Chapter 14
WE ARE NOT DISCUSSING THE WET SPOT
MIKAELA
If I had even one functioning brain cell left, it would be screaming at me.
Instead, all remaining neurons have dissolved into a warm, golden puddle.
I’m still pressed against the rock, legs shaking, lungs trying to remember their job.
Sarven is braced over me, one hand planted on the wall by my head, the other still cupping my thigh. His glow has gone up at least three levels; this little pocket of tunnel looks like someone dragged a sunrise into it. And his eyes are fully crimson, pupils narrowed almost out of existence.
He isn’t moving.
He isn’t even breathing.
He’s vibrating. A low tremor runs through his entire frame, transferring straight into my body where we’re pressed together.
“Okay,” I whisper, my voice sounding wrecked. “That was…”
What, exactly? Extremely ill-advised? Extremely, obscenely good?
Sarven doesn’t answer. He doesn’t blink. He just stares at me with a terrifying intensity, his nostrils flaring wide as he inhales the scent of what just happened.
He looks like a starved wolf who just tasted blood and is trying to decide whether to devour the rest of the prey.
“Sarven?” I try again, softer.
He flinches.
His head snaps down. He looks at his hand, the one he just licked clean, as if it belongs to someone else.
“Taste,” he grinds out. It sounds like rocks breaking. The earbud pulses a few times before giving me a translation. “Taste… life.”
He leans in so suddenly, another delicious shiver echoes through me as he drops his head and presses his face into the curve of my neck, inhaling so hard the scale-tunic shifts upward toward the flow.
Then he rubs his jaw against mine. Hard. Hot skin scraping over my jaw, my neck, my shoulder. As if he’s coating me in his scent.
“Mine,” he growls against my throat. “Water… mine. Heat… mine.”
My heart hammers a frantic rhythm against my ribs. This isn’t the gentle spoon-carver. This is the predator who sat in the shadows for weeks, sharpening a blade and watching me with a hunger he finally let off the leash.
And God help me, I don’t want him to stop.
I tilt my head back, baring my throat, and his breath washes hot over my skin. His teeth graze over me… testing. Threatening.
“Sarven,” I gasp.
He freezes.
His whole body goes rigid, like he’s hit an electric fence.
He jerks back, putting a foot of distance between us so fast I almost fall over. He ends up slamming against the opposite wall of the tunnel, chest heaving, eyes wide and wild.
He looks… terrified.
“Bad,” he snarls, pointing a shaking claw at himself. “Too… much.”
He drags a claw down his face hard enough to leave white lines on his golden skin. Hard enough that just a little more, and I’m sure he’ll draw blood.
Panic shoots through me. I hop off the ledge to go to him, but he jerks back even more, causing me to stop moving entirely.
“Sarven?” I call, eyes searching his. “You okay?”
His lip curls into a snarl enough for me to see his fangs. “Not… okay.”
Those crimson eyes shift over me. Moving to my swollen lips, my disheveled tunic, the way I’m still leaning against the rock because my legs won’t hold me.
“Want… bite,” he confesses, my earbud pulsing as the words tear out of him. “Want… keep. Here. Now.”
He drives his claws into the stone wall, gouging deep grooves into the rock, enough that stone dust rains down over his knuckles.
“Must… stop.”
Warmth that isn’t just leftover arousal curls under my ribs. I push myself off the wall. My knees wobble, but I hold my ground.
“Hey,” I say quietly. “We’re good. I’m good.”
I reach out, then pause again. I think if I touch him right now, he might explode.
He stares at my hand. His light pulses, erratic and flashing like a warning beacon.
Then he closes his eyes. He sucks in a jagged breath, holds it, and forces it out.
He does it again. And again.
Slowly, the vibration in his frame eases. The wild light in his skin dims from blinding nova to active volcano.
He opens his eyes. The black pupils are back, though they’re still blown wide now.
“Hard,” he rasps. “Very… hard.”
“Yeah,” I agree, my voice trembling. “I know.”
I lower my hand, chest heaving in the new silence between us. And all I can think, stupidly, is that he carved me a spoon and then did that with his fingers. And I am so completely doomed.
Sarven flinches.
Just a tiny jerk of his head, ears flicking forward like he’s just heard a gunshot.
I blink. “What?”
His brow knits as he tilts his head, staring at me with sudden confusion.
“Mih-kay-lah,” he says slowly. “You… loud.”
My stomach does an unhelpful flip. “Loud?”
“In… here.” He taps his temple with a claw. “Spoon. Claws.”
Oh. Wait.
Oh no.
Heat rushes into my face so fast I feel dizzy. I lean back against the rock, blinking at him.
“You heard that?” I squeak.
“Feel,” he corrects, rubbing his chest. “Echo. Loud echo.”
Jacqui warned us the mindspace can bleed through. That it did for her. And now, exhausted and shaking and with my barriers completely obliterated by an orgasm, I’m…broadcasting?
He heard me thinking about his fingers.
This is horrifying.
And… a little bit thrilling?
I wet my lips. “You can feel me?”
I don’t just think the words. I let go, just a little, of the tight grip I’ve had on my own feelings. The warmth in my chest. The awe. The way I feel safer with him than anywhere else in the universe.
I picture that feeling, then I push it toward him.
Sarven sucks in a sharp breath.
His glow leaps, bright enough that the tunnel walls throw the light back at us.
He takes a step toward me, drawn in like a moth to a flame. The feral look is gone, replaced by wonder.
“Tor-vakh,” he whispers.
He steps in, crowding me gently back against the stone, dipping his head until his face is so close I’m breathing his air.
My gaze drops to his mouth. It’s right there. An inch.
I want to kiss him. I want to know if his mouth tastes as good as the rest of him smells.
I lean up.
He leans down.
His nose brushes mine. He inhales my breath.
But he doesn’t close the distance. He hovers there, trembling, his lips parting.
“Not…safe,” he whispers, frustration bleeding into his voice. “Mouth…wants bite. Wants eat.”
The tension drains out of me in a sudden rush. My own lips part on a soft, silent breath.
His pupils are still wide as he swallows hard, the movement rippling down his throat. He shuts his eyes briefly and inhales like a man dragging air into starved lungs.
“Water,” he rasps.
It takes a sluggish second for my brain to parse that.
Not my water. Not that kind of water.
The water. The mission. The contamination slowly threading through the spring. Tina and Lucy burning with fever and cramps. The clan.
The word hits like a bucket of cold slush.
I let out a shaky, uneven breath and push my heels into the floor, easing my spine more firmly against the stone to create a sliver of space between us.
“Yeah,” I whisper. “The water.”
He jerks his chin, then he pulls back, too.
“We go?” Sarven asks quietly.
I look up at him.
He’s wrestled himself back under control, as much as either of us can.
His shoulders are squared. His expression has slipped from raw and wrecked back into something closer to the hunter I first met out in the dust. The only signs of strain are the faint tremor in his hand as he adjusts the strap at his waist, and the way his pupils are still dominating his eyes.
“Yeah,” I say. “We go.”
We leave the relative safety of the niche as Sarven hoists me up the high ledge, settling me on the upper path before following. The passage curves. The sound of water shifts, growing louder and fuller. This isn’t the thin, sick trickle from the higher seep. This is deeper. Broader.
My skin prickles. From nerves, from the barely-there rope of sensation tied between my mind and his? I can’t tell.
“We’re close,” I murmur, more to myself than to him.
Behind me, Sarven makes a low sound that holds both agreement and warning.
“Water… big,” he says.
I square my shoulders.
Then I step forward into the misting, unnatural heat of the spring.