The heat of Riot’s body behind him was close. So close Cass could feel his breath against his neck, could smell strawberries and cream and something darker underneath, something that made his knees want to buckle.
“Caught you.”
The growl vibrated through Cass’s spine. He was trapped between the door and Riot’s chest, pinned, breathing so hard his vision spotted.
And underneath the hammering fear, something else. Something that felt like the opposite of the panic.
Yes. This. This is what my body was trying to get to.
Riot’s hand closed,grabbed his waist and spun him. Cass’s back hit the door and then Riot was pressing him into it, one hand beside his head, those gold eyes blazing down at him.
“Why did you run?”
Cass’s heart was slamming against his ribs. Fear and want and something fiercer than both burned through him like a wildfire. He looked up into those—the eyes of the Berserker, the weapon, the dangerous thing everyone warned about—and told the truth. “Because I wanted you to catch me.”
Riot’s hands slipped beneath his thighs and Cass was being lifted, his legs wrapping around Riot’s hips on instinct, and then they were on the floor. His back chilled against the cold wood, the full weight of Riot pressing him down. Pinned. Caught. Held.
The scared part was still there. A flutter in his chest, a voice sayingbig, too big, remember the bathroom—
But the running had done something to it. Burned through it, maybe. Or rearranged it so it sat next to the wanting instead of blocking it. Because Cass, who should have been terrified—whowasterrified, his heart pounding so hard his vision pulsed with it—
—arched up into that weight instead.
More.Finally. More.
Chapter twenty-four
All That Glitters is Probably Pyrite
Riot
Mine.
The word hit like a phosphorous grenade, obliterating every careful thing Riot had built in the last three hours. The gentle touches. The blankets. TheI’m going to do better this time.All of it, gone, replaced by the singular, screaming certainty that the creature pinned beneath him on Lilac’s entryway floor washis, and he was never, ever letting go.
The Berserker didn’t see the world the way Brennan Loudon had. Brennan had seen people as complex, interesting, worth understanding. The Berserker saw targets and threats and, very rarely, something worth keeping. Right now, everything was gold at the edges, and in the center of that molten frame was Cass.
And Christ, the way the gold made him look.
Every detail sharpened to something almost painful. The wet tracks on Cass’s cheeks caught the low light like they’d been painted there. His pupils were blown so wide his hazel eyes were almost black, and his pulse was visible in the hollow of his throat—fast, fast, fast, like a rabbit’s. The black t-shirt rode up during the chase, bunched around his ribs, and beneath it was all that golden skin. He yanked it the rest of the way off, his eyes fixating on the bruises his teeth left in Cass’s skin.
Mine. That mark is mine. Put more on him.
Cass’s chest was heaving. His whole body vibrated under Riot’s weight and Riot could feel his need in the way Cass’s spine arched, the way his fingers grabbed Riot’s forearms instead of pushing them away.
“Make it stop—” His voice broke on the plea. He swallowed and tried again. “Make it stop hurting.”
The sound Riot made was between a groan and a snarl that vibrated through both of them where their bodies pressed together, and he felt Cass’s hips stutter up against him.
Riot’s body knew what a rut felt like. The modifications had made them unpredictable and barely manageable, but this wasn’t a rut. A rut was an inconvenience, like a bad flu that came with an erection and anger issues.Thishad been building since the Neutral Zone, since the car, since the bathroom floor, and it lived in his bones. His cock ached with it. His jaw ached. His hands ached, curled too tight around Cass’s wrists where he held them.
Ease up. You’re going to bruise him.
He didn’t ease up. Couldn’t. But he shifted his grip so the pressure was on the meat of Cass’s palms instead of the thin skin of his wrists, and some pathetic fragment of Brennan Loudon filed that away as progress.
Cass’s face crumpled. “Please…it hurts. It’s—they keep getting worse, and I can’t—” A full-body shudder racked through him, his stomach muscles visibly seizing, and the sound he made was raw enough to cut through even the gold.
The Berserker wanted to fuck the pain out of him. Brennan wanted to hold him and make soothing noises. Riot, the thing that existed between those two people, wanted to do something else entirely.
