Page 315 of Immune

Again.

And again.

And again, right up until his back meets one of the thick wooden support beams that are holding up the roof. He could easily stop me, there’s no question about it. He just chooses not to, because that’s what this is. This is him handing the reins over to me. It’s him proving he won’t stuff me in a cage, even if that cage is labeled as protection.

I reach for his belt and it’s then he makes a move. Only a small one. His hands twitch on my waist just as he utters my name with that drawl of his. “Dakota.”

“Don’t.”

He stills so I look up at him with clear eyes and a thrumming pulse. “Don’t warn me away, not from something I’m choosing.”

Something crosses his face and I know then that my words have hit their intended target. So much so that he doesn’t stop me when I undo his belt slower than necessary, his breathing changing every time my knuckles brush across him. Because his restraint isn’t cold. It’s scalding hot. It’s practically burning him alive, yet he’s still just standing there letting me set the pace.

When I get his pants open, I don’t hesitate, slipping my hand inside and wrapping my fingers around him. Fletcher’s head tips back against the post and a rough sound tears from his throat. It’s not loud, but it’s certainly deep. The kind of sound that rattles through bones and shakes up everything in your mind. It’s literally one of the best sounds I think I’ve heard, right up there with the sounds I’ve heard come from Xeon, Ewan, and Kaito.

His hands grip my waist harder, but he’s still not moving me. He’s not taking, even as I stroke him once, my hand dragging up and down on his hard length slowly and firmly.

His hips jerk like they have a mind of their own, and then they stop. He locks himself down so fast it makes my pulse trip and my heart hiccup a beat that seems vital to my health.

“Look at me,” I say.

His head lowers slowly and he peers down at me with dark eyes that are filled with too many emotions for me to count, almost black under the shitty yard lights. The scar on his cheek is pale through the shadow, clear and sharp enough to make him look harder than he is.

Or maybe that’s exactly how hard he is and I’m just now seeing how much he’s been holding back. For me.

“That,” I whisper. “That control. I want that.”

His breath leaves him hard and I rise onto my toes and kiss him. There’s nothing gentle about it, either. Fletcher doesn’t kiss like Ewan, bright and starved around the edges. He doesn’t kiss like Kaito, all restraint molded into the sharpest blade that could cut with barely a touch.

Fletcher kisses like the ground under bare feet.

Solid.

Hot. There.

His mouth opens under mine, and when I bite his lower lip, his hands drop from my waist to my hips, holding me with a strength that should feel like a warning but doesn’t. Because the very second I press back, his grip loosens. And that’s who Fletcher is to me. He’s a wall with a door. He’s my fucking door, and that thought makes my chest ache with something I’ve only felt three times before.

I drag his shirt up, and he only helps when I make a frustrated little sound against his mouth. The fabric hits the ground with a whoosh and then his heated skin is under my palms, scars and muscle and tension pulled tight over bone.

Leaning in closely, I kiss his chest and his breath stutters. When I kiss lower, he curses prettily. “Darlin’.”

The word is absolutely wrecked, haggard and strained and everything I want to hear from him.

I peer up at him from where I am sinking to my knees, watching the very moment his entire body goes rigid. Then I raise an eyebrow and ask, “No?”

His eyes flash with heat and something else I don’t have the mental margins to name right now. “You don’t gotta kneel just because you think you owe me something.”

My throat tightens, because there it is again. The difference.

“I’m not kneeling because I owe you,” I say. “I’m on my knees because I want to watch you fall apart and know for certain that you still won’t use your hands to make me stay.”

I’m pretty sure Fletcher stops breathing. Then, very slowly, he puts one hand on the post above him and the other behind his own back.

My stomach flips, because I haven’t been blessed with very many sights that make me melt on the inside until recently, and this one right here is one I wish I could take a photo of and make it my background on my old iPhone.

“Like that?” he asks then, and I’ll be damned if my thighs don’t clench, an ache appearing so deep inside me that I almost forget how to breathe.

“Yeah,” I answer, right before I take him into my mouth.