Chapter 27 #3
“What’s stopping you?” My words slur a little, like I’m drunk. Hayden climbs up my body so his mouth can brush my ear.
“Nothing,” he whispers. “Absolutely nothing.”
So swift and sudden I’m dizzy again, arousal shoots through me. My hands go to his belt and fly, and surprisingly fast for a human, I have his pants undone.
“Rose…I…” But Hayden’s breathing so hard, looking so desperate, his protests are falling weak.
I push down his pants. When I ease him out of his boxers, he’s bigger than I remember. Intimidating. It only makes it better, more thrilling. My mouth goes dry, and anticipation swells in me, pulsing and boiling like an ocean to splash through me, curling at the seat of my hips.
“Come closer,” I beg.
“Rose…” Hayden’s eyes are squeezed shut and he’s trembling, not moving. So I push up against the mattress with the flat of my feet for better leverage and arch against him.
I feel him against me, perfectly, exquisitely nestled right against me.
“Fuck. Can you—” Hayden trembles more violently against me, his brows wrenching in agony. But he still doesn’t move away.
I move, though. It feels incredible. And my body’s guiding me, chasing doggedly after this exquisite feeling I’m sharing with Hayden.
I rock up my hips up, sliding against him with long, dedicated rolls of my hips.
Each time, he starts to press back against me a little more and more, the furrow of his brow getting deeper, more pained.
I feel his hands twist in the linens on either side of my head, the ripping sound louder this time.
Hayden’s eyes fly open. Fury, wrath, agony pass over his eyes. His mouth is hanging open as he looks at me, and his fangs have never looked so huge. We’re still poised, balanced on the dangerous precipice of something I’ve wanted for not just this life but all my lives.
Because surely, surely it has never been this good.
I reach up and touch one of his fangs. Hayden lets out a harsh breath.
“Do they ache?” I whisper.
“Yeah,” he grates out. “But I ache everywhere right now. Hurts like hell.”
The insane need in his voice jolts through me. Before I realize what I’m doing, I bear down on him.
Immediately, Hayden disappears.
I sit up in the bed, the whiplash so intense the world feels dreamlike, surreal. I find Hayden against the far wall, fully dressed again, panting raggedly. There’s a hole in the wall by his head, and he’s holding a bent wall sconce in one hand.
“No,” he says hoarsely. He drops the sconce and drags a hand through his hair, wild-eyed. “We can’t. Not until I have a little more control. It’s been—” He cuts himself off with a sharp shake of his head. “I can’t risk it. I won’t.”
“I trust you,” I say, though my voice wobbles. “Hayden—”
“You don’t understand,” he snaps, then immediately softens. “If I lose it for even a second, I could hurt you.” He looks at me like the thought alone terrifies him.
Everything in me goes liquid and hot. I lick my lips, shaking. I swing my legs over the side of the bed, heart hammering, and meet his gaze.
“I know you won’t hurt me, Hayden. I know it.”
His breath stutters. His eyes rake over me, dark and hungry, but his body stays rigid, pinned in place by sheer will.
“Please, Hayden,” I say, barely above a whisper. “I want this. I want you.”
Hayden shuts his eyes for a beat, jaw clenched, like he’s holding himself together by force alone. When he opens them again, the restraint is still there, but it’s cracked, splintered.
“Rose,” he says, rough and warning. “If I say yes…I can’t touch you. Not this time. It’s gotta be just you in control.” His breath shudders. His hands curl into fists at his sides, knuckles whitening.
Something inside me sparks, fierce and triumphant and aching. “Okay,” I murmur. “I like that. I think I’d like that a lot.”
His eyes burn into mine, dark with need and surrender.
“Come here, Hayden,” I say.
Slowly, hesitantly, he walks back toward me on the bed.
When he’s within reach, I undress him until he’s as bare as I am.
He pulls the dress from my arms and crawls onto the bed, sitting up and leaning back against the headboard.
He threads his hands through the space between the carved flowers in the wood.
“I want to touch you. I always want to touch you, you know that,” Hayden rasps. “But right now, this is safest for you.”
I want to argue that I trust him. That I want his hands on me while we do this for the first time.
But I remember how fine the dust was on his palm after he crushed the rock.
How, as we were leaving the graveyard together, I looked back and saw that my tombstone had a new, deep crack in it, splitting down the middle.
Just from a twitch of his fingers.
“Okay,” I agree, and he looks relieved I won’t argue. I climb to him, watch his throat jerk on a hard swallow as I straddle his legs. When I settle down against him, his eyelids flicker.
“I love you, Rose,” he breathes, and it’s so overwhelming, so perfect and beautiful, I surge forward, kissing him deeply as I drop my hips down.