Chapter 29
Sable
He’s sleeping. Real sleep, deep and loose, his body sprawled on his stomach across the motel bed, one arm thrown over my hip, his face buried in the pillow. His breathing is slow and even and unguarded in a way I’ve never heard from him.
He feels safe enough to sleep.
I prop myself on one elbow and watch him in the thin light from the bedside lamp. The cheap bulb catches the planes of his back, and I study him the way I couldn’t when he was my patient. Not checking for pressure sores or monitoring anything.
Just looking.
He’s lean. Years of burning through everything the body takes in. His shoulders are broader than they look when he’s standing because he carries them hunched forward, braced. Lying down, with the tension gone, the breadth of them is striking.
His skin is pale where the scars aren’t. The chain grooves on his wrists are thick and ropy. The rune marks along his ribs are raised, silvery…wounds held open longer than they needed to be.
I’ve seen his back before. Ravenclaw, when I washed him. The cave, when the firelight moved over his skin. I’ve touched these scars, noted them, but moved past them because there were always more urgent wounds.
I’ve never looked at them like this. In still light. Without urgency.
The marks on his shoulder blades are different from the others.
I lean closer. Thin silver lines curving along the bone in patterns too precise to be random. They follow the shape of the scapula, branching and reconnecting. The kind of work you’d see in fine metalwork or hand-drawn calligraphy. The hand that made these wasn’t hurrying.
My stomach turns. The same way it did when I saw the scar marking his ribcage.
I’ve been looking at these scars for weeks and seeing damage. They’re not damage. They’re a signature. Made by that psychopath.
A cold thread of rage moves through me. I hold still and let it pass because if I don’t, I’ll put my fist through the motel wall, and he needs to sleep.
I should have fucking killed her.
The damage she did is still written on his body. Some of it will fade. Some won’t. However long it takes—every scar I can treat, every conditioned response I can help him unlearn—I’m here for it.
I trace one of the silver lines with my fingertip. Light. Barely touching.
The muscle underneath contracts. His head turns on the pillow. His arm tightens on my hip. Even half-asleep, his body knows where I am.
His eyes open. No flinch. No panic. No scan of the room.
He smiles at me.
Sleepy. Unguarded. Like this is the most ordinary thing in the world.
It nearly undoes me.
His face has changed since I first saw him at Ravenclaw.
The hollows under his eyes have filled. The gaunt look is gone.
His jaw has a set to it now that has nothing to do with the wolf—just strength.
And his eyes, blue and steady, are clear in a way I’m not used to.
Not the wariness, or the wild fury when the wolf took over.
Something between those extremes. Something settled.
All the versions of him I’ve known—broken, quiet, terrified, wild, tender—all in one face, looking at me like I’m the first thing he wants to see.
“Hey,” he says, voice thick with sleep.
“Hey.”
“You’re staring.”
“I’m looking. There’s a difference.”
He turns his head on the pillow. “See anything interesting?”
I trace his jaw with my thumb. The stubble catches against my skin. “You’re beautiful. You know that?”
The smile shifts, flickers. “I’m scarred.”
“I know. I don’t care.” I lean down and press my mouth against the corner of his. “Still beautiful.”
He’s quiet. His hand covers mine on his jaw.
“Faith made some of those marks on my back,” he says. “The ones on my shoulder blades.”
“I saw.”
“She liked watching me heal. The wolf healing.”
“I don’t want to talk about her.”
“Neither do I.” He rolls onto his side. His hand finds my jaw, thumb tracing the line. Warm. Unhurried. “I want to be here. With you. In this room that smells like carpet cleaner and vending-machine ham.”
“That’s your focus?”
“You’re my focus.”
His thumb moves to my lower lip. Heat pools low in my core. My pulse picks up.
“Can I touch you?” I ask, remembering that he likes it when I ask.
“Yeah,” he says. “Any way you want to.”
I push him onto his back. He goes willingly. Arms falling to his sides, hands loose on the sheets.
This is different from what we did before. That was hunger. Raw need. Two people who’d waited too long, finally getting their hands on each other.
This is slower.
His body is known to me now…intimately. I know where he’s sensitive. Where his breath catches. But this morning, I don’t want to discover him like territory. I want to remind him that every part of him is still his.
I start with his hands.
The right first, because it’s closest. I lift it from the sheet and turn it palm-up. Broad palm. Long fingers. Scarred knuckles. The faint marks where restraints bit too often and too hard.
I kiss the center of his palm.
His breath stutters.
I kiss the inside of his wrist next, over the old chain groove, then the heel of his hand, then each damaged knuckle. He watches me as if I’m doing something more intimate than taking off my clothes.
Maybe I am.
The power is quiet this morning, settled deep, present without asking to be used. His heartbeat changes under my touch, but nothing flickers. Nothing breaks. Nothing in the room moves except us.
I press his hand flat against my cheek.
“This is yours,” I say.
His eyes darken.
Then I lower his hand to the bed and move to his shoulder, to the place where strength has returned over bone and scar. I kiss him there. Not to erase what was done. Not to make it beautiful. Just to make sure my mouth is part of what he remembers next.
I take a dark nipple into my mouth and trace it with my tongue. His body jerks, a full-body shudder, head pressing back into the pillow, hands fisting the sheets.
“Good?” I say against his skin.
“Yeah.” Rough. “Don’t stop.”
I take my time. His ribs. His hip. The line of muscle along his oblique, where gooseflesh rises under my breath. Every touch gets a response: a contraction, a twitch, a sound from his chest. He’s alive under my hands in a way that has nothing to do with vitals and monitors.
When my hand moves past his navel, his whole body goes taut. His hips roll once.
I wrap my hand around his shaft. Hard. Hot. His head drops back.
I stroke once. Slowly. His jaw locks. His eyes close, then open, fixing on me; he wants to watch. And I want him to.
“I’m not going to last if you keep that up.” His voice is husky.
“Is that a problem?” I tilt my head, hand sliding smoothly along his length. He pulses against my palm.
“It is when I want to be inside you.”
“Oh. I can fix that.” I straddle him.
His hands grip my thighs. Hard. Possessive.
I guide his cock along my slit, coating it in my juices.
“Mmmm,” I moan, as it slides over my swollen clit. “You feel good. Right there.”
“Sable,” he chokes out. “You’re killing me, dammit.”
I notch the head into my entrance and sink down slowly. His eyes don’t leave mine. His mouth opens. No sound. The stretch and fullness of him make my spine arch.
“God,” I exhale, already feeling a tingle building. I hold still. Then I move.
He sits up. Arms around me, pulling me close, chest against mine. His face at my throat. His hands spread across my lower back, pressing me into him. The angle is deeper.
We rock together. Slow. The hum in his chest spreads into mine…warm. There’s a current running through the place where our bodies are joined that turns every sensation up. I feel it in my skin, my ribs, the base of my spine, deep inside me.
His breath is at my throat. I tip my head. His mouth finds the spot where he grazed his teeth earlier. He presses his lips there. Pauses. I wait, anticipation building.
Do it. Just do it.
I feel his breath shudder. Then his mouth opens against my skin—warm, wet—and instead of teeth, his tongue traces the marks he left before. Slowly.
“Sable… I…”
“It’s okay,” I whisper. “When you’re ready.”
My fingers tighten in his hair. The slow rocking deepens. His hands pull me closer. The warmth between us builds. Gradual. A tide coming in. Each wave a little higher than the last.
His mouth moves to my collarbone. My shoulder. The hollow of my throat. My breasts. He’s learning me the way I learned him, mouth and breath and the press of lips against skin. Giving back what I gave. Taking his time with it.
The pace quickens. His hips drive up to meet mine.
My hands grip his shoulders. The hum in his chest deepens.
I can feel it vibrating through my breastbone, settling into my joints, running along nerves I didn’t know were connected to the place where he’s moving inside me.
It doesn’t flash or shake the room. It just makes everything more.
Every point of contact brighter. Every breath shared between us carrying warmth that goes deeper than air.
“Yes,” I breathe. “God, yes. So close…”
“Now, beautiful. Let me watch you.”
I come quietly, sensation rolling over me in waves, long and deep. My body clenches around his while my forehead drops against his, and my hands hold his face.
“Rafael.” I breathe his name against his mouth.
“Say it again.”
“Rafael.” I draw it out, focusing on each syllable.
“Fuck!” He follows. His arms tight around me. His face pressed into my throat. The sound he makes is low. Steady and warm. The sound of something settling into the place where it belongs.
We stay upright. His arms still around me. My head on his shoulder. Both of us breathing hard in a room that smells like sex. Like us.
His hand moves up my back, tracing my spine.
“Mate,” he says against my hair.
“Mate,” I say. And then, because the word has been sitting in my chest, and I’m done pretending it isn’t there: “I love you.”
His hand stills on my back.
“You’re my mate. And I love you,” I say more firmly. “Both of those things.”
His arms tighten. His face presses harder into my hair. His voice is rough. Cracked at the edges.
“Yeah,” he says. “Both of those things.”
He holds me. I let him. The morning is coming, gray creeping at the edges of the curtain. Outside, there are Syndicate operatives and Aurora contingencies and a woman with a ruined face who will rebuild herself into something dangerous.
But that’s the other side of the curtain.
In here, the man who was made to never bond is holding me.
He’s not cured. The conditioning is still in his body. Faith is alive. Creed is alive. The captives are still waiting.
But he’s here. The man. Not the wolf. Not the weapon. Not the number.
Just Rafael.
His arms tighten once. Then ease. Eventually, he stretches out, rolling onto his stomach again, and I stretch along his back with my cheek between his shoulder blades, one arm curved over his ribs. His hand covers mine and keeps it there.
Outside, a truck passes. The sound fades.
The gray light reaches the edge of the bed.
His hand is in my hair.
I close my eyes.