20. Leo
LEO
The resort chooses power, not love.
My father’s words follow me up out of the vault and into the dark, and I can’t outrun them. Twelve years ago I buried him. Twelve years I was lied to, and the one true thing I let myself want might be a lie too.
That’s the part that won’t let go of my throat.
If the Circle engineered the bonds. If they put Brynn in my path on purpose, then everything I feel might be a thing they built. A leash dressed up as fate.
I find her on the observation deck.
She’s standing at the glass with her back to me, watching the storm gnaw at the dome.
The mark on her collarbone throws faint silver light against her jaw.
She doesn’t turn around. She doesn’t have to.
The bond tells her I’m here the way it always does, a tug low in the chest, and I hate that I can’t tell anymore if that tug is mine or something somebody made.
“You’re doing that thing,” she says.
“What thing?”
“The thing where you stand in a doorway deciding whether you’re allowed to want something.”
I cross the room.
“Is it real?”
She turns. Her eyes are wrecked, red-rimmed, and she doesn’t pretend not to understand.
“I don’t know. That’s the honest answer. I’m the one bloodline alive that’s supposed to be able to tell a real bond from a fake one, and I can’t read my own.”
“Then read it now.”
“Leo.”
“You said your magic exposes false bonds. So expose this one.” I take her hand and press it flat to my chest, over the heart that’s been hammering since the vault. “If it’s a leash, I want to know. I’d rather know.”
She goes still under my palm.
“Ok, I’ll try.”
Her magic moves. I feel it move, a warm pressure sliding through the bond, careful, like fingers testing a wound. Her breath shakes. Mine does too. I stand there and let a witch read the inside of me, and it’s the most exposed I’ve ever been in my life.
When she pulls back, she’s crying.
“It’s clean,” she whispers. “There’s no graft. No construction. Nothing was built here, Leo. It just... grew.”
The relief hits so hard my knees nearly go.
“But that doesn’t fix it,” she says, and steps back out of my hands.
“Because real or not, I’m still what they want.
My blood is the only thing that can break their whole operation.
You heard your father. The Circle can’t let a witness live.
The second I use what I am, I’m a weapon.
And weapons get pointed. And then they get spent. ”
“So don’t be a weapon.”
“It’s not a costume I can take off.” Her voice cracks. “It’s in my blood. It woke up in me the night I touched you. I can’t be near you without being dangerous to you, and I’m so tired of being the thing everyone wants to use.”
I cross the space between us before she can put up another wall.
“Look at me.”
She does.
“I don’t want a witness. I don’t want a weapon. I don’t want the one woman who can hold the Covenant together. I want you. The one who set my dinner on fire and read me like a cheap paperback in under an hour. The one who says my name in her sleep.”
“That’s not fair.”
“None of this is fair.” I cup her face. Her skin is wet under my thumbs.
“I spent thirty-six years being the strong one so nobody else had to break. And then you walked into my life and broke me on day one, and I’ve never once wanted you to put me back together.”
“Leo.”
“Choose me. Not the bond. Not fate. Not the Circle. Me. And I’ll choose you back, right now, with my eyes open. No magic deciding for either of us.”
She makes a sound that’s half sob, half laugh.
“You’re supposed to be the emotionally constipated one.”
“You ruined that too.”
And then she kisses me.
This kiss finishes everything. I start kissing her deeply, my tongue exploring her mouth.
She grabs my collar and drags me to her and I go, gladly, both hands in her hair, walking her backward until she hits the glass with the storm screaming on the other side of it. The bond pours through us, but it’s behind us now, not driving. We’re the ones driving.
I get the strap of that red dress down her shoulder and follow it with my mouth, and she shivers, head tipping back against the glass. The mark on her collarbone burns brighter where my lips find it. She gasps my name.
“Leo! Let’s go,” she says. “Now. Before I decide the floor’s fine.”
“The floor’s not fine.”
“Then move faster.”
I get us into the suite. I get the door shut. I get her up against it, and the rest of that red dress goes the way of the strap, peeled down and dropped, until there’s nothing between my hands and her exposed skin.
She’s bare and flushed and looking at me like she’s been waiting all week to be this much trouble.
“You’re still dressed.”
“Then, fix it.”
She tears my shirt open and the buttons go skittering across the marble and I don’t care. Her hands are everywhere, dragging down my chest, my stomach, lower, and when she palms me through my trousers I lose the thread of every thought I’ve ever had.
“Gods! To the bed,” I manage.
“Take me.”
I lift her. She wraps her legs around me and I carry her, mouth on her throat, and lay her down in the middle of the bed and follow her down into it.
She looks so beautiful with her hair spread out on the bed and her eyes full of desire. I’ve wanted this since the night she set fire to my self-control, and I’m not rushing a second of it.
I work down to her breasts. The dip of her waist. The soft inside of her thigh that makes her breath stutter. I settle my mouth between her legs and she arches clean off the sheets, one hand flying into my hair and fisting tight.
“Leo.” It comes out shattered.
I don’t stop. I flick her clit and suck and learn what makes her shake.
Then I do it again, and again, until I’m driving her wild and she’s grinding up into my mouth and gasping my name.
The mark on her collarbone blazes brighter with every sound she makes.
“Ohhh, Leo! I’m gonna come.” Her thighs clamp around my head.
“Don’t you dare stop, don’t you dare.”
I have no intention of stopping.
She comes apart moaning against my mouth, loud and uncareful, and I keep sucking and licking her clit to prolong her climax and lap up all her juices as they gush out of her, holding her hips while she rides it out.
“Ahhhh! Fuck! Leo!”
When I come back up her eyes are glazed and wild and she drags me to her mouth so she can taste herself on me.
After she has her fill of kissing me she rolls me over and starts kissing down my body, slow, deliberate, and wraps her hand around my hard cock.
“You don’t have to,” I manage.
“Oh, I know.” She glances up at me through her lashes, her hand stroking root to tip, in no hurry at all. “That’s the fun part.”
Then she takes me in her mouth, and I lose every word I’ve ever known.
My head goes back against the pillows. One hand finds her hair on instinct, not pushing, just holding, and she hums around me like she’s pleased with herself. She should be. She’s wrecking me and she knows it.
“Brynn.” It comes out rough.
She pulls off just enough to talk, lips still brushing me and licking my tip, eyes bright with trouble. “Problem?”
“You’re enjoying this too much.”
“I’m enjoying it exactly the right amount.”
And she takes me deep again, hollows her cheeks, one hand working what her mouth can’t reach, and my hips jerk before I can stop them.
She doesn’t let up. She finds a rhythm that lights me up from the base of my spine, and every clever thought I’ve ever had about staying in control burns to the ground.
“Gods.” My grip tightens in her hair. “Brynn, if you keep doing that I’m definitely going to come.”
She moans around my large cock, low and deliberate, and the vibration of it nearly finishes me right there. She’s watching my face the whole time, learning me the way I learned her, filing away every sound she pulls out of me.
I’m close. She feels it. She takes me deeper, drags me right up to the edge, white and fast.
Then she pulls off.
Slow. Lips swollen, chin tipped up, looking unbearably proud of herself while I try to maintain control underneath her.
“Now,” she breathes.
She hooks a leg around me and lines my cock up to her pussy. She reaches back to guide me in.
“Please, I need you inside me, I can’t wait any more.”
Those words in her mouth drive me wild.
I push into her slowly, feeling her stretch to accommodate me. I’m watching her face the whole time, watching her mouth fall open and her eyes go wide, and the sound she makes when I’m all the way in nearly finishes me on the spot.
I stay there for a minute letting us both get used to the sensation.
“Gods.” Her nails rake down my back. “Move. Please move! Leo Van Alstein, if you make me beg…”
I chuckle and start to move slowly in and out of her. She’s already soaked and ready for me.
It’s nothing I have words for. The bond goes white behind my eyes, but it’s not the bond that wrecks me. It’s her. Her body taking mine. Her hands clutching, her hips rising to meet every thrust, her voice breaking apart on my name.
I set a rhythm and she matches it and then she’s begging me faster, harder, and I give her everything, both of us past careful, past anything but this.
“Oh, Gods, Leo!” She’s clinging to me. “Harder! I’m going to come again!”
She doesn’t have to ask me twice! My cock starts pounding into her.
“I’ve got you. Come for me, baby. Let me feel you come all over my cock.”
That pushes her over the edge. I can feel her body shake with pleasure as cries out my name.
“Leeeoooo!”
The feel of her pussy pulsing tight drags me right over the edge with her, her name torn out of my chest, my face buried in her throat, both of us shaking through it together.
“Fuck!! Gods, Brynn!!”
Her eyes stay open the whole time. On mine. Choosing this. Choosing me. No magic in the room is making either of us do a single thing we don’t want to.
“Stay with me,” she says after, still trembling. “Don’t go anywhere.”
“I’m not going anywhere. I’m never going anywhere.”
After, she’s draped half over me, tracing the old scar on my ribs.
“That’s from an old Initiation ritual,” I say before she asks.
“It’s ugly.”
“Thank you.”
“I like it.” She presses a kiss to it. “It means you survived something.”
The bond settles between us. It’s different now. Quieter. The frantic pull that’s been clawing at me for days has gone calm, like a held breath finally let go. Stable. For the first time since the chandeliers turned red, I feel like I can breathe all the way down.
“It stopped fighting,” she murmurs, feeling it too. “The bond. It’s just... resting.”
“Don’t get used to it.”
“I’m getting used to it.” She tucks her head under my jaw. “Shut up and let me have five minutes of peace before the resort tries to kill us again.”
“If I have to,” I laugh.
And, I let her have it.
I’d let her have anything.
I hold the woman I chose with my eyes open, in a kingdom built on lies, beneath a moon that wants to use her, and for five whole minutes nothing is on fire.
Then her mark flares.
Bright. Blinding. Silver light spilling across the sheets, across my chest, across the walls, and Brynn jerks upright with a gasp, hand to her collarbone, eyes gone wide and white.
“Damn! Why does this keep happening? Brynn, are you okay?”
“It’s awake!” Her voice isn’t entirely hers. “Leo. It’s awake.”
Far below us, deep in the vault we sealed an hour ago, something turns over with a groan that shakes dust from the ceiling. The symbols on her skin answer it. So do the ones carved into the walls of the whole resort, lighting one by one in a long bright chain that runs straight down into the dark.
And rising up through all of it, through the floor, through the bond, through the marrow of my bones, comes that voice again, ancient and patient, speaking two names it has waited seven hundred years to say.
The High Alpha throne has woken.
And it’s calling us both.