Chapter 38
Rane
“Can someone bring me a towel?”
Her voice carries down the stairs and every single one of us moves at the same time. Six men standing up in unison like we rehearsed it.
Vaelor holds up a hand.
“It was his idea,” he says. Looking at me. “It’s only fair.”
Grumbling. Actual grumbling. Locke sits back down like it physically hurts him. Trey makes a sound I’m choosing to ignore. Kyron doesn’t say anything but his jaw has thoughts.
I take the stairs two at a time. I’m not grinning, I swear.
Grab a towel from the hall closet. Push open the bathroom door. Steam hits me first. Then the sound of water. Then her silhouette behind the frosted glass and my brain short-circuits for a full second before I remember how to function.
“Hey, thanks,” she says from behind the glass.
I put the towel on the counter. “No problem.”
I shut the door. Lock it.
She doesn’t hear the lock over the water. She thinks I left. I can tell because she starts humming softly. Something she probably doesn’t realize she does.
I pull my shirt over my head.
The humming stops.
“Rane?”
“Yeah.”
“What are you doing?”
“Taking my shirt off.”
“Okay… Why are you taking your shirt off?”
“Because it’s hard to shower with a shirt on.”
“Rane—”
I open the glass door. She’s standing under the water with her hair slicked back and her eyes wide and her hands immediately come up to cover herself.
“Rane!”
“I’ve already seen you, Nova.”
Her face goes scarlet. Because she knows exactly when. The doorway. Her and Beckett tangled in sheets that didn’t cover nearly enough. Me standing there when she woke up.
“That was different,” she manages.
“Was it?”
“You weren’t supposed to—”
“And yet.”
She starts laughing. “You can’t just—”
“I can.”
“We talked about this—”
“We didn’t, actually.”
“Someone is going to—”
“I locked the door.”
She stares at me. Water running down her body. Hands still covering herself. Mouth open like she’s got three more objections and can’t decide which one to use first.
I step in behind her. Put my hands on her waist and every objection she had dies in her throat.
Her whole body reacts. A shiver that starts where my fingers touch her skin and radiates outward. Her hands drop. Her head tips back against my shoulder and her eyes close. I can feel her breathing change under my palms.
I pull her against me, my chest against her back. My mouth finds the curve of her neck and I press my lips there. Just that. Just my mouth on her neck. And the sound she makes is so quiet I almost miss it but I feel the vibration of it against my lips.
“You looked so beautiful tonight,” I say against her skin. “On that roof. Laughing. I couldn’t stop watching you.”
“You were watching me?”
“Nova, I’m always watching you.”
My hands move. Slow. Across her stomach. Up her ribs. She inhales sharply when my thumb brushes the underside of her breast and I feel her lean harder into me, her back arching.
I trace the shape of her. Taking my time. Learning what makes her breath catch and what makes her hips shift and what makes her reach back and grab my thigh. My mouth works along her neck, her shoulder, the spot behind her ear that makes her gasp.
“Rane.” My name sounds different in her mouth when she’s like this. Softer, like it’s being pulled out of her.
“Yeah.”
“Touch me.”
“I thought you’d never ask.”
I can feel her roll her eyes even with her back to me. My hand slides down her stomach. Over the curve of her hip. Between her thighs. She’s warm and slick and the moment my fingers find her she lets out a moan that bounces off the tile.
I stroke her slow. Drawing circles. Learning the pressure she likes, the speed, the angle.
Her hand grabs my forearm and holds on. Her hips move against my fingers in small desperate rolls.
I’m pressed against her back and she can feel exactly what she’s doing to me because there’s nothing between us.
“There,” she breathes. “Right there.”
I give her exactly what she wants. My fingers working her while my other arm wraps around her waist keeping her upright because her knees are starting to shake.
She’s close. I can feel it in the way her body tenses, her breathing going shallow, her nails digging into my arm.
I press harder. Circle faster.
“Rane — I’m—”
I stop.
My hand pulls away and she makes a sound like I just ripped something from her.
“Rane, what the fuck—”
I drop to my knees.
She looks down at me over her shoulder. Furious. Flushed. Shaking.
I grin.
“Turn around,” I say.
She does. And now she’s looking down at me on my knees with her chest heaving and her eyes dark and desperate.
I take my time. I kiss along her hip, across her stomach.
“I bet you taste amazing,” I say against her skin.
She makes a sound that goes right through me. The kind I want to hear again.
I kiss down her thigh. Scrape my teeth lightly along her skin. Everywhere except where she wants me.
“Rane—”
“Hmm?”
She’s panting. I can hear it.
I move to the inside of her thigh.
“Fuck, please, Rane…”
“Please what?”
“You know what.”
“Tell me.”
Her face goes red. Redder than the doorway. Redder than the rooftop when Kyron called her beautiful. I can see it even through the steam.
“I can’t just—”
“You can.” I press my mouth to her inner thigh. Close, but not close enough. “Tell me what you want.”
“I want your mouth on me.” Barely above a whisper. “Please.”
“Good girl.”
Her whole body shudders. I file that reaction away for later.
I lift her leg over my shoulder. She grabs the shower rail with one hand and my hair with the other and I press my mouth against her.
She makes a sound that’s almost a sob.
I go slow. Long flat strokes with my tongue that make her hips buck. She’s still sensitive from being so close to orgasm and every touch is amplified and I can feel her shaking above me. I drag my tongue up the center of her and circle her clit and her grip in my hair tightens so hard it stings.
“Oh my god,” she breathes. “Oh my god, Rane.”
I pull back. Just slightly. Let my breath ghost over her.
“You taste incredible,” I say. “I’ve been thinking about this since the day we met. Since you walked into our lives and changed everything.”
“Rane—”
I seal my mouth over her clit and suck gently and the sound she makes echoes off every surface in the bathroom.
I work her with my tongue. Slow when she wants fast. Light when she wants pressure. Building her up and pulling back just before she tips over. Again. And again.
“Please,” she gasps. Her thigh is trembling on my shoulder. “Please, I need—”
“I know what you need.”
“Then give it to me.”
“Not yet.”
She makes a frustrated sound that’s half moan half growl and I grin against her because this is what I wanted. Her desperate. Shaking. Unable to think about anything except what I’m doing to her.
I slide two fingers inside her while my mouth works her clit. She’s soaked and tight and when I curl my fingers and press she nearly comes off the wall.
“Rane — I can’t — I’m going to—”
“Not yet,” I say again. And I slow down. My tongue lazy. My fingers still.
“I hate you,” she pants. “I hate you so much right now.”
“No you don’t.”
“I’m going to kill you.”
“After.” I press my fingers deeper. Curl them. Hold. “Come for me, Nova.”
I give her everything at once. My mouth on her clit with firm steady pressure while my fingers work inside her and she doesn’t stand a chance.
She comes so hard her leg almost buckles off my shoulder.
I hold her up with one arm while she shakes apart above me, her hand fisted in my hair, her head thrown back.
I don’t stop. I work her through every wave until she’s pushing at my head because it’s too much.
I pull back. Press one last kiss to her inner thigh. Look up at her.
She’s wrecked. Flushed from her chest to her forehead. Eyes glazed. Mouth open. Barely standing.
“Hi,” I say from my knees.
“I can’t feel my legs.”
“Good.”
I stand. My knees ache from the tile and I don’t care. I pull her against me and kiss her and she can taste herself on my mouth and the sound she makes is desperate and needy and nothing like the girl who was covering herself twenty minutes ago.
“I need you inside me,” she says against my mouth. “Now. Right now.”
I lift her. Her back against the tile. Her legs around my waist. She’s looking at me with those dark eyes and I hold her gaze while I line myself up.
“Look at me,” I say. “Don’t look away.”
She doesn’t.
I press into her. Slow. She’s swollen and sensitive and the heat is unreal. She whimpers as I push deeper. Her nails dig into my shoulders. Her mouth falls open but she doesn’t look away.
“That’s it,” I say when I’m all the way inside her. “You feel that?”
She nods. Can’t speak.
“That’s us. That’s what this is supposed to feel like.”
I pull back. Thrust in. She cries out but her eyes stay on mine.
I set the pace. Not fast. Deliberate. Deep.
Each thrust intentional. I want her to feel every inch of me.
I want her to know this isn’t just sex, this is me choosing her the way I chose her on that first date when I didn’t know what I was feeling but I knew she was the most important thing in the room.
“You’re everything,” I say. “You know that? You’re everything, Nova.”
“Rane—” Her voice breaks.
“I’ve wanted this since the first time I saw you.” I thrust deeper. She gasps. “Since you walked into that room and I called you beautiful and couldn’t stop myself.”
“You never — ah — you never can stop yourself.”
“Not with you. Never with you.”
I pick up the pace. Her body moves with mine. Her hips rolling to meet each thrust. Her hands clutching at my back, my shoulders, my hair. She’s beyond words now. Just sounds. My name broken on her lips. Yes. More. Please. The kind of sounds that make a man lose his mind.
I shift my grip. Both hands under her thighs. Spread her wider. The angle changes and she screams and I don’t cover her mouth this time because I want to hear every sound she makes.
“That’s it,” I breathe against her throat. “Let them hear you. Let everyone know you’re mine.”
“Yours,” she gasps. And the word hits me so hard I almost come right there.
I hold on. Barely. My hips driving into her, my muscles burning from holding her up, the water running cold now and neither of us caring. She’s close. I can feel it. The way she tightens around me in rhythmic pulses. The way her body locks up degree by degree.
I don’t slow down. I don’t tease. Not this time.
“Come with me,” I say. “Right now. Together.”
She lets go.
The orgasm tears through her like something holy. Her whole body clenches around me so hard I can’t move, can’t breathe, can’t do anything except bury myself in her and follow her over the edge.
The click.
It’s not a sound. It’s everything. A frequency snapping into place behind my sternum.
Clear and sharp and so certain it rewrites every uncertain thing I’ve ever felt.
My vision goes white. My chest fills with something warm and enormous and permanent and I know — I know the way I’ve always known things before my brain catches up — that I am hers and she is mine and this was always going to happen.
I come inside her with a sound I don’t recognize as my own. Deep. Broken. Like something that was locked just opened.
My mark burns. Warm gold pulsing from my wrist, spreading up my forearm. I can see it through my closed eyelids.
Nova’s hand finds my wrist. Holds it between us while the glow pulses.
“Rane.” Her voice is barely there. “It’s glowing.”
“Yeah.”
“Like actually glowing.”
“Yeah.”
She looks at my mark. Then at me. The glow fading into something steady and warm. My Dream House mark is gone. In its place — her mark. But mine is glowing. Gold light threaded through it like embers that won’t go out.
“I felt it too,” she says.
I laugh. It comes out shaky and wrecked and I press my forehead against hers. My arms are trembling. Neither of us moves.
I hold her as long as my body lets me. Then my arms give out and she slides down against me, her feet finding the floor, and I keep my arms around her because I physically cannot let go.
She presses her face into my chest. I press mine into her hair. The glow settles.
“Rane?”
“Yeah.”
“I think the guys heard all of that.”
“Good.”
She pulls back. Shoves my chest. I barely move.
“I hate you,” she says.
“You love me.”
She opens her mouth. Closes it.
Doesn’t argue.
That’s my favorite thing she’s ever done.
I reach past her and turn off the water. Grab the towel from the counter. Wrap it around her shoulders. She’s looking at my wrist. Tracing the gold with her finger.
“It’s beautiful,” she says.
“You’re beautiful.”
“Kyron already used that line tonight.”
“Kyron can fight me.”
She laughs. Small and warm. I pull her against me in the quiet bathroom with the steam fading and the towel between us and the bond humming in my chest.
Downstairs, someone — definitely Trey — starts a slow clap.
“I’m going to kill him,” Nova says.
“After you. I’ll hold your towel.”
She laughs again. Louder. And I decide right here, holding this woman in a bathroom in a town that shouldn’t exist — this is the sound I’m going to spend the rest of my life earning.
Every day.
Every night.
For as long as she’ll let me.