Chapter 9
Isla
I hear the bikes before anyone else does.
The text hit the group chat yesterday morning. Four words. Knox won. Coming home. I didn't hold the phone against my chest the way I've done every night in Tom's bed listening to his voicemails. I put it in my pocket and walked to the gate.
A low rumble past the tree line, too far to count, but the sound separates as it gets closer. I pick out the sound of Tom's Harley because I've stood at this gate since yesterday waiting for exactly that sound.
Sarah reaches the lot before the first bike clears the bend. Reeve on her hip. She plants herself in the center of the gravel and waits.
Knox comes through the gate first. He rides stiff, one arm braced against his side, his left shoulder sitting lower than his right.
He swings off the bike and Sarah crosses the last ten feet, he pulls her and Reeve against him with the arm that works.
His face goes into her hair. His hand cups the back of his son's head.
Jess comes out the front door fast with her son on her shoulder. Finn barely gets his leg over the bike before she's in front of him, and he lifts her off her feet, and the sound she makes against his neck carries across the lot.
Rex goes to Holly, his hands on her face, her hands on his cut, both of them talking at once.
Colt pulls Ellie close with one arm and reaches for Lily with the other, and Lily buries her face against his shoulder like a fourteen-year-old who spent two days pretending she wasn't scared.
Diesel parks and walks straight to Kim. Drops to his knees on the gravel and presses his forehead to her belly. Kim's hand slides into his hair.
Chain stops beside Morgan. He dismounts without a word. She stands at the edge of the lot, he steps into her space and puts his arms around her, whispering something no one else can hear.
Bruiser reaches Ava at the door. She grips the front of his cut with both fists and pulls him down and kisses him hard enough that his hand catches the doorframe so they don't fall over.
I stand near the gate with my hands in my pockets. Nine bikes, eight women crossing a gravel lot. Like I have room to judge. I've been out here since yesterday and Jess stopped asking if I needed anything around hour six.
Tom parks his bike and dismounts heavy and stiff, every movement comes with fatigue from riding for so long. Road dust on his clothes, his shirt pulled loose from the ride, his glasses smudged in both lenses.
He walks toward me, I walk toward him and we meet in the lot, halfway.
He opens his mouth, and I know what's coming. The species update. The medical report. Whatever safe, correct sentence he's about to put between us because that's what Tom does. He finds the right word and uses it like a wall.
I put my hand over his mouth.
"Don't."
He goes still. His hot breath hits my palm.
His glasses come off first. The wire frames fold in my fingers, lenses filthy with road grit, and I tuck them into his shirt pocket. His eyes are brown and tired, and he's looking at me like nothing else in this lot exists.
Both of my hands go to his jaw. His fur runs warm and coarse under my palms, his pulse hammering under my thumbs. I pull his face down to mine and kiss him before I can talk myself out of it—tentative, half-expecting him to pull back, not sure this is something I'm allowed to have.
He doesn't pull back. His hands land on my waist and his fingers close around my hips and he drags me against him and kisses me like he's done pretending too. The purr hits the second my body presses flush against his. It rips through his chest and into mine, and the whole compound can hear it.
I'm standing in a gravel lot in front of a compound full of people with my hands on a minotaur's face and his purr rattling the fence chain behind me, and the only thought I can form is that I should have done this two years ago in my intake building when he brought me a Cooper's hawk and said the species name like it mattered.
His apartment door closes behind us and his hands shake when he reaches for me.
The buttons on his shirt resist my fingers and I pull too hard and one of them pops off and bounces across the floor. His fingers find my shirt buttons and mine find his belt and we're pulling at each other's clothes, just pure need, until his shirt hits the floor and mine follows it.
He stops. Looks at me standing there in my bra and jeans, his hands hover at his sides like he's afraid to touch what's in front of him.
I laugh.
He stops.
"You're studying me."
"Two years of practice." He smiles, and it changes his whole face.
He unhooks my bra and drops it and his mouth goes to my neck, his breath runs hot against my skin, and the purr fills the room.
His hands move down my sides. He pays attention.
When his thumb drags across my nipple and my breath catches, he does it again.
When his mouth moves to my breast and my fingers dig into his shoulders, he takes his time there.
His chest presses against mine, fur dense and warm, his body throwing heat like a furnace. His hands find the button on my jeans and he peels them down my hips along with my underwear, and then his follow, the bed hits the back of my knees before I realize we've crossed the room.
I touch the base of his left horn.
His whole body locks.
The horn runs smooth near the tip and ridged at the base, the bone warm under my fingertips. His purr drops lower than I've heard it go. Deeper. The bed frame vibrates with it. I feel it in my spine and between my hips. His arms brace on either side of me, every muscle in his shoulders rigid.
I run my thumb along the ridge where his horn meets his skull.
"Isla." My name comes out of him broken in half.
I trace the ridge again. His forehead drops to my collarbone, and the sound he makes goes through my chest. He presses against my thigh—hard, thick, his cock between us—and the size of him sends heat through my belly and I arch up against him.
He reaches between us. His thumb presses against my clit, and the moan that comes out of my mouth surprises both of us.
He circles it. He reads my face the way he reads vitals—watching, adjusting, finding the rhythm that makes my hips roll against his hand.
Two fingers slide inside me, stretching me, his thumb still working.
I pull him down against me.
"I'm not fragile, Thomas."
His arms give. His weight settles over me—not all of it, he's too big for that, but enough that he's everywhere.
He pulls his fingers out and positions himself.
The head of his cock pushes against my entrance, thick and blunt, and the first inch stretches me open in a slow burn that makes my nails dig into his back.
He watches my face and then pushes deeper, inch by inch, every muscle in his body fighting every instinct telling him to drive forward.
My hands slide up his body and find his horn again.
The purr shatters into a growl. He pushes the rest of the way in and I moan against his shoulder because the fullness of him hits deep enough that I forget what I planned to say next.
"Okay?" His voice grinds low against my ear.
"Yes, please move."
The first thrust shakes the headboard against the wall.
His hips roll, deep and steady, each stroke dragging the full length of his cock against the spot inside me that whites out the edges of my vision.
I keep my hand on his horn. Every time I touch the ridge the growl breaks into a purr and the purr breaks into a growl and it drives his pace faster, harder, his control stripping away in increments.
His thumb returns to my clit. He circles in time with his thrusts and the heat builds low in my belly, winding tighter each time he pushes deep, his breath ragged against my neck.
The man inside me is not the man who labels every hook on his pegboard.
He's shaking. He's vocal in a way I didn't expect—low groans and moans that vibrate through him into me, my name in fragments, the purr underneath all of it.
My orgasm hits from the center outward, clenching around him in pulses that pull a sound from his chest I'll hear for the rest of my life.
He thrusts twice more, deep enough that my spine arches off the mattress, and comes inside me with his face buried in my neck and the growl dissolving into a purr that shakes through the bed and the wall and the floor.
His weight shifts to his elbows. His forehead rests against mine. The purr rolls on, and I feel it in every bone.
I curl against him, my cheek on his chest, and the purr hasn't stopped since the lot. I don't think he can stop it even if he wanted to.
My fingers trace the edge of his right horn—the broken one. The break sits two inches from the base, a jagged edge where it ends rough instead of curving smooth like the left.
He tenses under my hand.
I pull back. "Sorry."
His fingers close around mine and guide them to the broken edge. "It's okay."
I trace the break. He closes his eyes. The fur at his temple runs softer than the rest of his face. I don't ask what happened. Everybody's got a past they don't talk about. He'll tell me when he's ready.
I hold the damaged part. He lets me.
The purr deepens. His arm tightens around my waist. His breathing slows against the top of my head. The hand on my hip goes heavy and still, the same hand that sets every tool on its labeled hook and sutures lacerations by flashlight and held my wrist in the garage while he counted my heartbeats.
I close my eyes. His heartbeat thuds against my cheek. The room smells like him and like us. For the first time in six years I'm lying in someone's bed without counting the minutes until I need to check a cage.
That's enough for now.