4. Alas
Alas
The crushed ball of neon orange tape burns a chemical stench into the cold morning air. I drop it into the dirt. The plastic uncoils slightly, a bright, ugly smear of Syndicate trespassing against the dark earth of her farm.
She stands still. The white canvas of her protective suit swallows her shape, but it can’t hide the sudden drop of her shoulders. The fight drains out of her. The relentless, exhausting war she waged against her own isolation simply cracks in half and falls away. She stops pushing me away.
That surrender hits my veins like a shot of gasoline.
My jaw locks. The muscles in my neck pull taut, tight with territorial violence. The bond fires again, an irreversible click at the base of my skull. A physical lock snapping into place.
Mine.
That’s the only truth left in the world. The bunkhouse is a memory. The club is a distant echo. The directionless rage that’s defined my life finally has a focal point. A boundary line. I’ll burn Crimson Hollow to the ground before I let a single one of those bastards set foot on this grass again.
She turns away from the crushed tape. Her boots crunch over the frost-hardened ground. She walks back to the row of white wooden boxes. Colony D. The stubborn ones. The hybrids she warned me about yesterday, the ones that sting everyone else.
I follow her.
My boots fall in her footprints. A silent, stalking shadow.
The towering timber windbreak I built overnight blocks the harsh northern downdraft, creating a pocket of stillness around the hives.
The air here is dense. Saturated with the sweet scent of warm clover honey and the sharp, bitter sting of smoke.
She picks up her metal cold smoker. The bellows wheeze, pumping a cloud of grey smoke across the grass.
I step into her space.
The heat radiating off my body collides with the chill of the mountain air. She freezes. Her canvas gloves hover over the top of the hive box.
I reach out. Bare hands. I wrap my fingers over hers on the metal handle of the smoker. The leather of my cut shifts against my shoulders.
"I'll take the late shift on this." My voice is low.
She looks up. No veil today. Her face is bare, framed by strands of hair escaping her messy braid. Her lips part. A soft, shuddering intake of air.
I take the metal smoker from her grip. Set it on the flat lid of the neighboring box.
The bees lift from the top bars of Colony D.
Dozens of them. A low, vibrating hum fills the space between us.
They swarm up, a chaotic cloud of gold and black, furious at the open lid.
They circle the space between our bodies.
They drift over my bare forearms. They land on the ink of my tattoos.
They crawl over the raised, jagged scars on my knuckles.
They don’t sting.
They don’t give a single fuck about the feral rage boiling under my skin. They simply read the stillness in my muscles. A stillness I’ve never achieved in my life until I walked onto this dirt.
I place my bare palm flat against the top of the open wooden lid.
The vibration hums into my skin. A frantic, living current. The queen. The pulse of the hive transmitting through the painted wood straight into my bones. The colony accepts me. The bees settle over the back of my hand like a living, buzzing glove.
She watches my hand. A dark flush creeps up her neck, staining her throat.
She pulls the canvas gloves off. Tosses them onto the grass. Bare skin.
The tension in the air turns into a physical weight. A gravity dragging us together.
I crowd her.
Step into her shadow. My boots crush the wild grass. She backs up. Her hips hit the edge of the white wooden hive box. The solid structure stops her retreat.
I trap her there.
Plant one bare hand on the wood on the left side of her waist. Plant the other on the right. Cage her in.
The bees settle on my arms. A moving, buzzing layer of life. They’re unbothered by the heat radiating off my skin. They ignore the territorial beast clawing at my ribs. The hum of the hive mirrors the frantic hum of blood roaring through my veins.
This means something. The bees know what’s about to happen. They know she belongs to me.
She tilts her chin up. Her chest rises and falls in rapid, shallow bursts. The canvas of her suit stretches tight over her breasts. The scent of her—warm beeswax, morning sweat, and a dark, musky sweetness—crashes into my system.
Blood rushes violently to my cock. A painful demand.
I need to bite something.
The rage always needs an anchor. A target. The bees never bite me. I have nothing to fight here. Just her. Just the overwhelming, devastating need to claim every inch of her body.
I lean down. Bury my face in the soft, warm curve of her neck.
My teeth scrape over the delicate skin right under her jaw.
She gasps. A sharp, fractured sound. Her hands come up. Bare fingers gripping the cotton of my black t-shirt. She holds on like she is falling off the edge of the mountain.
I open my mouth. Press my lips against the rapid, erratic beat of the pulse in her throat. Suck hard.
A low moan breaks from her throat.
I bite down. Just enough pressure to leave a mark. Marking my territory. Claiming the skin. The metallic tang of adrenaline mixes with the sweet taste of her sweat.
I drag my open mouth across the curve of her throat.
Tasting the salt of her sweat. Tasting the faint sweetness of beeswax on her skin from her morning shift at the hives.
I bite the soft flesh under her jaw. Not hard enough to bruise.
Hard enough to leave a mark a Syndicate scout will see from across the southern trail.
My teeth scrape down to her pulse and I hold there, my mouth open against the frantic beat in her throat.
She moans my name against my hair. The first time she’s said it out loud since I crashed into her property yesterday. The sound hits the base of my skull and turns the violence into something brutal and quiet.
I drag my mouth up her jawline.
Claim her mouth.
No permission. No asking. Just a collision.
My lips crash down over hers. She opens for me instantly. A surrender. I thrust my tongue deep into her mouth. Devouring her. Tasting black coffee and cinnamon. Tasting the wild, desperate need matching my own.
The kiss is a violent war. Teeth clashing. Tongues wrapping together. A wet, filthy slide of saliva and heat. I swallow her moans. Drink them straight from her throat.
Press my hips forward. Pin her against the wooden hive box.
My cock is a painfully hard length of steel inside my jeans. Aching. Throbbing. I grind it against the soft junction of her thighs.
Through the stiff canvas of her bee suit. Through the heavy fabric. The friction is a violent shockwave shooting straight through me.
I grind again. Harder. Rolling my hips in a deliberate circle.
She arches up into the pressure. A desperate, whimpering sound vibrates against my tongue. She chases the friction. Needs it.
I wrench my mouth away. Gasping for cold mountain air.
"Mine," I growl against her wet lips.
My hands drop from the wood. I grab the metal zipper at the collar of her canvas suit. Rip it down. The harsh screech of metal teeth separating cuts through the hum of the bees.
I drag the zipper all the way down to her waist. Grab the shoulders of the suit. Shove the stiff fabric down her arms. Trapping her elbows against her sides. Trapping her inside the protective gear.
Underneath, she wears a thin, worn gray tank top. No bra.
The cold mountain air hits her heated skin. The peaks of her breasts pebble instantly. Hard, tight points pushing visibly against the thin cotton.
The sight of those pale tits makes my vision blur with red-hot lust.
A single Russian hybrid bee lands on her exposed collarbone. It crawls slowly over her heated skin. It doesn’t sting. It just buzzes lazily, drinking the salt of her sweat.
I don’t swat it away. I just drop my head and press an open-mouthed kiss right next to the insect. The bee vibrates against my cheek. Docile. We’re a violent force of nature, and the hive simply accepts us as its own.
The bee crawls down the slope of her collarbone toward the hollow at the base of her throat.
I track its movement with my eyes. Then with my mouth.
I lower my head and press my open mouth against the same skin, the bee just inches from my lower lip.
My tongue drags slow over her pulse. The bee lifts, drifts, settles on my jaw.
I don't move. Neither does Susan. The two of us locked in perfect stillness, the hive humming, the warm sweet wax in the air, and her wet pulse hammering against my tongue. Her hands fist in the back of my shirt. She’s trying not to make a sound.
The bee crawls back to her collarbone, knowing which body is which.
I grab the hem of the gray tank top. Rip it upward.
The fabric bunches above her breasts. Exposing the pale weight of them. The dark pink nipples are tight, hard, and perfect.
I take the right one into my mouth.
She screams. A high, wild sound breaking into the quiet morning.
I suck hard. Pulling the sensitive flesh deep into the wet heat of my mouth. Swirling my tongue over the tight peak. Scraping my teeth against the hardened nub.
Her fingers dig frantically into my shoulders. Her nails bite through my shirt, scratching the skin underneath.
I drag my tongue in a slow circle around the dark, swollen peak before I take it back into my mouth.
I suck hard, pulling the nipple deep against the roof of my mouth.
The wet, obscene sound of my mouth on her flesh layers under the hum of the hive.
She moans, a high, broken sound. I scrape my teeth gently across the tight peak before releasing it.
A bead of saliva slicks her bare skin. The cold mountain air hits the wet circle on her flesh, and her whole body jerks at the contrast.