Page 43 of Monster Queen Rising

He's out at the truck when I find him, parked under the equipment lean-to at the back of the property, out of the security lights. He's not doing anything. He's standing at the driver's door with his hand on the frame and his head down, and the bond between us is pulled so tight it's singing, and I understand it before he says a word — he had a round go through the glass a foot from where I was sitting tonight, and he drove for hours steady.

"That was close," he says. Not to me. To the truck.

"I know."

"Foot to your left." His hand tightens on the frame. "I heard it go past you and I kept driving because that's the job, and I can't anymore."

I don't tell him to come here. I turn him, put my hand flat on his chest, and back him into the seat. He goes. I scoot him to the middle. He moves where I want him — that's the thing about Dean, the control's a choice, and he's setting it down for me — and I climb up into the cab after him and pull the door shut andput myself over his lap, knees either side of his thighs, and the second I settle my weight on him the level face is gone for good.

"Jen." Wrecked, low.

"I'm here. We're here now. We're both in this truck."

His hands come up my back under the flannel, spread wide, pressing me down into him like he needs the weight to believe it. His forehead drops to my collarbone. I feel his heart going hard under my hand, faster than his face ever let on all night, the truth of it finally showing.

I take his face and bring it up and kiss him, and it's not slow this time — the adrenaline's in it, in both of us, and he kisses me back like he's been holding his breath since the driveway. His hands drop to my hips and pull. I grind down against him through the denim, slow, and he makes a sound into my mouth that he'd never let out with his hands on a wheel.

"Off," I tell him.

I get one leg out of my jeans and shove his down far enough, and he's already there, already hard, and when I get my hand around him he'sbig— bigger than I've braced for, thick and hot in my palm and heavier at the base than the top, a swell there my fingers don't quite close around. My body registers it before my head does. This is going to be a lot.

I line him up and start to sink down.

He stretches me open slow, because he has to — I'm wet, soaked, and it's still not enough, and I have to take him by inches, my breath going ragged, working down onto him a little at a time while his hands lock on my hips and shake with how hard he's holding still for me. Halfway and I have to stop. Breathe. He'severywhere, pressure to the edge of too much, and every time I move down he hits something deeper and my whole body lights with it.

"Dean —"

"Take it." Wrecked. His forehead against my throat. "You've got it. Take all of it."

I sink the last of the way down and the flare at his base catches as I take it, a stretch that punches the air out of me, and then I'm fully seated on him and we both stop breathing for a second.

Full. Too full. Exactly enough.

Then I move, and it hits me somewhere I don't have a name for, right up under where the pull lives, and every drag of him lights it brighter.

I ride him. Slow at first, my hands braced on his shoulders, his hands on my hips, just holding — and then not slow, because the thing running under both of us wants out, and grinding down onto him with the whole night's fear turning into this is the only thing either of us wants. The flare catches every time I come down on it, that stretch over and over, and I'm making sounds I can't stop and don't want to.

My head drops to his shoulder.

"Fuck Jen, so good," he whispers against my hair. "Right there. You take me so good."

His hands tighten on my hips. His control's gone — he's giving me all of it. He drives up as I come down and the flare drags at me on every stroke and it stops being something I'm doing to him and starts being something we're doing to each other, hard, the seat creaking, the windows gone gray with our breath.

I break on him, hard, forehead pressed to his, my whole body clenching down around the stretch of him — and he's a stroke behind, his hips driving up into me, the base swelling thicker as he goes so I feel every pulse of it, my name coming out of him rough and low, his arms wrapping all the way around my back and locking there like he's not going to let the truck, the road, the round through the glass, any of it, take me.

We stay like that. Him still in me, me folded down onto his chest, his heart slowing under my ear, both of us breathing the cab warm.

"I keep it level for the work," he says finally, quiet, his mouth in my hair. "I don't get to fall apart with a wheel in my hands. But I felt it. All of it. Every mile."

"You're mine. I've known it since the escape. Tonight I needed to have you before I could do anything else."

"Then hold me. Make me feel safe."

He does. He holds me in the dark of the cab under the lean-to.

The night is dark and there’sno moon. After dozing, I open my eyes, he's watching me. He brushes my hair back, kisses me once, quiet and certain, his hand at the back of my neck. "Get in the house. I’ve got a little more to get done tonight." Dean kisses me once more before he turns to reload the truck for our next mission.

As I walk up the front steps of the house, Thaw steps out onto the porch spilling the light from the house.