FORTY-THREE #4
My eyes fly open just as a thready whine slips out of my mouth and I look at him as I breathlessly pant. “No?”
“Not because I need to protect you.”
My chest heaves while he shakes above me. Like, actually shaking, showing me just how hard it is for him to stop but he’s doing it anyway.
“Not because I’m scared someone will take you,” he says. “Not because my instincts are telling me to mark what’s mine.”
The word mine almost breaks him. I see it happen. I feel it in the way his hips stop moving even though his knot is swelling, even though his body is fighting for the lock.
“Then why?” I whisper.
His eyes meet mine.
“Because if I’m standin’ between you and the world,” he says, voice rough, “you still get to tell me where to stand.”
There.
That’s Fletcher. That’s all of him. Big body and steady hands. A wall with a door I control.
I reach up and touch his face, just as I rasp, “Bite me, Fletcher.”
His eyes squeeze shut. “Dakota.”
“Fletcher.”
He opens his eyes with a deep, rumbling groan. I hold him there, thighs clamped tightly around his waist, body pulsing around him with desperate want.
“I want your bond,” I say. “Not because I need you to protect me or because I’m afraid. It’s not even because they might come for me. None of that matters right now.”
His breathing turns ragged.
“I want it because I’m choosing you, Scar,” I say. “Because you’ll stand between me and the world without standing over me.”
His control snaps then. Snaps, tears apart, and shreds itself up into little tiny pieces. But it doesn’t snap into taking. It snaps with the glorious sound of surrender.
He kisses me once, hard and shaking, then he thrusts deep. His knot locks instantly, slotting inside my body and fusing us together with a feeling that bursts from my core and spreads all through me with a wave of pleasure.
I cry out against his mouth as the stretch turns full and final, my body clamping down around him. He only pulls back enough to sink his teeth into my throat at the same time, slightly below Kaito’s mark, a third claim burning into skin already aching with proof.
The bond drops into place like earth after falling.
Solid.
Warm.
Unmoving.
Not a chain or a wall sealing me in. It’s very much a wall with a door. A door with my hand on the latch and the key tucked in my pocket.
Fletcher groans into my throat, body shuddering over mine as his release pulses deep.
I come with him, hard enough that everything but Fletcher disappears from around me, hard enough that all I know is his weight held carefully above me, his knot locked inside me, his bite in my skin, and the solid rush of cedar and leather filling a place in my chest that had been waiting without telling me.
The bond settles slowly, heavy in the best way. Like a lifted shield held at my side. Not in front of my face and not around my throat. Right next to me where I can reach it. Where I can put it down if I need to.
Fletcher licks the bite once, then stills like even that might be too much, another one of those chesty groans vibrating out of him.
I reach up and trace the scar on his cheek with my thumb, my touch soft.
The first time I saw it, I genuinely thought it made him look dangerous.
I wasn’t exactly wrong, I just didn’t know then that dangerous could choose where to stand.
I slide my hand into his hair. “Stay right here.”
His whole body softens. “Yes, ma’am.”
I huff a breath that might be a laugh if I had energy for one. “Don’t even think of overusing that just because you’ve learned that I actually like it.”
“No, ma’am.”
“Fletcher,” I groan, scraping my nails through his hair.
His mouth curves against my throat, and there he is. I feel it now.
Ewan, bright and hot.
Kaito, dark and steady.
Fletcher, solid and warm.
Three bonds and three very different ways of staying.
Across the yard, far past the fence, the compound lights sweep over the trees.
Haven Ridge is still there wanting answers.
Mercer still wants blood. Hale still wants control dressed up as duty.
And somewhere near a door, or a wall, or a shadow, Xeon is still choosing me without any thread to pull him there.
That thought shoots a dart of pain into my chest, but Fletcher’s hand slides down to cover mine where it rests against the bench. Not trapping, just there.
“You doin’ alright, darlin’?” he asks softly.
I look up at him. At the Alpha who could have made protection into a cage and chose to hand me the key instead.
“Nope,” I say honestly, running my eyes over every inch of his face and storing the image into my brain for safekeeping.
His thumb strokes once over my knuckles. “Same here, darlin’.”
I breathe in slowly, my chest pressed snugly against his warmth, and take in the night smells like rust, rain, cedar, and leather.
My body is sore.
My throat burns.
My future is still a total shitshow waiting outside the yard.
But Fletcher is above me, around me, inside me, bonded to me by choice and held back by it too.
A shield.
Not a cage.
And for tonight, that is more than enough.