Page 300 of Immune

“But you stopped.”

“Always will unless you tell me otherwise.”

Her thumb brushes my lower lip and then the edge of my teeth. My entire body goes still.

“Kaito.”

“Do not ask unless you mean it,” I blurt, swallowing hard directly after.

Her eyes hold mine for only a moment before she says, “I want your bite.”

My breath leaves me.

“I want your bond,” she says. “Not because my body is doing something weird. Not because NOVAC scared me. Not because Davis made me feel like something people can argue over.”

She swallows. “Because you stopped.”

My control almost breaks right there.

She leans closer. “Because you want me and still let me choose.”

I close my eyes for half a second. When I open them, she is still there, still watching. Still choosing.

“Where?” I ask.

Her pulse jumps under the skin of her throat. She tips her head, showing me the unmarked side while her hand slides into my hair. “Here.”

My mouth goes dry. “You’re sure?”

“Yes.”

“Dakota.”

“If you ask me three more times, I’m going to bite you first.”

A rough sound tears out of me, half-laugh and half-ruin. “That sounds like yes.”

“It’s definitely a yes.”

There she is. Mine to love but not mine to own.

I shift us carefully, still buried inside her, knot swelling harder now. Stretching her, catching at the edge of locking. Her breath stutters but I keep one arm around her back, one hand braced on the mat.

“Say stop, and I stop,” I tell her.

“I know.”

“Say wait, and I wait.”

“I know.”

“Say bite, and I bite.”

Her eyes are dark, clear, and undeniably hers.

“Bite,” she says.

My knot catches fully as my teeth sink into her throat. Dakota cries out, a shattering sound that I lock away in my brain to keep until the end of time. Her body locks around me at the exact same time, tight and deep and final.