Page 25 of Fated to the Fang

That is enough. His hands tighten on my hips, holding me down, and holding himself steady. The first stroke of his mouth drags a sound out of me I would have swallowed from anyone else. He does it again, slower, and my fingers twist in the sheet.

An electric shock sensation rushes through me that I can't explain and his mouth follows the path his hands made—slow over my ribs, the soft of my stomach, the inside of my wrist where my pulse gives me away. I learn him back. The cool plane of his shoulders, the muscle that jumps when I drag my nails down it, the pause in his breath when I find the place that makes his careful hands strengthen around. Each time he pauses, and waits, like he's letting me set a pace. I put my mouth around his huge penis, and watch his reaction each time I move up and down. He pushes my head down and eyes me like I'm dangerous.

He eventually grabs a fistful of hair and pulls me back on the bed, climbing over me. He puts one finger on my clit, and I gasp, my eyes beg him to take me. I set my hand behind his neck and feel him shudder. "Take me," I breathe, and the control frays, his forehead drops to mine, and he slides his cock inside me. He moves with control, restrained even now like he's fearful he will hurt me. Each press measured against strength he isn't allowing me to feel. Our breath starts to become one of the same, the sea-sound rising under both our thoughts until I'm not sure whose pulse I'm hearing.

His name leaves me in pieces with each thrust, his hands grip the headboard and the wood groans loudly. Warmth rushes through me, all of it mine, while his body stays cool against me. I choose not to examine how badly I want the contradiction. The pressure behind my eyes gathers again, bright and strange, and for one suspended second I feel the sea under the floorboards, the cove breathing beneath us, his pulse too slow and mine racing hard enough for both of us.

The break in me is coming, I feel it build, and his cock expand inside me. My eyes roll and the pressure explodes out of me, images flash before me as I come like I'm seeing a future that doesn't exist. Exquisite. Mind-blowing.

I begin squirting all over his cock, and he follows with a groan that tears out of him. The headboard cracks beneath his hands with a sharp wooden snap and my nails dig hard into his skin. Our bodies shake together and I feel as though I've levitated off the bed and into a another world that can't be real.

I open my eyes, and the broken wood hangs above us in a jagged split. His hands still there as if trying to hide what I have already noticed. I say nothing. Not because I missed it. Because if I name one impossible thing, all the others will come with it, and instead I want his weight over me, his breath at my mouth, and the chosen truth of not being afraid.

He moves one hand to my cheekbone and one hand at my hip. He shuffles to one side and his arm stays heavy across me.

"You still won't be honest," I say.

"Not yet."

"Then this didn't fix anything."

"No." His thumb moves on my shoulder, once. "It didn't."

I should hate how little that is. Instead I place my hand flat over his heart, too slow, too even, a rhythm I can't make my own match. Past the glass, the orange coal is gone. I close my eyes and choose him anyway, and lie there knowing his secret is warm and enormous in the bed between us, waiting.

16

DORIAN

I'm three streets from the B&B and she's with me. Not physically. Not memory. A second pulse runs under my own, off-beat, hers—too fast, alive, a saltwater thread pulled taut behind my thoughts. A pressure I can't set down. The bond was a low thing before tonight. Manageable. Now it runs in me. We're connected. It is not a leash. I don't own that pulse. I only can't stop hearing it. Seeing the future set out by the bond.

Yesterday was not a mistake. But it was the end. She won't be able to keep that distance. That chance is slammed shut. She will know I'm different. From the cold or me. The wood. The hidden truth is slowly revealing.

Jasper Finch is on the docks before dawn, a cigarette burning low between two fingers and a torn net across his knee.

He looks at me once and then resumes the knots. "Valek."

"Finch."

"Bad night for walking."

"Bad night for smoking."

"That makes most nights bad." He tugs a line through the mesh. "Your lot always did like correcting other men's weather."

I stop. Jasper does not look up. That is why I listen.

"Say that again."

"I said weather." His hands keep moving, but his pulse changes. Old fear. Old stubbornness. "That's what they called it in Wrackmouth too. Bad weather. Strange tide. Gear failure. Same words every time someone comes back without half his evening, or doesn't come back at all."

"Wrackmouth."

"And Cobb's Landing. Gull Reach, if you believe dock talk. This harbor isn't special, Valek."

The bond pulls inside me, Avery's breath coming through mine from a distance. Her intuition would have her hearing that sentence and turning it into a map. Behind my eyes, my mind begins making the map she would.

Greer's office sits above the municipal records room, its windows dark, I don't break the frame, just the lock. The public files are where they should be. Tidy. Thin. Useless. The drawer beneath his desk is not.