Chapter 22 #3
For the first time since I’ve known him, Nash Cross looks a little unsteady.
Good.
I like him that way.
He lifts my hand between us and slides the ring onto my finger. It fits, which is either a cosmic joke or proof that Echo has been involved in this longer than anyone should be comfortable with.
There’s something preternatural about that damned raccoon.
The diamond catches the city lights from the window and throws them back at us in small fractured sparks.
Nash bends and kisses my knuckles. Once. Twice.
Then the inside of my wrist.
My pulse jumps under his mouth.
“I love you,” he says against my skin.
“I know.”
His eyes flick up.
I shrug with one shoulder because the other is useless and wrapped and currently reminding me that fighting a witch with a hex blade was a bad life choice. “You’ve been kind of obvious.”
His mouth curves. “Have I?”
“Painfully.”
“Good.”
Then he kisses the center of my palm, and the teasing in me falls quiet.
The bond hums.
Not loud. Not demanding. Not dragging me anywhere.
Just there.
A living thread between us. Warm and steady and terrifyingly certain.
I spent years thinking a bond would feel like a cage closing in on me. Like a lock sliding into place. Like losing the last piece of myself I had fought so hard to keep.
But this doesn’t feel like that at all.
It feels like a door opening.
It feels like Nash’s mouth on my wrist and his hand careful at my injured shoulder and the weight of his gaze asking instead of assuming.
It feels like choice.
Mine.
And it feels like the thing protecting me rather than exposing me to heartache. It feels good to let myself be protected at last. Especially by someone like Nash Cross.
I cup his face with my good hand and kiss him again.
This time, there is nothing slow about it.
He groans into my mouth, and the sound lights me up from the inside. His hands move over me with careful hunger, one at my waist, the other braced along my back where he can hold me without hurting my shoulder. He knows exactly where I’m injured. Exactly where to be gentle.
Which only makes the rest of him feel more dangerous.
I push at his shirt. “Off.”
He obeys fast enough that I almost laugh.
Almost.
Then his shirt is gone, and I’m staring at a whole lot of bare Nash. Warm skin, hard muscle, bruises already fading from Ramsey’s claws, and the dark marks at his throat where he came way too close to dying today.
Something inside me goes sharp.
I touch the bruising with trembling fingers.
His breath catches.
“I’m okay,” he says.
“You’d better stay that way.”
“Is that an order?”
“Yes.”
His smile turns wicked. “Yes, ma’am. Any other orders you want to give me?”
“You’d better already understand the assignment,” I say.
He grins. “Oh, I understand perfectly.”
He runs his hand over the part of me that aches for him most. Then he stops. Like a fucking tease. And because he’s an asshole, because he knows exactly what that does to me, because apparently my future husband has a death wish and excellent instincts, I kiss him hard enough to shut both of us up.
He stands with me in his arms; one smooth motion that makes me gasp and clutch at his shoulders. My legs lock around his waist before I decide to put them there.
His hands flex under my ass as he walks, and my breath catches at the pleasure of it.
Echo makes a sharp chitter from somewhere behind us.
“Absolutely not,” I call over Nash’s shoulder. “Stay out here.”
Another offended chirp.
Nash pauses long enough to kick the bedroom door shut.
The lock clicks.
“Good call,” I say.
“I’m a strategic thinker.”
I smirk. “Prove it.”
That wipes the amusement off his face.
He lays me on the bed like I’m something precious, which is annoying because I am a weapon and a nightmare and the woman who tore Ramsey’s throat open this morning.
But then Nash crawls over me with his eyes gone black and reverent, and I decide I can allow precious this once.
Temporarily.
He braces himself above me, careful not to put weight on my shoulder. “Tell me if anything hurts.”
“Nothing hurts.”
“Mia.”
I roll my eyes. “Fine. I’ll tell you.”
“Good.”
“Bossy.”
“Careful,” he says, brushing his mouth over mine. “There’s a difference.”
I should have a smartass response. I’m sure one exists. But then he kisses down my throat, avoiding the bruises and scrapes, and all my thoughts abandon me like cowards.
His hand slides under my shirt.
Slow.
Warm.
Possessive in a way that doesn’t feel like ownership. It feels like wonder.
Like he can’t quite believe he gets to touch me.
That does something terrible to my heart.
“Nash.”
“I know,” he says, though I haven’t said anything useful.
He lifts the strap of my sling carefully, guiding it over my head and then easing it around the injured shoulder with such focused patience that my throat tightens. The way he looks at me, the gentleness, the care…it makes my heart contract.
“You are inconvenient,” I tell him.
He pauses, my shirt halfway off. “Because I’m being careful?”
“Because you make me want to let you.”
His expression goes still.
There it is. The truth sitting between us, soft and dangerous.
Then he kisses me again, and I let him take the shirt off.
His gaze drops.
The air changes.
I’m lying in only my bra and leggings. Nash looks at me like he’s been given a kingdom.
I reach behind myself with my good hand, fumble with the clasp of my bra, and hiss when my shoulder pulls.
Nash catches my wrist gently.
“Let me.”
I don’t argue.
He takes his time with the clasp, one-handed, maddeningly competent. The bra loosens, and he eases it away, his gaze locked on mine until I want to shake him.
“You can look,” I tell him.
His mouth tilts. “I am looking.”
“At my face.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because I like watching you realize you’re safe with me.”
My heart trips over itself.
“That was way too romantic,” I mutter.
“Want me to say something filthy instead?”
“Yes, actually.”
His gaze finally drops to my breasts.
His expression goes hot enough to burn the room down.
“I want my mouth on every inch of you,” he says. “I want to find every sound you try not to make and earn it anyway. I want you so wet and desperate for me that you forget every reason you ever thought this was a bad idea.”
My entire body clenches.
“Oh,” I say.
He smiles like he knows exactly what he just did. “Better?”
“Moderately.”
“Liar.”
Then his mouth closes over my nipple, and I stop having opinions.
Or words.
Or bones.
His tongue moves slowly at first, then harder when I arch into him.
He learns me with the same ruthless attention he gives everything else, except now that attention is focused on my body, and I am not built to survive this.
His hand cups my other breast, thumb dragging over my nipple until pleasure sparks low in my belly.
I grab his hair with my good hand.
He groans.
The sound vibrates through me.
Through the bond.
Goddess, the bond.
It opens wider with every touch, every breath, every little sound he pulls out of me.
I can feel him. Not his thoughts exactly, but the shape of him.
His hunger. His restraint. The sharp edge of his need where he’s holding himself back because I’m hurt and because he is Nash and because he would rather suffer than take more than I offer.
I hate him a little for being this good.
And by that, I mean, I love him more for it.
His mouth moves lower, kissing over my ribs, my stomach, the soft skin above the waistband of my leggings.
I tense before I can stop myself.
He stills instantly.
“Don’t stop,” I say.
“I wasn’t stopping.” His mouth brushes my hip. “I was listening.”
“That is extremely inconvenient.”
“Mm.” He hooks his fingers into my waistband. “I’ve been told that about myself.”
He looks up at me, waiting.
I lift my hips.
That’s all the answer he needs.
He peels my leggings down slowly, taking my underwear with them, and tosses both somewhere into the dark. Then he’s between my thighs, broad shoulders spreading me open, and every clever thought I’ve ever had leaves the building.
“Nash.”
His hands slide under my thighs. “I’ve got you.”
I believe him.
That is the most terrifying part.
I believe him when he says it. I believe the hands holding me open will never become a trap. I believe the mouth kissing the inside of my thigh will never use my wanting against me. I believe this male could destroy me and won’t.
Not because he can’t.
Because he chooses not to.
His mouth finds me.
My head drops back into the pillow. “Fuck.”
He laughs softly against me, the bastard, and then does it again.
Slower.
More deliberate.
A hot, wicked drag of his tongue that makes my hand fist in the sheets. He learns what makes me gasp, what makes my hips lift, what makes my wolf push close to the surface with a low, possessive growl.
The bond flares.
Nash’s answering growl rolls through the room.
He likes it.
Of course he does.
He works me with his mouth until I’m shaking, until the city outside the window disappears, until there is nothing but his tongue and his hands and the unbearable steadiness of him through the bond. Every time I get close, he slows down just enough to keep me on the edge.
“Nash,” I snap, breathless and furious. “Do not make me kill you on the night you proposed.”
He lifts his head. His mouth is wet. His eyes are black.
“You’re beautiful when you threaten me.”
“I’m serious.”
“So am I.”
Then he slides two fingers into me.
My back arches off the bed.
He groans like he feels it too. Maybe he does. Maybe the bond is open enough now that pleasure moves both ways, because his composure cracks at the exact same moment mine does.
“There,” he says, voice rough. “That’s it.”
I hate how much I like being talked to like that.
I hate how much he knows it.
He lowers his mouth again, fingers moving in a slow, devastating rhythm, tongue working over me until the pressure inside me turns bright and sharp and impossible to hold.
I come with his name in my mouth and my hand twisted in his hair, my body bowing, my wolf surging forward with a satisfaction so fierce it almost scares me.