’s…
“Tell me to stop,” he says, voice dropping lower, “and I will.”
Every rule I have is screaming at me to send him home. To lock the door three times and spend the night listing all the reasons this is a terrible idea.
I don’t listen to a single one of them.
“Then don’t,” I whisper. “Don’t stop. Not this time.”
He reaches behind him and closes the door.
The first kiss is nothing like I expected.
I expected urgency. Heat. The kind of desperate collision you read about in books, bodies crashing together, hands tearing at clothes, mouths consuming.
Instead, he cups my face in both hands, tilts my head back, and presses his lips to mine with a gentleness that makes my eyes sting.
Soft. Slow. Like he has all the time in the world.
Like he’s been waiting three hundred years for this exact moment and he’s not going to rush it now that it’s finally here.
His lips are warm. Firm. He kisses me like I’m fragile, like I’m precious, like I might disappear if he moves too fast.
I make a sound, somewhere between a sigh and a whimper, and he swallows it, tongue sliding against the seam of my lips, asking permission.
I open for him.
The kiss deepens. His tongue strokes against mine, slow and deliberate, learning the taste of me. One of his hands slides from my face into my hair, fingers threading through the strands, tilting my head to a better angle.
“Fable,” he breathes against my mouth. “You have no idea what you do to me.”
“Then show me.”
He changes against me. The gentleness gives way to something hungrier, more urgent, and suddenly he’s walking me backward, his mouth never leaving mine, until my thighs hit the arm of the couch.
“Here?” he asks against my lips.
“Yes. Here. Now.”
He lifts me onto the arm of the couch one-handed, effortless, and slots himself between my thighs, and I can feel his cock, hard and heavy against me, nothing between us but the thin cotton of my leggings.
The contact punches a gasp out of me, makes my hips rock forward instinctively, chasing friction.
“Easy.” His hands grip my hips, holding me still. “We have time.”
“I don’t want time. I want…”
“I know what you want.” He presses a kiss to the corner of my mouth. My jaw. The sensitive spot just below my ear. “And I’m going to give it to you. But I’m going to take my time.”
His hands are shaking.
I can feel it where they rest on my hips, a fine tremor, barely perceptible. The mighty lycan king, three hundred years old, trembling like this is his first time.
Because of me. He’s shaking because of me.
“You’re trembling,” I whisper.
“I’m trying to be restrained.”
“Why?”
“Because if I’m not restrained…” His mouth drags down my throat, teeth grazing my pulse point. “…I’m going to do things to you that will make you forget your own name.”
“That sounds like a threat.”
“It’s a promise.”
His hands find the hem of my shirt and pause there, thumbs stroking the bare skin just above my waistband.
His thumbs still, a question in the touch.
“Yes,” I say, before he can ask.
He pulls my shirt over my head in one smooth motion, and then his mouth is on my collarbone, my sternum, the swell of my breast above my bra. Each kiss is deliberate. Worshipful. Like he’s mapping my body and committing every inch to memory.
“So beautiful,” he murmurs against my skin. “You’re so beautiful it hurts to look at you.”
“You don’t have to…”
“I’m not flattering you. I’m stating facts.” His fingers find the clasp of my bra, and he looks up at me with those gold eyes. “Yes?”
“Yes.”
The bra falls away, and he makes a sound, low and rough, somewhere between a groan and a growl, that sends heat flooding through my entire body.
“Perfect,” he breathes. “Absolutely perfect.”
His mouth closes over my nipple, and I cry out, back arching, hands fisting in his hair. His tongue swirls, teases, and then he’s sucking gently, and the sensation shoots straight to my core.
“Orion…”
“I love hearing you say my name.” He switches to the other breast, giving it the same devoted attention. “Say it again.”
“Orion…”
“That’s it. Just like that.”
He kisses down my stomach, each press of his lips deliberate, reverent. His fingers hook into the waistband of my leggings, thank god I wore leggings, thank god I didn’t wear something complicated, and he looks up at me again, asking permission.
I nod.
He pulls them down slowly. So slowly it’s almost torture. He watches my face the whole time he reveals me inch by inch, and the weight of that stare is almost as intense as his hands.
“Lift your hips.”
I do, and then the leggings are gone, and I’m in nothing but my underwear, sprawled on the arm of my couch with a naked lycan king kneeling between my thighs.
This is insane. This is completely insane. This is also, without question…
He drags his lips up the inside of my thigh, slow, deliberate, and stops just short of where I want him.
…the hottest thing that’s ever happened to me.
“I want to taste you.” His voice has gone to gravel, low and ruined. “I’ve been thinking about it for days. The way you’d feel against my tongue. The sounds you’d make. Will you let me?”
“Yes.”
His fingers curl into the waistband of my underwear, and he pulls them down with the same agonizing slowness, unwrapping me the way you unwrap something you’ve waited your whole long life for.
Cool air hits wet, aching skin, and the sound he makes at the sight of me is low and rough and frankly obscene.
And then his mouth is on me.
Oh god.
Oh god oh god oh god…
The first stroke of his tongue makes my entire body jolt. He’s not tentative, not exploratory, he knows exactly what he’s doing, exactly where to press and how hard, and the pleasure is so immediate, so intense, that I cry out.
“That’s it.” His voice vibrates against my most sensitive flesh. “Let me hear you.”
“I can’t… I can’t think…”
“Don’t think. Just feel.”
He licks into me, slow and thorough, and my hips buck against his face. His hands grip my thighs, holding me open, and he devours me with a focus that borders on worship.
“You’re soaked.” He sounds drunk on it. “For me.”
“Obviously for you, there’s no one else h…” His tongue does something devastating and the sentence dies in my throat.
“So sweet.” The words are murmured against my clit, and I feel them as much as hear them. “Sweeter than honey. Sweeter than anything I’ve ever tasted.”
“You don’t have to…”
“I’m not flattering you.” His tongue circles my clit, and I see stars. “I’m reporting field observations.”
How is he so good at this? How does he know exactly…
His tongue slides lower, presses inside me, and the question dissolves into static.
“Look at me.”
The command cuts through the haze of pleasure, and I force my eyes open. Force myself to look down at him, at the dark hair between my thighs, at the gold eyes watching me like I’m the only thing left in the world.
“Keep looking at me.”
“I can’t… it’s too much…”
“You can. You’re so strong. So brave.” His tongue works my clit with devastating precision. “Let me see you. Let me see what I do to you.”
I hold his gaze as he works me toward something inevitable. His eyes are getting brighter, the gold intensifying, flaring white at the edges, and I realize with a distant part of my brain that this is what he meant in the FAQ. They shift color when he feels something too strongly to hide.
He’s feeling this.
He’s feeling this as intensely as I am.
“You’re so good,” he growls against me. “So perfect. So responsive. Every sound you make is a gift.”
“Orion…”
“That’s it. Say my name. I want to hear you say my name when you come.”
He seals his lips around my clit and sucks, and I shatter.
The orgasm crashes through me in waves, cresting and breaking and pulling me under, and I’m moaning his name, filthy and desperate, my hands fisting in his hair as my body arches off the couch.
His eyes blaze near-white, and he doesn’t stop, doesn’t let up, licking me through every pulse and aftershock until I’m boneless and gasping and trembling in his grip.
Finally, finally, he pulls back.
Presses a kiss to my inner thigh. My hip. The soft curve of my belly.
Then he climbs up my body, gathers me into his arms, and settles us properly on the couch, my back to his chest, one heavy arm banded across my hips, his face buried in my hair.
“That was…” I can’t finish the sentence. Don’t have words.
“Just the beginning.” He presses a kiss to my temple. “When you’re ready. When you want more.”
I can feel him against my lower back, hard, impossibly hard, pressing against me in a way that makes it very clear he didn’t get the same release I did.
“You’re still…”
“I’ll survive.”
“But don’t you want…”
“I want a lot of things.” His voice is gentle but firm. “I want to give you everything. But not tonight. Tonight was for you.”
“That’s not fair.”
“Life isn’t fair.” There’s a smile in his voice now. “Sleep, Fable.”
“I can’t just sleep after you…”
“You can. You’re exhausted. I can feel it in the way your body’s going soft against mine.” He tightens his arm around my waist. “Sleep. I’ve got you.”
“Will you stay?”
“Yes.” No hesitation. “I’ll stay as long as you want me.”
I tuck myself closer against him, breathing him in, woodsmoke and pine and that wild green note underneath, and it makes me feel safe and wanted and home.
His heartbeat is steady against my back. His arm is warm around my waist. His body is still hard against mine, still wanting, still waiting.
But he doesn’t push. Doesn’t take. Just holds me, strokes my hair, lets me drift.
I fall asleep wrapped in him.
I dream of golden eyes.
Of running through trees, fast and free, with something massive and warm keeping pace beside me. The moon is bright overhead and the ground is soft beneath my feet and I’m not afraid, I’m exhilarated, alive in a way I’ve never felt while awake.
Something is hunting me.
No, not hunting. Following. Protective. Present.
Something in the dark that knows my name. Ancient and patient and utterly devoted.
I should be afraid.
I’m not.
What I feel, impossibly, is found.