Chapter 11 #2
"Flowers?" He's closing the distance, so big, so angry, and I'm still holding a crushed stem in my other hand. Purple petals. Ruined. "You left the territory. Alone. Without telling anyone. For fucking flowers."
"Well, for dye, actually. Everything here is brown. The whole village is beige and gray and depressing and—"
"You almost died."
"I was fine until—"
"You were NOT fine." Right in front of me now. Close enough that I can see the blood drying in the hollow of his throat. I am not looking at his throat. "You were pinned down. If I hadn't caught your scent—if I'd been five minutes later—"
"But you weren't! You showed up and—"
"And what if I hadn't?" His voice cracks. Raw underneath. Shaking underneath. "What then? What happens when you wander off and there's no one coming?"
"I don't need saving!"
"You JUST did! Thirty seconds ago!"
"That's not—I mean—I had a knife—"
"A knife." He laughs, no humor in it, and runs a hand through his hair. Gets blood in it. "A tiny knife against two armed men."
"It's better than nothing!" My cheek hurts. My hand hurts. He's got blood smeared across his shoulder and I'm still holding this stupid flower stem. "I cut one of them! I was fighting back!"
"And losing! You were losing, Melori!"
"So what? So I should stay inside forever? Ask permission every time I want to—"
"YES."
"That's INSANE."
"That's SURVIVAL."
"That's a CAGE!"
"It's a cage that keeps you ALIVE!"
"I don't WANT to be kept alive like some fragile thing you have to—"
"You ARE fragile!" He gestures at me, wild, blood flicking from his hands. "You're human! You can't fight them off when they grab you!"
"Don't call me fragile."
"You ARE. Look at you." His breath ragged. Blood everywhere. Flowers crushed between us. "They almost had you. You almost died because you wanted to make things pretty."
"I wanted to make things BETTER!" My tongue catches on the word, still raw where I bit it, and I shout anyway, voice going so high it hurts my own ears.
"That's what I DO! I see problems and I fix them!
The food was a problem—fixed it. The supplies were a disaster—fixed.
Everything looking like mud IS a problem—"
"So you get yourself killed? That's your solution?"
"Obviously I wasn't TRYING to—"
"You went into the forest ALONE!"
"Because I didn't think I needed PERMISSION to pick FLOWERS!"
"Two nights ago!" His voice breaks open on it, raw and wrecked. "I stood in a stream and told you to stop acting like you're leaving and you just—walked out here like none of it—"
"This is the other direction! These were humans, not wolves—"
"IT DOESN'T MATTER WHAT DIRECTION!" He's shaking now. Not just anger—
"You're human. You can't shift. You can't run fast enough—"
"Then what am I supposed to DO?" My voice cracks. The flower stem drops. My hands need something to hold and there's nothing. "Sit in my dwelling all day? Stay inside the lines you've drawn?"
"YES."
"I won't LIVE like that!"
"You won't live AT ALL if you—"
"That's MY choice!"
A laugh. Low. Not a good one.
"No." He steps closer. Tree at my back, his body blocking everything else, blood-slicked and furious and not wearing a single thing and my brain picks now—right now—to—
"Not anymore."
"You can't just DECIDE—"
"Watch me."
"I'm not one of your wolves! I don't follow orders because you're big and scary and—"
He grabs my shoulders. Hands huge, pinning me against the bark. Every wolf in this territory is about to—
My mouth keeps going—
"—you think you can just GRAB me whenever you—"
"Shut up."
"Don't tell me to shut—"
His mouth on mine.
Hard. Not tentative. Not asking.
I freeze for one heartbeat. Just one. Then my hands are in his hair and I'm pulling him closer, not pushing him away, and everything in me that was still shaking from the fight redirects straight into his mouth.
His lips part mine. His tongue finds mine. A sound I don't recognize comes out of my throat and he swallows it, his hand sliding from my shoulder up to cup the back of my neck, holding me where he wants me.
I let him.
I'm shaking. Adrenaline and cold and something else. All of it pouring out of me into him and he's drinking it down like he's been waiting years for me to spill.
"Keer—"
"Don't." Against my mouth. His other hand finds my waist. "Not right now."
"I'm not—"
"Good."
He kisses me again. Slower this time. Deeper. His beard rough against my jaw, the coppery taste of blood between us—mine, his, I can't tell—and my body is melting into his, into the tree at my back, into the heat of him after all that cold.
His hand at my waist slides lower. Finds the hem of his own shirt I'm still wearing. Slips underneath it.
His palm on my bare ribs.
"Oh." I don't mean to make the sound.
"That's it." His mouth moves to my throat. Teeth scraping. "Make that sound again."
Already making it. His hand traveling up, thumb skimming the underside of my breast, and my spine arches off the bark and pushes me into his palm. He breathes out rough against my neck.
"I'm going to touch you now."
It isn't a question.
"Everywhere I've been thinking about. You're going to let me. You're going to stand here against this tree and you're going to take it. Do you understand?"
"Keer—"
"Do you understand, Melori."
"Yes. Yes, I—"
His hand closes fully over my breast. Squeezes. His thumb drags across my nipple through the thin fabric and my whole body jolts and my knees try to give.
His thigh is between my legs before I drop. Hard muscle pressing up into me. Steady. Holding me up.
"Ride it."
"I don't—"
"Yes you do. You've been thinking about me. I've smelled it on you. Ride it."
I make a sound I'll have to disown later and my hips roll against his thigh and he groans against my neck, low and pleased.
"Good." His teeth on my earlobe. "Keep going. I want to watch you do it."
I can't stop if I wanted to. My hips moving, my hands pulling at his hair, his thigh flexing up to meet me, and he's talking the whole time—filthy against my ear.
"This is what you needed. Isn't it. Somebody's hands on you. Someone telling you when to stop moving and when to keep going. You've been begging for it without knowing."
"Keer, please—"
"Please what?"
"I don't know I don't know please—"
"I do."
His hand leaves my breast and slides down my stomach and his fingers hook into the waistband of my trousers.
"I'm going to put my hand on you now. Inside you. I'm going to make you come on my fingers against this tree and then I'm going to do it again. You're not leaving this forest until you've come on my hand at least twice. Nod if you understand."
I nod so hard my head hits the bark.
He shoves my trousers down my hips. His hand between my legs.
His fingers find me wet and the sound he makes—
"Fuck."
He drops his forehead against mine and his eye closes for a beat, and when he opens it he looks at me like he's going to ruin me.
"You're soaked, Melori. Look at that. All of that for me."
"I—"
"Don't be shy now. You're going to come apart on my hand in about thirty seconds and you want to pretend this isn't what you've been wanting."
"It is—goodness, it is—"
"I know it is."
One finger slides into me and my whole body arches against him. Then two. His palm grinding against me, his thumb finding the spot that makes me sob.
"That's my girl. Take it."
"Keer—I can't—"
"You will. You're going to. Right now."
His fingers curl inside me. His mouth finds mine and swallows the noise I make when he hits something that undoes me.
"Come on my hand, baby. Do it."
I shatter.
Crying out into his mouth, thighs clamping around his wrist, pulse after pulse while his fingers keep working, not slowing, dragging it out until I'm shaking so hard I can't stand.
"Good girl." His mouth at my ear. His fingers still moving. Slower now but not stopping. "That's one. We're not done."
"I can't—"
" told you. Twice."
"Keer—"
"Hands off my hair. Down here. Around me."
My hands drop from his hair without asking and wrap around him—hard and hot, already leaking at the tip. He makes a strangled sound against my throat.
"That's it." Rough. Wrecked. "Just like that."
I stroke him and his hips push into my grip and his fingers push deeper into me. I'm moving back toward the edge already, faster than should be possible, every nerve already wrecked from the first one.
"Keer—"
"Again." His mouth at my temple. "I told you. Make it again."
"Please—"
"Say my name when you do it."
He bites the spot where my neck meets my shoulder and his thumb circles and his fingers curl and—
"KEER—"
I shatter again. Harder. Everything white-hot and shaking and his name coming out of me again and again like a prayer I don't know how to stop.
His hips jerk into my hand. His own voice cracking against my throat.
"Mine." A growl. "You're mine. Say it."
"Yours—"
"Again."
"I'm yours, Keer—Keer—"
And that undoes him. He groans against my neck, a torn sound, and his hips stutter into my grip and warmth spills over my fingers and his whole body shudders against mine. His forehead drops to my shoulder. Breathing ragged and so close I can feel every exhale.
Both of us shaking. My hand still wrapped around him. His fingers still inside me. Bark rough against my back. Blood cooling on his chest where it's pressed to mine.
The forest quiet around us.
Everything quiet.
I turn my face into his neck. Breathe in cedar and copper and sweat and him. My lips move against his throat without asking permission.
"I'm yours."
He holds very still.
Then he pulls back.
Cold rushes in. He's stepping away and his face—
Horror. Not at me. At himself.
"Keer—"
He won't look at me. Hand dragging down his face, jaw so tight the muscle jumps, and I'm still against the tree with bark in my hair and his taste in my mouth.
"Keer, wait—"
"Don't go out alone again."
He turns. Starts walking.
"Keer!"
Doesn't turn. Doesn't slow. Naked and blood-covered, disappearing into the trees.
"KEER!"