Chapter Fifteen #3
His free hand finds my wrist, then the other, and pins both above my head against the mattress with a single grip that makes it clear there is no pulling free.
The loss of control over my own body should frighten me, but instead it unlocks something, strips away the last pretense that this is anything other than exactly what it is.
I stop fighting to hold on and take everything he gives me, my body arching and shaking beneath his with a responsiveness that is not submission but hunger, pure, uncomplicated, and entirely mine.
“Eyes on me when you come, Roxy,” he demands, the ice traces the edges of the bruises his fingers leave around my wrists, branding me in a way that will still be visible days from now.
The knowledge that I will carry these marks on my skin like evidence carved into me by three hundred years of denied wanting finally released, sends heat pooling through me so sharply that my hips buck against him involuntarily.
The pressure has been building for longer than I can track, coiling tighter with every stroke, every shift of his hips, every place where ice meets heat against my skin, until it is no longer building so much as vibrating.
A tension so dense it has become its own kind of pain, sitting at the very edge of something that will not ease or release when it breaks but will shatter outright, taking everything with it.
It breaks.
Not gradually.
Not with a warning.
It detonates through me in a single, blinding wave that starts at my core and tears outward until every nerve in my body fires simultaneously.
My back arches violently off the mattress, spine bowing until my shoulders leave the sheets, thighs locking around him hard enough to trap him where he is, and the sound that leaves my mouth is raw, uncontrolled, and devastating in its honesty.
Every wall I have ever built, every defense I have ever constructed, every pretense I have ever maintained since the moment I stumbled into this place, is reduced to nothing in the space of a single breath that I cannot even hear over the blood pounding in my ears.
“Jesus, Raze!” I scream out his name as I climax, my pussy clenching tight around him when I shatter completely, coming undone.
His body reacts instantly, his hips jerking in response, when he follows seconds later.
A single, brutal thrust that buries him as deep as his body will allow, and the sound he makes is nothing I have heard from him before.
Not a growl, not a roar, but a simple breath dragged out of him by force, rough, ragged, and breaking at the edges in a way that strips away every pretense he has ever built around himself.
Raze’s body shudders against mine, a full-body tremor that runs from his shoulders to his hips, and the ice that has been threading across his skin all night flares bright for one instant and then dissolves all at once in a wave of warmth that floods outward from every point where his body touches mine.
For one suspended, breathless moment, the cold that has defined him since the curse took hold simply does not exist.
“Mine!” he roars, then it’s like his body is spent as he collapses on top of me, breathing heavily as we lie here together in the aftermath.
The room holds nothing but our breathing, slowing in unison.
Gradually, he pulls out, spinning us as he gathers me against his chest without a word, his arms wrapping around me with a tightness that borders on desperate, like he is memorizing the weight of me, the warmth, the steady beat of my heart against his ribs.
His face presses into my hair, and the breath that leaves him is slow, shaking, and carries the vulnerability of someone who has just surrendered something he never intended to give.
Some things exist beyond words.
And without saying anything, we both close our eyes, falling asleep in each other’s arms.
The Next Morning
Gray light filters through the barred window in thin beams that land across tangled sheets and the bruises scattered across my skin like a map of everything that happened in the early hours of the morning.
My body aches in ways that are entirely new, muscles protesting movement while something deeper hums with a warmth that has nothing to do with temperature.
As I shift on my bed, I open my eyes to see that Raze is no longer with me.
Am I surprised? No.
Am I hurt? Maybe a little.
Exhaling, I slowly move to stand, my body screaming at me as I take in all my fresh injuries from the incredible sex I had.
Sex with an ice dragon.
That was not on my bingo card for this year, I can tell you that much!
Glancing around the room, I reach for my clothes, pull them on, wincing as the clothes sit over my frostbite burns, and then I head for my door, wondering if it will still be locked.
It isn’t.
And a small smile pricks the corner of my lips as I decide to make my way out for breakfast. But when I open my door, what looks like a care package sits at the base of the door.
Furrowing my brows, I lean down, pick it up, and bring it inside.
Peeling back the layers of cloth, I find a folded set of clothes, clean and practical, left with the quiet efficiency that suggests maybe Luna moved through this corridor without making a single sound.
The gesture is stripped of sentiment and delivered with the same precision she applies to everything in this clubhouse.
There’s a small jar of Ivy’s healing salve, the herbal scent drifting through the air with a familiarity that has become, somewhere along the way, something close to comfort.
Professional courtesy extended to the president’s… whatever I am.
Not ownership.
Not yet.
Just the first careful acknowledgment that whatever I am now, whatever Raze and I became last night, the club has noticed.
And they are not looking away.
And somehow, that makes me feel like maybe, all those nights ago, I might have stumbled into the right place all along.