Chapter 11
Hallie
Idon’t remember the walk to the holosuite.
I remember pieces of it…Chief’s voice giving orders, Roxy’s hand on my back steering me toward a specific destination.
The night air was fresh. Maxon was a wall of heat at my side that I couldn’t stop reaching for. The world had narrowed to him and to the thing burning under my skin, the fire in my veins his bare hand started when I clasped it in the dark to save his life.
By the time the brothers got us to this private suite at the holosuite complex with the door sealed behind us, I’m shaking with it.
Maxon quickly disappeared.
The floor changed under my bare feet into wet grass.
The whole suite has changed from gray grids to a wild setting so real I truly feel that I’m off planet.
The fog rolls back and the walls are gone and I’m standing in a forest that looks straight out of Chronos.
It’s not Timbur’s jungle, not exactly…it’s wilder, older, a programmed dream of a forest with trees that vanish into a green-lit sky and two moons hanging low and a stream I can hear but not yet see.
Someone made this for us. I have a fractured thought that the family chose this, programmed it while I was busy keeping his hearts beating, and the tenderness of that almost levels me. They built us a place to do this.
I’m in a loose tunic I don’t remember changing into.
It falls to my thighs and I’m bare underneath.
My feet are bare on the cool grass. The fever rolls through me in waves.
I’m so ready to have sex with Maxon it’s embarrassing.
How can one single hand clasp do this to me?
My nipples are tight points and my pussy is wetter than wet.
I mean, I’ve been on edge all week, having to masturbate most nights, simply to fall asleep, thinking of Maxon in his bedroom, next to mine.
But this is different. This is flaming hot.
I could literally jump this male right now and impale myself on his thick erection and cry out with joy.
What the hells is wrong with me?
This is what the women told me about. The clasp goes both ways. I did this to myself when I chose him. And wow, I’d choose it again.
A branch cracks.
He comes through the trees.
And it isn’t the male who poured me traq this morning and let me cheat at Karrec.
This Maxon is a wild version of my soon-to-be-husband, something the fever built.
He’s bigger somehow, his fangs drop past his lip, his claws are longer and his chest heaves.
Every muscle in his enormous body strung tight.
He’s naked.
And he’s magnificent.
And he is, gods help me, fully hard, his luscious erection juts out from his body in a way that makes my mouth go dry.
His eyes find me across the clearing and they’re lit from within. Under the fangs and the fever it’s still Maxon, my Maxon, the one who saw the whole board and put himself in the only square that mattered, and he is looking at me like I am the only piece left on it.
He starts to speak.
The words aren’t words I know. They’re old…
older than the mining colony, older than the language the universal translator long ago implanted in my brain was built for.
It’s dense, rolling and archaic. I catch fragments.
Bind. Two into one. For all the rotations of a life.
A vow in a tongue his people have used for longer than humans have been off the original planet.
I don’t understand most of it and I don’t need to.
I understand the shape of it. This is Maxon’s version of a human wedding ceremony.
We’re getting married right now. He’s promising me forever in the language of his ancestors, and my eyes are stinging.
I stand still and patiently let him finish this formal ceremony because I would not interrupt this for anything in the Four Sectors.
He says one last word, and this one I understand. “Run.”
For half a breath I just blink at him. Run? Why would I run?
And then something in me lets go of its leash.
Because…of course I need to run. Every nerve I have suddenly screams at me to let go and move.
My whole body coils toward the trees, and it isn’t fear, it’s the oldest game there is and some buried animal part of me already knows the rules.
I need to make him work, make him earn this and he needs to chase.
And I will do everything in my power to make this hard for him.
This won’t be easy. He’s given me the head start required by this formal claiming. I can’t waste this time.
I run as fast as I can, rushing through the trees.
I’m small and barefoot and I have never been fast in my life. I am up against a powerful male built by the deep rock he works with. So, I use the only thing I have ever been good at.
Strategy.
I don’t run blind. I run the way I run a board, three moves ahead, watching the terrain resolve around me, reading the lines of attack.
The obvious path is downhill toward the stream and so I don’t take it, instead I cut left across the slope into the dense trees, because he’ll expect the water, everyone goes for the water.
I weave through the trunks where his bulk will slow him down.
Then I double my own trail, step where I stepped before, and break off at an angle through a thicket that’ll tear at him, but it lets me through.
Meanwhile, my feet are killing me because I’m doing all of this barefoot. I swear I’m stepping on every single godsdamn rock and stick in this simulation. This place is fake; couldn’t they have made it a little less real?
Behind me, a roar goes up that shakes the leaves from the branches.
My heart slams. He’s coming.
Oh hells.
Go. Go. Go.
I push faster, my mind spinning the board, and here’s the thing I keep almost laughing at even as the fever climbs my spine…
I’m trying to outthink the one person on this planet who thinks the way I do.
Maxon sees everything. He’s never lost. All the weaving and hiding I’m doing is probably for naught.
If this were a game across a board he would read me in four moves and trap me in the corner and name me Queen while he did it.
But on the other hand this isn’t a game across a board.
The fever has him and he probably isn’t calculating anymore, he’s pure drive and need to fuck me, no strategy in him at all.
And I realize, ducking under a low branch with my pulse roaring in my ears, that for once it’s me seeing the board and him who can’t be read.
Because you can predict a strategist. You cannot predict a male who has stopped thinking entirely and is simply, relentlessly, coming for you. Wanting to impregnate you immediately.
And my own body is betraying me the whole time because I desperately want that too, but I’ve got to make this hard for him.
Jeez. This is crazy. But good crazy.
Every stride the fever pulls lower and hotter in my body, and some traitor part of me is slowing, wants to be caught, wants to stop running and let him put his hands on me. I have to fight that as hard as I’m fighting the terrain.
I make it to the stream after all, not because it was the smart move but because the slope finally won.
I splash in and wade upstream against the current, quiet as I can, because water doesn’t hold a trail.
Then I climb out on a flat rock, double back along the bank, slip into a stand of ferns and go still, pressing my hand over my own mouth, chest heaving.
For a moment, nothing. Just the rush of the stream and my own thundering pulse.
I almost believe I’ve done it. Has he actually lost me?
And then the ferns explode and he’s there, bursting through them like the whole forest gave way. I can’t help the shriek that flies out of my mouth. I bolt and don’t make it two steps before an arm like a tree limb closes around my waist and takes me down.
Maxon is so freaking big. How did I forget how big he is? He turns us as we fall. Even now, even gone to the fever, he twists so that he hits the ground and not me. I land on the broad cradle of his body and the grass instead of the dirt. His fevered erection presses against my stomach.
Then he rolls me under him and his mouth comes down on mine.
It’s his first kiss. Our first kiss.
This is not the careful male who sat across the table from me each day this last week.
This kiss is a claiming all its own, fangs and tongue.
His growls rumble through me, causing my clit to throb.
Logical thoughts dissolve like sweetener in traq.
I’m drowning. I want to drown. Every part of me is screaming to just let go and let him have me.
Which is exactly when the last clear-thinking sliver of me remembers the rules.
Make it hard, Hallie. The mark is a gift.
So even drowning, even fevered, I pick my spot. I turn my head and sink my teeth into the thick muscle where his neck meets his shoulder and bite down with everything I have.
He throws his head back and roars, and it isn’t pain in it at all. It’s triumph. “Mine,” he snarls, looking down at me with my mark on him, blood on his throat and the most undone joy I have ever seen on a male’s face.
“Yours,” I gasp back, and mean it down to the floor of me.
And then his claws are on the fabric of the tunic and it’s gone, torn away, and I’m fully naked under him in the green light.
Oh, but I’m not done. The rules are still in me, somewhere under the fever, and the wild thing he woke in me wants to run again, wants this male to earn the right to have me.
So I continue to fight.
I buck under him and get a hand free and punch him, hard, across that beautiful fevered face.
I scream at him, wordless and furious, trying to get away.
Maybe I can get on my knees and run again.
Dammit, he’s so strong. I claw, kick and wrench myself out from under his weight and scramble up onto my knees in the dirt.
I’m super proud of my accomplishment.
Then he lunges. But I’m faster than he expects.
I really do get onto my feet and get two strides away and then he’s on me again, an arm hooking around my middle.
We go down together and roll, a tangle of his huge body and my flailing one, over and over through the wet grass.
I’m shrieking and hitting at the wall of his chest and he’s growling, taking it, loving it, his eyes blazing like I’ve handed him a gift.
Uh oh. We roll right into the stream.
The cold shocks the breath out of me. For a second I’m under, churning, hair in my face. Then his fist closes around my ankle and he hauls me back, dragging me up the bank on my belly through the mud.
I’m naked, soaked and filthy but still fighting him, twisting onto my back to kick at him.
He catches one foot. Then the other. And he is so much bigger than me, so much stronger, that when he finally decides he’s done playing it’s like a door swinging shut.
He pins both my wrists over my head in one enormous hand, drops his weight down between my thighs, and holds me to the earth.
He is so sexy I’m going to die from the want. My chest heaves and my whole body screams with how badly I need him pounding inside of me.
“Mine,” he growls, low and final, feral fangs bared, water dripping off him onto my skin.
And I stop fighting.
Because I’m done. I’m so turned on I can’t see straight, every nerve in my body lit from the chase, the cold water and the weight of him holding me down in the mud.
My thighs fall open.
I tip my chin up.
And when his mouth comes down on mine this time I kiss him back with everything I have, biting at his lip, arching up into him, past pride, past strategy, past every wall I ever built.
“Maxon.” It comes out of me ragged, begging, nothing left to guard. “Please. Please, now, I need you, I can’t—”
He doesn’t make me ask twice.
He positions the crown of his leaking erection at my entrance.
I feel it notched there, where I’m sopping wet and ready.
He surges into me in one long stroke and I cry out…
not pain, I’m not new to this, but the sheer overwhelming size and heat of him.
He’s certainly the biggest and thickest I’ve ever had.
And wow, it really does make a difference.
I feel him everywhere.
He fucks me hard, not stopping to check on me, fully in the throes of a primal need he cannot fight. And I’m there for all of it. I hold on tight and experience the best moment of my life. A huge, scary orgasm is building and he hasn’t even touched my clit. What magic is this?
“Hallie.” He literally roars my name. “My Hallie,” he cries out. “My Queen. I love you.”
“I love you too,” I sob, arching up to meet him, holding nothing back, no wall, no math, no corner to retreat to. “I love you.”
And that’s when the I feel the orgasm starting. “I’m going to…don’t stop.” Then it rushes through me, so intense I scream out as it moves along my thighs and across my stomach, clamping down in my pussy.
Maxon stills above me and throws his head back, letting out another thunderous roar.
I watch the majesty of this male coming undone above me.
I can literally feel the pulse of his large cock as it throbs inside of me as he comes.
I can feel the heat of his seed as it jets inside of me again and again.
There’s so much I swear it must be leaking along the inside of my thighs.
Oh wow.
We both come down slowly.
The forest hums around us, the stream still rushing, the two false moons still hanging in the green-lit dark. He’s collapsed half beside me and half over me, taking his weight on one massive forearm so he doesn’t crush me, his breath sawing against my hair.
I have never in my life felt so thoroughly, completely undone. Or so safe.
Here I am, at the end of the longest day of my life, with a male who took a blast to the chest for me and a found family that programmed me a forest, I am not alone, and I am never going to be alone again.
Maxon stirs and lifts his head. His eyes have cleared, the fever is spent this is just him now, my Maxon.
He moves one big hand, slow, and spreads his clawed palm flat and gentle across my lower belly.
“Mine, you’re both mine,” he murmurs, and lets out a long, satisfied sigh, his thumb moving once over my skin.
It takes me a second.
And then I understand exactly what he’s already scenting, what’s already begun, what I said yes to over a cup of traq this morning.
We’ve started a family.
“Mine,” I agree.