Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter
Twenty-Nine
Less than a minute after I send the text, there’s a soft knock at my door.
I swallow. He must have been waiting for me to message—there’s no other explanation.
Wesley steps quietly into the room, and with his thick flannel pajama pants, Game Knight pullover, and mussed hair, he looks adorably sleepy—but his dark eyes are alert and a little wary. Neither of us has slept yet, I’d bet on it.
I pull aside the comforter, and he crawls in. We both lie on our sides, staring at each other, not touching.
“That was incredible,” I say.
He exhales a quiet laugh. “Did you really ask me to come to your room at two a.m. to tell me that?”
“So what if I did?”
“Maybe I wish you had other things in mind.”
“I can contain multitudes, Wesley.”
He sneaks his hand closer to me and lays it flat on the gray sheets in the space between us. I fold my fingers over his. He relaxes some.
“Do we really have to kill him?” I ask.
“Vadrien?”
“Obviously.”
He tilts his head from side to side. “Probably.”
“He’s so well done. I don’t want to kill him; it’s like—I want to help.”
“That’s the tragedy of him, isn’t it?” Wesley muses. “In some ways, he just wanted to survive and fix his kingdom. But the pact he made and the power he gained corrupted him irreversibly.”
I pick at a loose thread on my pillow. “Irreversibly?”
His gaze is steady on me, but I watch the dimple on his cheek pop in and out of existence. “Yes,” he says.
I press my lips together.
He curls his fingers against my ribs playfully. “This is textbook lore, Reagan. You know this,” he teases. “Vampires are inherently evil creatures. Whatever humanity he had is gone now. Some would argue he doesn’t have a soul anymore at all.”
I pin him with a flat look. My tone sounds like an eye roll. “The whole point of Blood Pact is to see whether the player, as Vadrien, can resist succumbing to monstrous tendencies. The fact that it’s a fight at all implies that it’s possible for him to overcome them.”
“Does it?” His eyes gleam in the darkness. “You don’t know how it ends.”
But I’m already shaking my head. “Neither do you,” I accuse. “Determining the ending this far ahead goes against your gaming philosophy.”
Wesley draws back in surprise; a puzzled smile curls his lips. “What do you know about my gaming philosophy?”
Everything, I think. Because it’s the same as mine.
“I’ve watched how you play, Wesley—how you create, how you DM.
I think, for you, the beauty of games—good games—is that the player has a hand in how the story shapes out.
It’s not some predetermined thing, the way it is in a book or a movie.
In D for him, I’ll lay it bare.
His voice comes out ragged. “I’m yours.”
I straighten and brace myself with my hands on his thighs. I sink slowly onto him, and it takes everything in me not to cry out as he fills me completely.
When I rock forward, rolling my hips against his, we draw in hitching gasps at the same moment. Wesley releases a strained breathy laugh, and when I can’t help but smile, he reaches up to touch it. His thumb swipes along my swollen bottom lip, and his gaze grows tender.
“So beautiful, baby,” he whispers.
I’ve never let anyone call me baby, but somehow, hearing it from Wesley’s lips…
I bite back a groan as I arch forward again.
He presses his thumb into my mouth, but just as I begin to run my tongue along his skin, he withdraws—and then lowers his hand to circle my clit.
At the same moment, he lifts his hips up in a shallow thrust, spreading me open in a way that has me seeing stars.
I roll my hips exactly in time with the rock of his, and we move together in less of a give-and-take and more of a duet.
It doesn’t take any time at all for us to find our rhythm.
Maybe it’s because we’ve done this so many times now, or maybe I’ve just never had anyone understand my body—understand me—the way that he does.
Even now I feel an ache building in the strain of my hips and the center of my core.
“Wesley,” I whine. I’m already so close.
“I know, love. Come here.”
Without warning, he sits up until his chest is flush with mine, winds a strong arm around my waist, and rolls me onto my back.
His momentum builds as he surges forward and deeper, and he shifts the orientation of his wrist where it’s lodged between us until his thumb glides down to find me again.
Something about the way he hasn’t shut his eyes, or maybe the way he continues to press soft kisses against my temple, my cheek, and the corner of my mouth as I suck in lungfuls of air, has my chest aching with something I refuse to put a name to.
It takes only a few steady, purposeful strokes of his thumb before I’m burying my mouth against his neck, biting back the moan building in the back of my throat as the dam in me breaks.
I shudder in his arms as each pulse of pleasure rocks through me and clenches around him, and by the gasp that he muffles into my shoulder, I know he can feel it. He chases the aftershocks of it, and I feel both full and hollowed out as Wesley’s pace grows frenzied and desperate.
I realize I love to see him lose control like this, allow himself to fall apart with me.
I love when it shatters for him, and I press my mouth to his and swallow his own moan when he unravels, too.
I love that in this—and in so much more, I’m coming to realize—we’re not so different after all. I love—
My mind goes blank. I try to chase all thoughts from my head and focus only on the comforting weight of Wesley’s body as he collapses onto me and gasps into the side of my neck.
I try not to think of anything at all as inexplicable pressure builds behind my eyes; instead, I fold my arms around him and pull him close.
Something about tonight…it’s an intimacy we haven’t allowed ourselves until now.
Something has shifted, and by the way we’re clinging to each other, limbs winding tight, we both know it.
Moments or hours pass. Time doesn’t seem to exist here in the aftermath. I don’t know what compels me to speak; maybe I half convince myself Wesley fell asleep, and that makes me brave.
“What happens next?” I ask into the darkness.
Wesley runs his palm over the crown of my head, smoothing down my hair until his hand cups the back of my neck and draws me close so our foreheads are touching. “We could find out.”
I don’t know if I believe him, but I want to. In the cage of his arms, I almost imagine it’s the truth.
I fall asleep before I make any promises I can’t keep.