Chapter 14 #3
"Christ, Hex. You're drenched." His forehead raises to mine, his fingers circling my clit slow, relentless. "This all for me?"
"Yes—yes—" My eyes flutter shut.
He slides one finger into me, the heel of his hand grinding against my clit with every stroke, and everything narrows to this moment.
Twelve years of running the math on what everyone around me wants, reading every room for the exit, and here there's no math to run.
He knows. The bond hands him every twitch and clench the second I feel it, so he plays me like he's had the sheet music for years—curling his finger just right, dragging that pressure just there, chasing every sound I make and giving it back louder.
"That's it," he murmurs against my mouth, filthy and tender at once. "Let me feel you. Come on my hand, Cal, I want all of it."
Then he kisses me—deep, unhurried, swallowing every sound while his finger keeps its rhythm—and I rock into his hand, chasing it, hips moving on their own because my body's stopped taking orders from anything but him.
The heat builds low and tight, a coil winding between my legs, tighter with every drag of his finger, every grind of his palm.
I can feel myself clenching around him, feel how wet I am, feel the pressure gathering to a point that's almost too much and nowhere near enough.
I whimper into his mouth and he groans back, and through the bond I feel his restraint fraying, feel how badly he wants to feel me let go.
The coil snaps.
It tears through me from the inside out, everything pulling tight and then shattering, my body clamping down around his finger in waves I can't control.
He strokes me through every one without slowing, and the bond sings my own orgasm back at me so I get it twice—once in my body, once as an echo—until I'm shaking and gasping his name into his shoulder and my knees have entirely stopped participating.
He eases me down slow. Slides his finger free, and—god—brings them to his mouth, holds my eyes while he does it, and the look on his face is going to live in me for a while.
"Been wondering what you taste like," he says, low. "Wasn't disappointed."
I'd have a comeback if I could remember how words work. Instead I lean into him, forehead to his collarbone, and feel him breathing hard—feel the restraint in it, the want he hasn't done a single thing about, rigid between us.
"Cal," he says, wrecked, into my skin.
"Give me a second." My voice isn't steady. "Then your shirt's coming off."
He laughs, low and rough, and it's the best thing I've heard all day.
I get my hands on the hem of his shirt and start dragging it up—and he takes over, hauls it off himself in one motion, and then he's pressing me back into the wall, kissing me hungry and unfinished, all that restraint finally slipping its leash.
I throw a hand out to catch myself against the stone—and a jutting edge bites into the side of my finger.
I hiss and flinch, pulling my finger in front of me to see the damage. A drop of crimson wells up and drips onto the ground between us.
Kage goes still.
Wrong-still. A heaviness settles over the room and Kage’s energy changes, expands until I can’t breathe being this close to him.
I meet his gaze and his eyes have changed. They’re wild.
The normal storm-blue color has gone black–the pupil has swallowed almost all the color. What's left is a dark rim and something behind it that makes the part of my brain responsible for survival go very quiet.
His fangs pop out and he sneers, his jagged scar pulling across half his face.
I suck in a sharp breath, a jolt of fear tearing through me until I’m shaking. “Kage?”
He tears himself off me.
Both hands shove flat against my shoulders—not to move me, to launch himself, the push flinging him backward across the room, and I stagger sideways along the wall and catch the workbench to stay upright. Hard enough to bruise. Hard enough that the print of his hands will be on me tomorrow.
He hits the far wall like he means to go through it. Back to me. Hands flat against the stone. Shoulders heaving.
"Go."
“Kage, wait–”
“Go!”
The fury in his voice rattles through me and all I can feel is pure terror.
I snatch my shirt off the floor and drag it on with hands that won't cooperate, buttons be damned, and I don't look back—can't look back, because some animal part of me knows that looking back is how prey dies.
I shove through the door into the daylight and I run.
Across the field, past the oaks, my finger still bleeding and my heart going like it wants out of my chest and the whole warm wanting thing from thirty seconds ago curdled into something with teeth.
He's a monster. I felt the shape of it—the real thing, the thing under the warmth and all the centuries of person he built on top of it.
He’s a monster…
And yet, he didn’t hurt me.
I keep running but that’s the thought that runs through my head on repeat even after I’ve gotten back to the mansion, run up the stairs, and shut myself in my extravagant room.
Kage is a monster–but I’m not sure that monster would ever hurt me.