Page 69 of Final Drive

He moves faster, the control giving out at last. His knot swells with every thrust until the stretch sits right on the line, and his breathing goes ragged at my neck. I can feel him fighting the instinct to bite, feel the whole of him locked down where he’s pressed against my shoulder.

It builds from somewhere deep, slower than the others, coiling tighter with every stroke. When it breaks it’s the biggest thing I’ve felt tonight. I cry out into the sheets and his knot locks us together as he comes with a broken sound.

“Now,” I manage. “Eli, now.”

His teeth go into the curve of my neck, opposite Jackson’s mark, and the bond opens like a door thrown wide.

I feel him come through it. Not only where our bodies are joined. In my blood and behind my eyes and everywhere at once. He’s there alongside the others, and it’s exactly what I knew it would be.

Still water. Deep and calm and clear all the way down.

He groans against the bite, tongue soothing the broken skin, hips jerking through the last of it. We’re locked together and both of us are shaking, and he rolls us carefully onto our sides and keeps me against him.

“Okay?” His voice is wrecked.

“More than okay.” I reach up and touch the mark, the raised edges of it, the tenderness. “It’s perfect.”

His arms tighten, and his relief washes through the new bond so clearly I almost laugh. Under all that analysis and control, he’d been genuinely afraid I wouldn’t choose him.

“Four bonds,” I say.

He’s quiet a second. “One past the threshold. Tyler will be unbearable about it.”

“You’re allowed to be pleased.”

“I’m extremely pleased. I’m also aware the number isn’t why you did it.”

“No. It isn’t.”

He presses his lips to the bite and the bond hums between us.

“I should tell you something.” He pauses long enough that I know he’s arranging it before he gives it to me. “I don’t think I’m ever going to need this the way some people do. The frequency, I mean. That’s never been the part that matters most to me.”

“What does?”

“Being known accurately by somebody.” His fingers move over mine. “And knowing them the same way.”

“That’s not a problem to solve.”

“No?”

“No.” I bring his hand up and kiss his knuckles. “We work out what it looks like for us. We’ve got time.”

He pulls me closer and I tuck my head under his chin. The new bond settles alongside the others, and every one of them is its own thing. Jackson’s runs fierce and low behind my ribs. Beckett’s is warm and quick at the edges. Zane’s is bright, sunlight coming through glass.

And Eli’s. Still water, deep enough to go under in, and I’m not afraid of going under.

“Eli?”

“Hmm?”

“Thank you for waiting. For letting me come to you.”

He kisses my hair. “Thank you for seeing me.”

I close my eyes. Tomorrow there are complaints to file and people to fight. Right now there’s a storm on the windows and a man breathing against the back of my neck, and I don’t want to be anywhere else.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN