Page 258 of What We Burn

“So we wait.”

“We wait.”

We tell Dean Amy is asleep before we leave. He promises to stay close and call the second she wakes.

In the car, I look up at the apartment window. The blue flicker of the television moves behind the drawn curtains.

Amy is asleep behind a locked door. Milo is home recovering. Fenrir has a bag full of dead men’s devices, and Odin has put the Hangmen on ice.

Stephen might be dead.

He might not.

And until Odin comes back, our job is to sit still and try to live with not knowing.

SIXTY-FIVE

SAGE

“Fuck—right there. Don’t stop!”

Holden doesn’t stop. Holden never stops when I tell him not to. It’s one of the few areas of his life where he takes direction without question, and the dedication he brings to it deserves a medal. If there are awards for skillful, controlled, mind-blowing orgasms, this man would sweep the podium.

He’s got my hands pinned over my head, loose but unbreakable, his forearms bracketing my face, knee wedging my thighs apart enough to let him work. I’m on my back and he’s on me, inside me, sweat slick and relentless with the measured focus of someone running a very specific experiment in “how much pleasure can one woman take before she snaps in two?”

I’m close. That edge is right there, and he knows it because my breath is coming too fast and my entire body is locked around him, my ankles crossed behind his ass, trying to pull him even deeper.

“Holden—”

I gasp, but he shuts me up with a bruising kiss, tongue hot and inescapable.

We’re on my bed. My old bed, in my old room, in the apartment that still smells of new paint and carpet from where the guys erased all evidence of one of the worst nights of my life—I hate that I have a few to choose from.

Every time he thrusts, the headboard knocks the wall. I want it to stop, I want it to last forever, I want his voice in my ear the way it was a second ago—steady, ruthless, like he’s reminding me with every inch that this is how he loves. With discipline. With hunger. With a control that borders on violence and is never, ever anything but safe in his arms.

“Fuck, you feel good, wildcat,” he grunts, trailing his mouth down my throat and sucking lightly on my pulse.

He goes harder, deeper, and my body bows under him, back arching so hard my vision stars. The headboard’s rhythm is a metronome for every flick of his hips. There’s a trembling underneath me, in me, needier than it’s ever been, like my whole nervous system is tuned to the frequency of him.

“You gonna come for me, wildcat?” he mutters, barely more than a rumble against my jaw. I could lie, but there’s no point. He already knows.

“Y-yes⁠—”

The word gets cut off by the heat in my stomach blooming outward, ripping pleasure through me so sharp I bite his shoulder to stay anchored to the world. Holden’s groan is immediate, primal. He takes my jaw in one hand, as if to look me in the eye even as the quake hits, and his own release follows—tight and buried so deep inside me I feel the hot pulse of it.

I don’t know how long I drift, heart still crashing, Holden’s body heavy and perfect over mine. His mouth finds my cheek, my throat, the corner of my lips—softer now, almost apologetic for the onslaught. Our sweat is a shared ecosystem. At some point, he lets my wrists go, and I bring my hands down, threading my fingers through his hair and feeling the pulse beneath his skin.

“You alive?” he murmurs, barely above a breath. His voice is frayed but with an edge of pride.

“Give me a minute,” I say, and he laughs, the vibration shuddering through both of us. He rolls off, but stays close. An arm slung across my waist. His other hand traces over the lines of my ribcage, the faint aftermath bruise where Tyler’s grip left a finger-paint disaster across my skin.

His hand goes still on my ribs, and his energy shifts.

“Holden?”

He doesn’t answer. His eyes are fixed on the ceiling. “Camera,” he says, and a smirk pulls at the corner of his mouth. “I remember the first time you turned that thing on.”

I shift so I’m lying beside him, looking up at the camera and remembering the show I put on for all of my guys. “From my understanding, it was quite the circle jerk.”