Chapter 18
CHAPTER
EIGHTEEN
Things were different when they returned to the Battery, and it wasn’t just because he’d never felt happiness before now.
Cecilia’s arms squeezed tightly around his middle as he guided the bike through the hidden garage door.
Almost as soon as they left the restaurant, she’d placed her helmeted head on his shoulder and leaned her weight into him, trusting Sloane to keep her safe on the road.
Whatever tension lingered in her seemed to have evaporated, leaving her disturbingly at ease.
He’d never been touched so much in his life. Outside of torture, of course.
Sloane hadn’t been able to suck in a full breath since they left. He’d barely been able to focus on anything other than wherever their bodies brushed. A strange sort of static filled his mind whenever they touched, and when she took his hand…
Desire, he discovered, felt a lot like pain.
It was sharp and bright and relentless. It consumed him in the way pain tried to. The difference was that he’d been trained from childhood to ignore pain, to the point that even in its most severe, life-threatening forms it was hardly more than background noise.
He had no such defense against his need for Cecilia.
The rubber and metal of the bike’s handlebars bent beneath his powerful grip as he fought for some tiny shred of control.
It’d taken nearly everything he had to sit calmly with her pressed against him for so long, and then to deny her when she so earnestly wished to share a meal with him had almost pushed him to his breaking point.
It was unnatural to deny his consort anything. Instinct balked at the idea and outright rebelled at his continued insistence on denying himself the Pull.
His skin didn’t fit right. His focus shattered. His world narrowed to the smallest points — those places where her delicate hands touched him. It was torture unlike anything he’d trained for, and it was the best he’d ever felt in his entire existence.
Sloane parked the bike beside one of his cars and dropped the kickstand.
When he cut the engine, the world seemed too quiet.
Only his labored breathing echoed inside his helmet.
It’d never felt like a cage before, but the familiar padding and protective glass had become a slowly tightening scold’s bridle.
He expected Cecilia to hop off the bike as soon as possible, but she didn’t. Instead, she sat back and unwound her arms from his middle. The sound of fabric and hair rustling made his already over-taxed heart clench.
Her helmet fell to the ground with a small thwack of fiberglass on concrete. The blade of desire cut impossibly deeper when she slipped her arms back around his waist.
“Thanks for the ride. And the date,” she whispered, pressing her soft cheek between his shoulder blades.
Within the confines of his helmet, his voice was a strangled thing. “It was satisfactory?”
“Very.” Her hands wandered upward, across the flat of his stomach, until they reached his chest. It was impossible to hide the way his heart pounded. Even through his undershirt and armored outer layer, it must’ve hammered at her palms in a desperate rhythm: I’m yours. I’m yours. I’m yours.
Neither of them spoke. For a while, he only heard his own breathing and the ticking of the cooling engine.
He didn’t dare move a muscle, afraid that she’d change her mind about touching him or that he’d somehow scare her off.
His fingers didn’t unclench from the handle bars and his eyes stayed fixed on the gray wall ahead of him, unblinking.
“Why didn’t you ask me out before? Or even just talk to me? I want a real answer this time.”
A strange noise came from his throat — almost a whine. “I didn’t know how.” And I didn’t dare risk it.
If she’d run, or if she reported him, or if she’d just… hated him, Sloane couldn’t have handled it. Protecting her was his first priority, and any of those possible outcomes would’ve posed a threat to his duty.
Cecilia’s arms tightened, not because they were taking a turn but because she was hugging him. Another first.
“You were afraid,” she surmised, a note of wonder in that soft voice.
Sloane forced himself to blink. His eyes burned when he replied, “I don’t feel fear.”
“Who told you that?”
“My trainers,” he answered, throat tight.
Cecilia was quiet for a moment. “Someone made you this way, didn’t they? You were taught to be… what you are.”
It’s too soon, he thought, chest seizing. She can’t know yet. If she knows, she’ll demand to leave.
But his doe was smart. Of course she’d picked up on the fact that he wasn’t normal, and that whatever he did for Patrol, he wasn’t like all the other officers she might’ve encountered.
He’d read her academic record, dug up all her papers on child psychology and behavioral development.
Her putting the pieces together that he wasn’t quite right was an inevitability.
Panic gripped him, but he was incapable of lying to her. “Yes.”
“It’s not normal elvish stuff,” she guessed.
Defeat was another horrible, unfamiliar sensation. Sloane dipped his chin under the weight of it. “No.”
A note he couldn’t easily identify entered her voice when she asked, “You don’t know how to do any of this, do you?
Not just dating. I mean normal life stuff like conversation, having fun, touching.
That’s why you didn’t know how to talk to me before.
You were scared of… I don’t know. Putting me off or frightening me.
Or maybe even your own feelings. Am I right? ”
“I needed to keep you safe,” he insisted.
“And did keeping me safe from you play a part in that?”
It was a shrewd, ruthless question. Sloane swallowed hard but his throat wouldn’t unclench no matter what he did. Barely able to get the words out, he rasped, “I would never hurt you. Never.”
“But you’re a dangerous man. We both know that.”
“Yes.”
He couldn’t exactly deny it, and wouldn’t even if it were possible. He had one use in this world: to be a weapon. If he didn’t fulfill that purpose for the safety of people like Cecilia, then there was no point in him at all.
He wasn’t sure he had a heart to break until she pulled away from him.
Sloane flinched when she climbed off the back of the bike, depriving him of her warmth.
Watching her walk away from him was stomach curdling, so he didn’t do it.
He closed his eyes, waiting to hear her footsteps retreat into the house.
But they didn’t.
Fabric rustled again as something was dropped onto the floor, and then a gentle hand touched his rigid forearm.
“Ease up,” she instructed.
Sloane’s eyes popped open. They widened at the sight of her there, her pink leather coat discarded and her hair wild from the wind.
Without thinking, he let her unwind his fingers from the handle bar.
It’d crumpled under his grip and would need to be replaced before he could ride again, but he didn’t care.
Cecilia pushed against his shoulder, urging him to sit back a bit. Confused but relieved she hadn’t left him, Sloane planted his boots on either side of the bike and shifted backward on the leather seat.
He thought he’d gotten pretty good at predicting her behavior over the past year. He was wrong.
The air escaped his lungs in a long, pitiful wheeze as his consort threw one long, thigh-high covered leg over the seat — facing him. Their size difference was enough that she didn’t really straddle the bike so much as she straddled him.
Her thighs draped over his as she settled her weight on his lap.
Without her jacket, she was left in small shorts and a skin-tight long-sleeved shirt.
He’d seen her in far less, but something about this moment made the outfit somehow more erotic than the number of times he’d watched her in a towel or that distressingly small work uniform.
His skin heated in a flash as she hung her arms around his neck, pressing their torsos together until he could feel every perfect curve and padded inch of her.
Cecilia’s fingertips found the tiny gap between the top of his collar and the accordion folds attached to the bottom of his helmet. When their skin touched, Sloane jumped like he’d been electrified.
“Is this okay?” she asked, dark brown eyes searching his visor.
Sloane’s shoulders moved with the strength of his deep, desperate breaths. “Yes,” he wheezed. “Your touch is… pleasurable.”
She seemed to consider something very seriously for a moment before she asked, “Do you want to touch me?”
If his cock got any harder, he was fairly certain it’d snap off as easily as he’d taken that vampire’s arm.
Making a pathetic sort of gurgling sound in his throat, Sloane answered, “I don’t know how. I wasn’t trained to handle soft things.”
A small smile played at the corners of her lips. “Do you want to learn, champ?”
“Yes,” he answered, short and sharp and sure. I’ve never wanted anything more in my life.