Chapter Fifteen #2
“I’m fine. I’m just...” I searched for the word. “Full. Of decisions and responsibilities and the constant, low-level terror that I’m going to get everyone killed.”
“You’re not going to get everyone killed.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I know you.” He said it simply, the way he said most things.
As if the words were obvious and he was merely pointing out what the rest of the world had somehow missed.
“And I know that the woman who just talked a traumatised soldier out of his guilt spiral is not the woman who gets people killed. She’s the one who keeps them alive. ”
The warmth of his words settled into me like sunlight into soil.
I pushed off the door and crossed the room to where he sat, and when I reached him I didn’t sit beside him.
I stood between his knees and put my hands on his shoulders, looking down into those brown eyes that had been watching me with steady, patient, unwavering attention since the moment I’d walked in.
His hands came to my hips automatically. His thumbs traced small circles through the fabric of my shirt and the touch sent sparks down my spine that had nothing to do with magic and everything to do with the man.
“I asked you something earlier,” I said.
His brow creased, then cleared. “Whether you were neglecting me?”
“The answer was no. But I’ve been thinking about it since, and I realised something.” I ran my fingers along the line of his jaw. The stubble there was rough against my fingertips. “I’ve been so busy trying to hold everything together that I forgot the most important part.”
“What part?”
“The part where I stop holding everything and just hold you.”
Something changed in his eyes. The steady patience was still there, the rock-solid foundation that had never once wavered since the day I’d met him.
But underneath it, rising like heat from sun-warmed stone, was something hungrier.
Something that the bear usually kept banked and controlled but that I could see now, burning behind the calm.
He pulled me closer. Not roughly. Tank was never rough unless I asked him to be.
But with a deliberateness that left no room for misunderstanding, his hands sliding from my hips to the small of my back, gathering me against him until I was practically in his lap and the heat of his body was seeping through every layer of clothing between us.
“You don’t have to hold me,” he said, his voice lower than it had been a moment ago. “But I wouldn’t object.”
I kissed him.
Not the gentle, reassuring kisses we’d been stealing between crises.
This was the kind of kiss that had been building since the training ring, since the meeting, since the moment in the corridor when he’d looked at me with those steady eyes and I’d felt the bond between us pulse with something that demanded attention.
His mouth opened under mine and I sank into it, into him, into everything that was the man I loved.
He made a low sound against my lips that was half man and half bear, and it sent a shiver of anticipation down my spine.
His hands moved. Up my back, fingers spreading wide, pulling me impossibly closer. I shifted in his lap and felt the evidence of exactly how not-calm the bear was pressed against me, and the friction sent a bolt of heat through my core that made me gasp into his mouth.
“Door locked?” he murmured against my lips.
“I locked it when I came in.”
The sound he made was approval and desire rolled into one, and then he was standing, lifting me with him like I weighed nothing, and the world tilted as he turned and laid me on the bed with a care that contradicted the hunger I could feel building in every line of his body.
He held himself above me, arms braced on either side of my head.
The look on his face was the one that undid me every time.
Patient. Focused. Like I was the only thing in the world worth paying attention to, and he intended to pay very close attention indeed.
“We leave in the morning,” I said.
“I know.”
“This might be the last chance we have for a while.”
“Then we should make it count.” His thumb traced my cheekbone, a touch so light it barely registered, and the contrast between that gentleness and the weight of his body above mine made something tighten low in my stomach. “Tell me what you want.”
“You. Just you. No war, no courts, no decisions. Just this.”
He lowered his mouth to my throat and I stopped thinking about anything at all.
Tank kissed like he did everything else.
Deliberately. Thoroughly. With the patience of a man who understood that the best things required time and attention and the willingness to linger in places that mattered.
His lips found the hollow beneath my ear and I arched into him, my hands finding the hem of his shirt and pulling.
He helped, sitting back just enough to drag the fabric over his head, and the sight of him in the fading afternoon light made my mouth go dry.
He was enormous. I knew that. I’d known it since the first day at the garage when he’d ducked through a doorway that was built for normal-sized humans.
But knowing it and seeing it, here, now, with the golden light painting shadows across the planes of his chest and the Spring Court magic humming faintly beneath his skin, were different things entirely.
I sat up and pressed my mouth to his collarbone.
Felt the rumble of the bear beneath his skin, a vibration that resonated through my lips.
His hand cupped the back of my head, fingers threading through my hair, and he held me there while I mapped the territory of his chest with my tongue.
The taste of his skin was salt and warmth and something green, like crushed leaves, the Spring magic leaving its signature even here.
“Alyssa.” My name in his mouth was a prayer and a warning. The patience was fraying. I could feel it in the tension of his muscles, the quickening of his breath, the way his hand tightened in my hair when I found a spot that made his control slip.
I pulled back and looked up at him. “Stop being patient.”
His eyes darkened. The bear surfaced, not dangerously, not the berserker that lived in the deep places of his nature, but the simpler, more immediate beast that wanted what it wanted and was tired of waiting for permission.
He took my shirt off. Slower than I would have liked, his fingers grazing my skin with every inch of fabric he removed, leaving trails of heat that the Spring magic amplified until my whole body was humming.
My trousers followed. Then everything else, piece by piece, until there was nothing between us but air and the growing certainty that if he didn’t touch me properly in the next thirty seconds I was going to lose my mind.
He must have felt it through the bond because his mouth curved, just slightly, and then his hand was between my thighs and his fingers were sliding through the wetness there with an agonising slowness that made me want to scream.
“Tank.”
“I’m here.”
“I know you’re here, I need you to be here faster.”
The laugh that came out of him was low and warm and it vibrated through every point of contact between our bodies.
He shifted down, pressing his mouth to my stomach, my hip, the inside of my thigh.
His breath was hot against my skin and I could feel the bear’s hunger in every controlled movement, the effort it took to maintain the deliberate pace when every instinct was telling him to take.
When his mouth found my core I stopped breathing.
He was thorough. God, he was thorough. His tongue worked with the same steady, focused attention he brought to everything, finding the rhythm that made my back arch and my hands fist in the sheets and then staying there, relentless, refusing to rush even when my hips were rocking against him and the sounds coming out of my mouth were not words in any language.
The Spring magic responded. Warmth spread through the mattress beneath me, golden and alive, the court’s magic recognising what was happening between its king and its queen and pouring itself into the space between us.
It amplified everything. Every touch. Every sensation.
The pleasure building in my core became a wave, gathering force with every stroke of his tongue, and when it broke I came apart with his name on my lips and his hands gripping my thighs as the Spring magic blazed through both of us in a wave of golden light.
He gave me approximately four seconds to recover before he was above me again, his body a wall of heat and muscle and barely contained need. I reached down between us, wrapped my hand around him, and watched the patience shatter completely.
Tank’s forehead dropped to mine. His breath coming in short, ragged bursts.
When I guided him to me and he pushed inside, the sound he made was somewhere between a groan and a growl, the bear’s voice bleeding through the man’s, and the stretch and the fullness of him sent sparks cascading through every nerve I possessed.
But then he started to move. Slow at first. Deeper than I knew possible.
Each thrust measured and intentional. Then faster as his control slowly started to slip away.
The bond between us blazed open. I could feel everything he was feeling and the feedback loop of shared pleasure built into something that neither of us could contain.
I wrapped my legs around his waist, pulling him deeper as he buried his face in my neck and said my name like it was the only word he knew.
The Spring magic surged again, golden warmth flooding through us both, and when I came for the second time he followed me over the edge with a sound that shook the bed and probably carried through at least two walls.
I didn’t care. How could I when all that mattered was the man who held me in his arms?
Tomorrow morning we’d be leaving at first light, but right now I didn’t want to think of that. I just needed one night to pretend I was just a girl surrounded by men who loved me and didn’t have the fate of a realm resting on her shoulders.