Chapter 3
Chapter Three
Jack
She shuts me up with a kiss and I’ve never felt more blessed by the quiet. I sweep my tongue against hers. One taste of her is like touching a slip of the most glorious sunlight. Bright and warm and whole. It’s everything I’ve missed in our decades apart.
It’s home.
Holing up in Time’s lair is a frail substitute, but it’s all that remains of a life fighting to reach her. To claim and be claimed by her. We’re surrounded by the relics of a love unbound. Forbidden. And somehow after decades she’s found me here. She’s in my arms. Kissing me.
Mine.
It’s a lie. A word I’ve chanted like a prayer through the seasons, through eternity. I pretend that it’s true, that she can still feel the connection she chose to severe when she chose Fate over her fated. But tonight, just for tonight, she pretends with me.
She presses up on her toes and kisses me fervently.
When I loop my finger under the strap of her dress, she doesn’t shiver at my touch.
Not like she used to. Placing her hand atop mine, she draws it down before guiding me to the other.
But before I can pull the top of her gown down to pool at her feet and worship the soft crests of her breasts, she pivots toward our nook and strips as she walks, leaving a rainbow puddle of chiffon trailing between us. A dreamy path to my ruination.
Naked and covered in brilliant streaks of every color atop her rose-gold skin, she crawls across the mattress, tossing a glance over her shoulder. “Aren’t you eager to get to those shouldn’ts?”
She spreads her knees, arches her back, and presses her breasts into the bedding. She’s dripping, presenting for me, giving into the remnants of her harbinger instincts. My cock wars with my trousers and before I even undo the buttons, I know it’ll be weeping for this. For her.
It’s been so fucking long…
Of course a few of the other winter harbingers suggested trying to fuck the pain out of my system. But even if my mate was forbidden to me, always existing just out of reach, nothing would ever compare. Every time I looked in the mirror and saw the mate mark I was reminded of that.
Now she’s no longer out of reach. She’s wet and wanting and ready for me.
I kick off my trousers and rush for her, greedily shoving my face into her and flattening my tongue against her.
She gasps and whimpers. Hips jerk in time with my strokes.
I’m not just tasting her, I’m devouring. Gloriously gluttonous, I savor my fill, becoming dizzy with pride when her legs quiver against my neck. If I get one night of this, of us, I’m indulging every single fucking moment of it.
“Oh my god.” Her head tosses against the mattress, green and blue streaked fists ball the blankets.
“There are no gods here, Lizzie. It’s just you and me,” I whisper against her sensitive flesh. “If you want me to make you see stars, you will call out my name.”
When was the last time she said it that wasn’t tinged in anger or frustration? Tonight she’ll be screaming my name until her voice is raw. Until she realizes how futile denying this—us—is. I need her to admit she still wants this, even if it’s not possible, I need her to dream alongside me.
I wrap my lips around her clit and suck, circling it with my tongue in between.
“Jack.” She pants. “Jack! Ohhh—” Her words jumble into a pleasure-ridden unintelligible mess and I fucking love it. I want more.
My body tingles, balls tightening. Cum drips onto the mattress. I reach forward and wrap her rose gold and rainbow kissed strands in my fist, and pull her up until her back is flush with my chest, my cock trailing desire along her round ass. “Need to be inside you, Lizzie. Please.”
Another shouldn’t. Not just because it’s forbidden, but because I know it’s going to ruin me. But I’ve already taken this too far. There’s no going back. An eternity of pain will be worth one night of my mate’s pleasure.
She reaches behind herself, gripping the base of my shaft, and I groan.
She smiles, satisfied with her effect on me, teasing me with achingly perfect strokes.
Dragging my cum against her slick body, she lines me up with her center and lowers onto her elbows.
As tempted as I am to thrust deep inside of her like this, get lost in the haze of pleasure, I want to see more of her.
If we only have tonight, I need to witness every cry of pleasure and commit them to memory.
I fall onto the bed and drag her against me. She spreads her knees and I rest at her entrance.
“Please Jack.” She doesn’t have to ask again. In fact, I’m shocked at the begging laced in her voice. I’m the desperate one. I don’t even care if I’m pathetic for pleading for this night because the moment I’m inside of her, I know I’ll be home.
I suck in a breath as she shifts her hips back, taking me into her inch by inch.
“You. Feel. So. Fucking. Incredible.” I manage to get out, each word accented by shallow thrusts before I bottom out.
She gasps, reaching back to thread her fingers through my hair and twisting my face to capture my lips.
Our tongues twirl, her taste still on mine.
She clenches, squeezing my cock from root to tip and I’m both blissed out and angry at myself for suggesting this.
It’s everything I’ve dreamed about and just as brutally ephemeral.
But if life has taught me anything it’s that the briefest glimpses of joy are worth the impending pain.
So many never experience it at all. I am lucky to have had the time we did, the reminders hanging above us, captured in clocks.
To experience it, even if temporarily, is worth everything.
Every moment tucked away in this place, every year of pain—I’d do it again to have her in my arms and be inside of her.
Maybe I’ll always be chasing this feeling. Her. But it’s the most sacred sort of sprint.
The feel of her wrapped around me is every bit as incredible as I remember and I wonder what’ll be like for her to take my knot.
Pleasure zips down my spine at the memory, recalling how her body locked me within her, stroking me from the inside, dragging out every drop of ecstasy until she was full of it. Of me.
The lock only belongs to spring harbingers, just as the knot belongs to us wolves within winter.
As Fate, does her rejection of our bond, the erasure of it, take away that as well?
Here in my arms she feels so much the same yet not.
There’s no heat against my skin, no inked floral markings across her flesh.
I swallow thickly. Palming the supple swell, I thumb over her nipple, then slide my hand down the slope of her breast. Curiosity beckons my attention to her sternum.
I lift my head and suck in a breath, bracing myself for the truth of her choice.
Her body stills.
The only part of me that moves is the pad of my finger trailing over the long stem, delicate petals, and intricate flakes of snow. Each ridge of her mate mark feels alive under my touch even if it’s faded and hidden behind streaks of periwinkle, buttercup, and sage-green paint.
“It’s still there,” I say, forcing down the emotions lodged thick in the back of my throat at the sight of the most beautiful signet I’ve ever seen, worn by the most beloved creature. A tear tracks down my cheek, chilling as it does. “You let me believe it was gone.”
Her hand comes over mine, interlacing with my fingers. “I thought it would hurt more knowing it still existed.”
The ache in my chest proves she’s right. But while it threatens to fracture my ribs, it fortifies them in equal measure.
“Does it really make a difference?” She rasps. Her eyes flutter, hips shifting in response to my cock jerking within her.
“You know it does.” I curl my hips into her and answer on a growl. “It matters a great deal to me.”
Our fingers remain interlocked over the mark as she rocks back into me.
I meet her with a deep thrust and nudge her upper leg with my knee.
Without a word she opens herself wider, guiding our hands down to where we are joined.
She massages the base of my shaft as I hold in place, only making small ripples with my pelvis to push deeper.
My fingers toy with her clit, savoring every gasp and whimper that escapes Lizzie’s rose-gold lips.
A prismatic tear streaks her cheek as she cries out.
“Jack… Jack… Jack.” My name is as reverent as a prayer and as powerful as a curse coming from her. Because the truth is we are both damning ourselves tonight.
I was desperate enough to beg for one evening of shouldn’ts.
And while there are no regrets, punctuated by each punch of my hips, I’ll never be able to walk away from this.
I know it and Lizzie knows it too, even if she’ll pretend otherwise.
But I’ll let her pretend all night with my cock buried inside her, our pleasure staining these sheets, and my mark etched into her skin.
The thought, along with the greedy way she drags up and down my shaft, massaging the space where my knot is about to fill, is enough to shoot stars into my vision.
I clutch her tightly, pleasure bolting through every vein, bursting into her as I come.
I hiss through gritted teeth, “Last chance before I knot you, Lizzie. Because once I do, we both know there’s no leaving until daybreak. ”
She shifts her weight and I panic, though I don’t say a word. I’m already grieving when she pushes me onto my back and in one smooth motion takes my knot within her. She presses a finger against my lips. “There’ll be no talk of tomorrow.”
And as she finishes the sentence a rippling moves up and down my cock, becoming tighter with each undulation.
Her lock.
“Fuck,” I groan. “I forgot how impossibly good that feels.”
“Allow me to remind you… tonight.” She accentuates the last word with a warning that flashes in her stare.
Its intensity is felt all the way to my toes.
But I don’t care. I’m too busy soaking up every curved arch of her spine, every gasp I pull from her, every delicious swivel of her hips and rippling of her lock.
I drag my teeth along her neck, fighting the urge to break skin, not that it would change anything. Regardless, she will always own me. Every fractured, battered, part.
By the time daybreak arrives, we’re spent but we’re far from finished.
The nook is a mess of rumpled sheets and shredded pillows steeped in the scent and stains of our desire.
Our bodies remain connected, lazily drawing out pleasure from one another until my knot recedes and her lock releases.
I slip out of her and admire how my cum seeps down her thighs and onto the bedding.
Pushing it back in with my fingers, I take the last bit leftover and rub it over her sternum, marking her where she’s still marked as mine. Even though she’ll never claim it.
The snow-cradled forget-me-not blooms in inky lines between her ribs, holding every hope I’ve carried since she chose Fate’s path.
Truth is, I waited years for her to believe in me, decades for her to believe in us, and I’ll wait an eternity longer if that’s what it takes.
There’ll never be any other Fate for me.