Page 319 of Immune

Fletcher’s head dips and his teeth brush the unmarked space at my throat, drawing out a haggard moan straight from my goddamn soul.

But then he pulls back. Hard. So hard I feel the loss. His hand drops from my mouth suddenly, just as he rasps, “No.”

My eyes fly open just as a thready whine slips out of my mouth and I look at him as I breathlessly pant. “No?”

“Not because I need to protect you.”

My chest heaves while he shakes above me. Like, actually shaking, showing me just how hard it is for him to stop but he’s doing it anyway.

“Not because I’m scared someone will take you,” he says. “Not because my instincts are telling me to mark what’s mine.”

The word mine almost breaks him. I see it happen. I feel it in the way his hips stop moving even though his knot is swelling, even though his body is fighting for the lock.

“Then why?” I whisper.

His eyes meet mine.

“Because if I’m standin’ between you and the world,” he says, voice rough, “you still get to tell me where to stand.”

There.

That’s Fletcher. That’s all of him. Big body and steady hands. A wall with a door I control.

I reach up and touch his face, just as I rasp, “Bite me, Fletcher.”

His eyes squeeze shut. “Dakota.”

“Fletcher.”

He opens his eyes with a deep, rumbling groan. I hold him there, thighs clamped tightly around his waist, body pulsing around him with desperate want.

“I want your bond,” I say. “Not because I need you to protect me or because I’m afraid. It’s not even because they might come for me. None of that matters right now.”

His breathing turns ragged.

“I want it because I’m choosing you, Scar,” I say. “Because you’ll stand between me and the world without standing over me.”

His control snaps then. Snaps, tears apart, and shreds itself up into little tiny pieces. But it doesn’t snap into taking. It snaps with the glorious sound of surrender.

He kisses me once, hard and shaking, then he thrusts deep. His knot locks instantly, slotting inside my body and fusing us together with a feeling that bursts from my core and spreads all through me with a wave of pleasure.

I cry out against his mouth as the stretch turns full and final, my body clamping down around him. He only pulls back enough to sink his teeth into my throat at the same time, slightly below Kaito’s mark, a third claim burning into skin already aching with proof.

The bond drops into place like earth after falling.

Solid.

Warm.

Unmoving.

Not a chain or a wall sealing me in. It’s very much a wall with a door. A door with my hand on the latch and the key tucked in my pocket.

Fletcher groans into my throat, body shuddering over mine as his release pulses deep. I come with him, hard enough that everything but Fletcher disappears from around me, hard enough that all I know is his weight held carefully above me, his knot locked inside me, his bite in my skin, and the solid rush of cedar and leather filling a place in my chest that had been waiting without telling me.

The bond settles slowly, heavy in the best way. Like a lifted shield held at my side. Not in front of my face and not around my throat. Right next to me where I can reach it. Where I can put it down if I need to.

Fletcher licks the bite once, then stills like even that might be too much, another one of those chesty groans vibrating out of him. I reach up and trace the scar on his cheek with my thumb, my touch soft. The first time I saw it, I genuinely thought it made him look dangerous. I wasn’t exactly wrong, I just didn’t know then that dangerous could choose where to stand.