Chapter 11 #2
From inside the house, Ameena’s laugh carries through the window. Someone says something I can’t make out. They’re right there. Twenty feet away. Thin walls and an open window.
I bite down on my lip hard enough to taste copper.
His hand slides under my shirt, up my ribs. His thumb brushes the underside of my breast. My whole body stutters.
He pulls back. Looks down at me. His pupils are blown.
He helps me peel my shirt off. It’s still wet, clinging to my body. It takes more effort than it should, and it’s not graceful at all. We’re both laughing by the time we actually get it off.
His breath catches.
I’m not wearing anything underneath. I was sleeping and then I wasn’t, and I didn’t think about a bra when I jumped up to carry water for an old woman.
The way he looks at me makes heat pool low.
Locke looks at me like something just broke inside his chest and he doesn’t want it fixed.
“Christ, Nova.”
My face is hot. I want to cover myself and also never cover myself again, and I’m stuck between both when his mouth finds my collarbone and the decision doesn’t matter anymore.
His hand cups my breast. His thumb drags across my nipple. My breath locks in my throat and the ache that shoots down is so sudden I grab his shoulders just to stay present.
Then his mouth replaces his hand and my brain gives up.
He draws my nipple in and sucks. The sound that comes out of me is something I’ll deny later.
The suction pulls a line of heat straight down between my legs, this direct wire from his mouth to my clit.
I’m so wet I can feel it on my thighs. He moves to the other side as I run my hands in his hair and hold him there, grinding against his thigh not caring anymore.
His teeth graze my nipple and my hips snap up so hard he groans against my skin.
“Fuck,” he breathes, and the word vibrates against my breast. “The sounds you make.”
“I’m trying to be quiet—”
“Try harder.” His mouth drags up to mine. He kisses me slow and deep. Pulls back just enough to murmur against my lips. “Unless you want Rane to hear exactly what I’m doing to you right now.”
My face burns. My whole body burns. Somehow the thought of being heard makes everything hotter instead of scaring me into silence.
“Please,” I say.
I don’t even know what I’m asking for. My body does. My body is miles ahead of me.
He drags his lips down my stomach. Stubble against skin. My muscles tense under his mouth. I’m holding my breath, knowing where he’s going, wanting it so much I can’t stand it.
His fingers hook into my waistband. He looks up at me, eyes so dark the green is almost gone.
“Yeah?”
“Yes. God, yes.”
He pulls everything down in one motion. The night air hits me — cool against how wet I am — and the vulnerability of being naked in the grass should bother me. It doesn’t. It feels like a dare I already won.
He spreads my thighs with his hands. Settles between them.
And then nothing.
He just looks at me. Thumbs pressing into the soft insides of my thighs. His breath hot against my skin. I can feel him not touching me where I need him to and the waiting is going to kill me.
“Locke, if you don’t—”
His tongue, flat and hot and slow, drags up the center of me.
Everything blanks.
I hear myself moan and it sounds far away. My fingers claw into the grass. He does it again and makes a sound against me — this low, hungry groan like I’m something he’s been starving for — and feeling him moan into me is so obscene that my thighs clamp around his head.
He pries them apart. Pins them open with his hands. Holds me spread while his tongue circles my clit, slow and deliberate. I can’t close my legs, can’t control my hips, can’t do anything except take what he’s giving me.
“Locke — I — oh fuck—”
My hands find his hair. I hold on like I’ll fall apart if I don’t.
The back door creaks. We both freeze. His mouth still on me, my hand still fisted in his hair. Footsteps inside — someone getting something, a cabinet opening, closing. Then nothing. The door doesn’t open.
His eyes find mine from between my thighs. He doesn’t move. Doesn’t pull away. Just waits, watching me, his breath hot against where I’m swollen and desperate.
The footsteps fade.
He seals his mouth over my clit and sucks.
My spine comes off the ground. His hands slide under my hips and tilt me up — the angle changes everything, deeper, sharper — and I open my mouth to scream.
His hand clamps over it. His palm against my lips, muffling what tears out of me while his tongue keeps going.
I pull his hair hard enough to hurt. Instead of stopping he groans against me and the vibration sends me over the edge so hard my vision whites out.
I come with his name trapped behind his palm and my back arched off the ground. His hands are the only thing holding me together.
He gentles but doesn’t stop. Every aftershock makes me twitch against his mouth until I’m gasping and overstimulated and I push at his head because I can’t take any more.
He lifts his head. Chin wet. Eyes wild.
The sight of him between my legs makes me clench around nothing.
“Again,” he says.
Not a question.
His fingers replace his mouth. Two of them pressing inside me while I’m still pulsing. The stretch makes me gasp. He curls them, finds the spot, and I grab his wrist because the sensation is so sharp I don’t know if I’m pulling him closer or pushing him away.
Closer. Definitely closer.
His thumb presses against my clit and I’m already there. Three strokes. I come clenching around his fingers, thighs slamming shut on his hand. He doesn’t stop. Keeps stroking until I’m shaking and have to physically push his hand away.
“Stop,” I gasp. “Give me a second—”
His cock presses against my thigh. Hard and hot. Before I can think about it, I reach between us and wrap my hand around him.
He makes a sound like I’ve hurt him.
I pull my hand back. “Sorry — did I—”
He catches my wrist. Brings my hand back. Wraps my fingers around him again, his hand over mine.
“Don’t stop.” His voice is wrecked. “God, Nova. Don’t stop.”
Oh.
I stroke him. Slow, because I don’t know what I’m doing and I’m terrified he’ll figure that out.
He’s thick. My fingers don’t quite close.
His hand tightens over mine, showing me the rhythm, and then he lets go and his forehead drops to my shoulder and for one second Locke Mercer — who fights everyone, who fears nothing, who held me while I burned — is completely at my mercy.
He’s leaking against my palm. His breathing has gone ragged. I want him inside me so badly my whole body aches with it.
“I want you,” I say against his ear. “Now.”
He pulls my hand away. Pins my wrist to the grass beside my head. Looks down at me with eyes that I swear are barely human.
“Now, Locke.”
He sits back and gets rid of the rest of his clothes. I look at him — chest, stomach, thighs — and when my eyes drop lower my mouth goes dry.
Oh.
He catches me staring. Something passes over his face. Not smugness. He’s worried about it.
“We’ll go slow,” he says.
“If you stop I will literally set this field on fire.”
He stares at me. “Yeah. You probably would.”
Then he laughs — really laughs, head tipping back — and the sound cracks something open between us. He’s still laughing when he settles over me again and I’m grinning up at him. For one second this is just fun. Just two people who want each other in the grass.
Then he presses against me and the grin drops off my face.
He pushes in slow. The first inch stretches me wider than I expected and I suck in air. He freezes. Every muscle locked. Arms trembling.
“I’m okay. Keep going.”
Another inch. My body resists and then yields and the fullness borders on too much. My hands find his arms and grip hard enough to leave marks.
“Nova.” My name sounds like it’s being pulled out of him. “You feel — fuck—”
“More.”
He slides deeper. My breath comes in short bursts. Pressure and stretch tipping from almost-painful to something else. My toes curl. My legs wrap around his waist without my permission.
He bottoms out. Goes still. Forehead against mine. Breathing like he’s run a mile. Shaking with the effort of not moving.
I feel so full I can’t think. Every breath shifts him inside me and even that tiny movement sends shockwaves through my core.
I shift my hips.
We both groan.
“Move,” I whisper.
He moves.
The first real thrust is slow and deep and drags against every nerve I have. My mouth falls open. Nothing comes out. He pulls back. Pushes in again. I feel it everywhere — the drag, the stretch, the ache when he pulls away.
“Oh my god.”
“Yeah.” His voice is gone.
He stops holding back. His hips snap forward and the pace goes from careful to desperate. I’m clinging to him. Legs locked around his waist. Every thrust pushes a sound out of me that I can’t control.
“Shh.” His mouth against my ear. “You have to be quiet.”
“I can’t — you’re — oh god—”
He covers my mouth with his hand and keeps thrusting. His palm pressed tight over my lips. Muffled sounds vibrating against his fingers. His hips driving into me while he holds me silent. It’s so filthy I almost come right there.
I bite down on the base of his thumb. He hisses but doesn’t pull away. Just fucks me harder.
His free hand grips my thigh, hauls my leg higher. The angle shifts and he hits something deep that makes my vision go white. I scream into his palm.
“Right there,” I gasp when he moves his hand. “Don’t stop—”
“I know.” His voice is barely his. “I know, sweetheart. I’ve got you.”
That word.
That’s Vaelor’s word. The one I hear when he hands me coffee or pulls a blanket over me. Hearing it come out of Locke’s mouth — raw and desperate and half-broken — while he’s inside me.
It wrecks me.
His thumb finds my clit and I’m right there, right at the edge. My back arches, head tipping back, and my eyes find…
Blue.
Not green. Blue.
Bright, sharp, impossible blue — watching me through the window. Kyron’s face half-lit by the light from inside, those eyes locked on mine through the glass.
And something in my chest snaps taut.
The orgasm is overwhelming. My whole body locks up. The mark on my wrist flares hot and gold. I feel a pull deep in my chest, sharp and sudden, like a thread going tight between me and Locke and something else, something wider, something that has nothing to do with his body inside mine.
I cry out his name. Locke’s. But my eyes are on Kyron. I don’t look away and the thread pulls tighter and the mark burns brighter and I feel it in my bones.
I watch as Kyron’s expression shifts. Just barely. His hand coming to his chest.
Then he steps back from the window. Gone.
Locke buries his face in my neck and follows me over. His whole body shudders. His hips jerk. His grip on my thigh goes tight enough to bruise. I hold onto him through every pulse. But something has changed. I can feel it. The thread in my chest is humming at a frequency it wasn’t before.
For a few seconds neither of us breathes.
The grass is soft underneath me. The sky is dark and wide. Locke is trembling in my arms, and not from effort.
He lifts his head. Looks at me. His eyes are wet.
“Don’t,” I say, because if he cries I’m going to cry and I’ve had enough crying for one lifetime.
He laughs. Rough, surprised. Presses his forehead against mine.
“You’re impossible,” he says.
“You like it.”
“I love it.” He catches the word as it leaves his mouth. Goes still. I go still. The air between us changes.
He doesn’t take it back.
I don’t ask him to.
He rolls onto his back and pulls me against his chest. I lie there listening to his heartbeat slow down, watching the last fireflies blink at the edge of the forest.
“We should go inside,” I say.
“In a minute.”
“They’re going to know.”
“They already know.”
I think about Kyron’s face in the window. Those blue eyes. The way he didn’t look away.
The way I didn’t either.
“Oh god. They definitely know.”
His chest shakes under my cheek. Laughing. The bastard is laughing.
“It’s not funny.”
“It’s a little funny.”
“I bit you.”
He holds up his hand. I can see the teeth marks on the base of his thumb, even in the dark. “Yeah. You did.”
“Sorry.”
“Don’t be.” His voice drops. “Do it again next time.”
My face goes hot all over again. I press it into his chest so he can’t see.
His arm is heavy and warm around my waist. I can feel his heartbeat against my cheek. It matches mine. Not metaphorically — actually matches, beat for beat, and that should scare me but it doesn’t.
The mark hums warm against my skin. Whatever I felt in my chest is still there. Still humming.
I don’t know what it means.
I’m not sure I want to.
I close my eyes.
“Locke?”
“Yeah.”
“Next time, you won’t miss.”
His arm tightens. His lips press against the top of my head.
“No,” he says. “I won’t.”
The bucket is still sitting by the well, empty.
We never did get Ameena her water.