Chapter Nineteen #2
Something in his eyes shifts. The careful going out like a light.
His hands find my waist, and the warmth of them through the fabric of my shirt is immediate.
I make a sound that I don’t try to control.
He pulls me into him with a certainty that is completely different from carefulness, as if he’s been holding this back for many days and has decided it’s time to stop.
His mouth finds my throat, and I tip my head back against his shoulder, and the sensitivity of this body, the vampire-sharp nerves that have been my nemesis for days, becomes something entirely different.
Every point of contact registers at a depth no human body could manage.
The warmth of his breath against my skin.
The texture of his hands at my waist, moving upward.
The steady drum of his heartbeat, close enough now that it doesn’t only reach my ears, it moves through me.
“You’re thinking,” he says against my jaw.
“I’m always thinking.”
“Stop!”
“Impossible, I have an extremely active…” he does something with his mouth against the curve of my neck that empties my mind completely, “… inner monologue,” I finish, somewhat after the fact, and grip his shirt in both hands.
He laughs. A real one, low and close against my skin, and the sound of it does what I knew it would do, what it’s been doing in fragments for weeks, it undoes something.
I turn in his arms and press my mouth to the corner of his jaw where the sound was, feel the curve of his smile against my lips, and the warmth in my chest reaches a temperature I didn’t know it could.
“Hi,” I say.
“Hi,” he says back. Gold eyes glimmering in the dark. Something in them I’ve been circling for days.
I lean up and kiss him, and something in his exhale, the small, controlled release of it, tells me he’s been waiting for me to do exactly this.
His hands slide under the hem of my shirt, palms flat against my ribs, and the contact, skin to skin, lands with an impact entirely disproportionate to the simplicity of it.
The warmth of him floods through every point of contact at once, and I make a sound that I don’t try to moderate.
His grip tightens in immediate response, fingers pressing into my sides as if the sound got somewhere past the controlled exterior.
“Off,” I tell him, pulling at his shirt. “Take it off.”
“Ask me nicely.”
“I could just rip it.”
“You could try.” The low note of challenge in his voice does absolutely nothing to help me think clearly.
“Three seconds,” he says. “I gave you three whole seconds.”
“Very generous.”
“I thought so.” I grab the hem and pull upward, and he lets me struggle with it for approximately three seconds before he reaches back with one hand and drags it over his head in a single, devastatingly unhurried motion.
The shirt lands somewhere in the dark, and I have his chest under my palms, and the warmth of Rogue floods through me before I’ve even fully registered the view.
I take a moment to register it anyway. The architecture of this man, the breadth of his shoulders, and the way the muscle moves under my hands when he breathes.
The scar on his left shoulder, the raised line of it silver in the low light.
I press my fingers over it, feeling the ridge, and something passes through his eyes.
“Almost two weeks,” he says, quiet, like he’s thinking out loud. “Weeks of you in my space, bleeding patience into the air. Any idea what that does to a wolf?”
“I’m getting a clearer picture by the second.”
Then his hands find the hem of my own shirt, and he pauses, gold eyes finding mine in the dark, patient, asking without asking.
“I am entirely far too dressed,” I say, before he can.
He chuckles, peeling it over my head with a care that somehow lands harder than impatience would, the fabric going slowly, his eyes following the reveal of my skin in a way that makes my vampire-sharp nerve endings decide to register everything at once.
The cold air hits my shoulders and my collarbone.
Then his hands return to my skin immediately, tracing the line of my shoulders and collarbone downward, learning me with unhurried deliberation.
At the same time, I stand here and try to remember how breathing works.
“Rogue.”
“Mmm?”
“You’re doing the patience thing again.”
“I know.” His mouth finds my collarbone. “You hate it.”
“I fucking hate it,” I confirm, and then his hands find the clasp of my bra, and the thought dissolves entirely.
He unhooks it with single-handed ease that should not be as appealing as it is, then slides the straps from my shoulders.
The air that meets newly bared skin lasts approximately three seconds before the heat of him replaces it.
His mouth traces downward, unhurried and specific, and the sound I make is entirely undignified, and I do not care even slightly.
His hands frame my waist and begin moving downward, and I grab his belt in both hands.
“Fair is fair,” I say.
Something in his expression shifts, and his careful demeanor widens.
He looks down at my hands on his belt, then back up at me.
“Go on then,” he says, low and unhurried, like he’s got all night and knows it.
“Fair is fair,” he agrees, voice rougher than before, and helps me with the buckle, while I work the button, and there is a moment of mutual coordination that would be farcical except for the quality of his breathing, the heat in his eyes, and the way every point where our hands briefly brush sends a current up my arms.
His jeans go. I raise my eyebrows at the discovery that there is nothing beneath them.
“Practical,” he says, with zero apology.
I blink. “Was this optimism or routine?”
“Does it matter?”
“Extremely,” I reply, and let my eyes do what they want to do, which is take a complete inventory. The inventory is thorough. The inventory is satisfying in ways I decline to quantify.
He watches me look at him like he’s used to it not mattering, but right now, it does. “Your turn,” he says.
“I’m aware.” I hook my thumbs in the waistband of my shorts, his hands cover mine, and he slides them down with a slow, methodical attention to detail that makes my knees genuinely consider a tactical retreat.
The fabric goes, and then his hands come back up the outside of my thighs, unhurried and certain, and I stand in front of him in the dark, feeling the mate bond pull between us like a wire drawn taut.
“Come here,” he says. An alpha’s voice stripped of command and left as something quieter and worse.
I step into him, and his arms wrap around me, and the full length of him against the full length of me is a collision of warmth so total my vampire-cold skin doesn’t stand a chance.
His chest against mine, his heat flooding through every point of contact, and I dig my fingers into the muscle of his back and tip my head back and breathe out.
“Better,” I say.
“Getting there,” he says against my temple, and his hands begin to move.
He’s thorough in the way he is thorough about everything—systematic, unhurried, devastatingly attentive.
His hands map me with a patience that makes me want to argue with him on principle, except I can feel what the patience is costing him in the tension of his jaw and the quality of his breathing when I move against him, and knowing it costs him is its own form of intoxication.
His mouth finds the curve of my jaw, my throat, and the soft skin below my ear. I tip my head back and give him access. He takes it without ceremony, his hands still moving, learning the features of me with a thoroughness that my vampire-enhanced nervous system is having strong opinions about.
“Stop holding back,” I say, somewhere between a request and a demand.