Chapter Thirteen #2
He lays me out, not gentle but hungry and worshipful, as if I’m both a feast and a goddess. His hands roam, memorizing every inch, and I arch up, desperate for more.
“Fuck, Briana. Look at you. So fucking perfect. You have no idea what you do to me.” His voice is wrecked, desperate, as he drags his mouth down my body.
He kisses his mark on my shoulder, tongue flicking over it, then bites just hard enough to make me gasp.
“Every mark on you is mine,” he growls, his breath hot against my skin. “You’re so beautiful it hurts.” His mouth travels lower, teeth scraping, lips claiming, and I can feel how badly he wants to lose control.
“You are everything. You survived. You’re fucking perfect.” His mouth is everywhere, over my breasts, my stomach, down between my thighs. “You’re so wet for me, sweetheart... Gods, I need to taste you. Let me hear you. I want every sound you make.”
His hands hover, trembling, until I guide him lower. The power is mine, but he worships it, and me, with every filthy, reverent word. When his mouth finds my center, I cry out, shameless, and he moans against my skin.
“That’s it, love. Give it to me. Let me ruin you.”
He growls against my pussy as his tongue dances over my distended clit, and pleasure surges through me.
“You are mine because you choose me. And I will never stop choosing you. Never.”
My fingers tighten in his hair, and I pull him closer, needing his mouth, his praise, his darkness, everything he is.
“And I am yours. I need you. I love you. All of me belongs to you.”
The bond between us unfurls, dark and wild, pulsing with hunger and love. It feels like drowning and being saved at once.
Pleasure builds so fast it burns. I sob his name, writhing under his mouth, and he doesn’t let up. He’s greedy for every sound, every shudder.
“You taste so fucking good. Let me see you fall apart for me, Briana. That’s it, good girl.”
Knox’s praise is endless, ragged, and worshipful. His voice is low and reverent, but filthy too, like he can’t help himself.
“That’s it, love. Give me everything. I want to hear you break for me. Let me feel you come for me. Fuck, you’re perfect when you lose control.”
But I need him, all of him. I drag him up to me, desperate, and the look in his eyes is pure wild devotion.
“Please, Knox. I need you. Now.”
He curses, voice wrecked, and lines himself up, body trembling with restraint. The first push is hot, slick, and overwhelming. He slides deep inside me with a raw groan.
“So fucking tight. You feel incredible, Briana. All mine.”
He thrusts hard and fast, his rhythm rough with need, but every movement binds me tighter.
His hands are everywhere, gripping my hips, tangled in my hair, pinning me open so I can take all of him.
The pleasure is sharp, burning, and I cling to him, needing him deeper, closer, until there’s nothing but us.
He talks through every thrust, dirty, loving words, losing himself. “That’s it, sweetheart. Take me. Let me in. You want this, need this, need me. Say it. Tell me you’re mine.”
I give him everything, my body, my voice, and my heart. I tell him I’m his, that I love him, that I need him, and he answers with every brutal, worshipful stroke until I break apart, and he follows, cursing my name, pouring every dark, desperate, adoring thing he feels into me.
It’s hot and fast, yes, but it binds us, need and love tangled so tightly I can’t tell them apart. I don’t want to, not when he’s inside me, not when I am his, and he is mine.
His eyes lift to mine, black and reverent, the beast and the man both laid bare for me. He is wild and mine. I am adored and claimed, and I am not afraid.
I cradle his cheek, tracing the line of his jaw with trembling fingers.
“Hi,” I whisper, voice raw with everything I feel—love, need, and awe all mixed.
The beast stills, and then Knox presses a kiss into my palm, eyes shining with gratitude and adoration, as if I am his salvation. Maybe I am. Maybe he is too.
I fall asleep with my head on his chest and his arm around my waist, and no nightmares come. Or maybe they do, and they find a Minotaur guarding the door.
****
When I wake again, the room is full of late afternoon light. Knox is awake beneath me, one hand moving slowly over my back. Not to wake me. Not to take. Just because he can touch me now, and I let him.
I press my lips to the mark I left on his shoulder, and he shudders.
I smile against his skin. “Sensitive?”
“With you, always.” There’s no shame in his voice.
I lift my head. “What happens now?”
He brushes hair from my face. “Whatever you choose.”
“That’s a dangerous amount of power to give me.”
“It was always yours.”
My chest aches, and I think of The Marrow House burning. Of the collar hissing in the tray. Of the black room that no longer exists. Of Sera and the fox girl and the others breathing free air. “I want to stay at The Gin Room,” I say.
Knox’s face stills.
“I want to help the rescued humans. Not as a symbol, a victim, or whatever inspirational bullshit Ari will absolutely put on a mug someday. I want to help because I know what the first night after feels like.”
His thumb moves over my cheek. “Okay.”
“I want darker curtains.”
“Done.”
“I want self-defense training.”
His eyes darken. “Done.”
“With you.”
A slow, dangerous warmth moves through the bond. “Absolutely.”
“And I want my own room.”
The warmth doesn’t vanish as I expect, it steadies.
“Of course.”
“But I also want a drawer here.”
His expression breaks into a half-smile. “You can have all of them.”
“One drawer, Knox. Growth. Boundaries.”
His mouth smiles. “One drawer.”
“And maybe half the bed sometimes.”
“All the bed.”
“You are bad at boundaries.”
“I am learning.”
I laugh, and he freezes beneath me, like the sound still has the power to ruin him. Maybe it does.
****
A week later, the new curtains in my apartment are thick and dark.
Sera comes by The Gin Room with the fox girl, whose name is Lin, and both of them sit with me in the quiet before opening. We don’t talk about everything. Not yet. We drink tea, Ari brings pastries, and Korvin brings protein bars. Lin eats three and asks if Cruz is always that loud.
“Yes,” I say.
Cruz, from across the bar, yells, “I heard that.”
“Exactly,” Lin says, but she smiles when she says it. Small and real.
Aldron clears space in the building next door for survivors who don’t want to leave New York but can’t go home yet.
Akasha and Krishka weave wards into the walls.
Malichai sends money and pretends it’s not an act of kindness.
Ari names the project Second Door because she says everyone deserves another way out.
I pretend not to cry, badly.
And at night, Knox trains me in the cage.
Not like I am breakable, and not like I am helpless.
He teaches me where to strike, how to stand, how to breathe through panic, and move anyway.
Sometimes he touches my wrist to correct my angle.
Sometimes his hands settle at my waist to fix my stance.
Every time, he asks with his eyes first.
And every time, I choose.
Sometimes, after training, we don’t make it upstairs before I drag him into the shadowed hallway and kiss him until he growls my name like a warning.
Sometimes, I need space, and he gives it.
Sometimes, I wake in my apartment shaking, and he comes when I call.
But tonight, The Gin Room is open and alive around us.
Music pulses through the floor. Monsters laugh beneath amber lights. Humans dance too close to danger and call it fun. Behind the bar, I stack clean glasses while Ari argues with Cruz about cocktail names and Akasha threatens to hex Korvin if he keeps reorganizing her herbs.
Knox stands in the hallway, watching the room and watching me, not like a victim ready to break, but like a woman who walked into the dark and came back carrying fire.
I set down the glass in my hand and cross the room. I stop in front of him, rise on my toes, and kiss him in front of everyone. The bar goes quiet for half a second.
Then Ari cheers.
Cruz groans. “Finally.”
Knox’s hands settle on my waist, and the bond hums warm beneath my skin. I pull back just enough to look at him. His eyes are dark and hungry but soft in the secret way only I get to see.
“Ready to go home?” he asks.
I think of his apartment and his bed. The people we saved and the monsters who became family. The mark beneath my sweater and the beast who waits for my choice.
Home used to be a word monsters twisted into a threat, but they were wrong. Home is not a cage. Home is not a collar. Home is not a place where fear teaches you to kneel.
Home is a choice. A door you open yourself. A monster who stands beside you and waits for your hand.
I slide my fingers through Knox’s. “Yes,” I say.
And this time, when I walk into the dark with my mate at my side, I am not leaving pieces of myself behind. I am taking them with me.