Page 47 of Veil of Night & Flames

I do, my eyes locking on his. Golden Eyes. The man I’ve loved since he rescued me from a freaky wolf-monster when I was fifteen years old. The man who almost died for me.

“Just us,” he says, somehow thrusting even deeper as I arch up to take him as deep as he can go.

For a second, neither of us moves. I just feel him—the fullness, the heat, the stretch of my body around him. His forehead drops to mine. His breath comes ragged against my mouth.

“I love you,” he whispers, and I let the words wash over me.

“I love you, too,” I say. “Tell me you know that.”

“I do.”

I believe him, but there’s something in the way he holds himself still, something tight and almost desperate, that tells me this isn’t only about our love. It’s about what I am to Adric now. What Chase wants, and what Adric will take. Or, worse, what I’ll willingly give him.

Chase knows that what’s happening in this bed with him will happen in another one, too. Another bed in another realm, with the man whose blood saved his life.

Worse, it will happen because I want it to.

Chase hasn’t said any of that. Not aloud. But it’s all there in the set of his jaw and the grip of his hands and the way he’s looking at me like he’s trying to brand himself onto every part of me at once—so that whatever I do later, wherever I go, I will always come back here. To him. To us.

Of course I will. The words are hard and certain in my head. But at the same time, I know what it costs him to love me with his brother standing in the wings, and the only thing I can give him as solace is all of me, right now, holding nothing back.

“Don’t leave.” His voice is barely there.

I curl more closely against him, but say nothing. I won’t make promises I can’t keep, so I tell him the only way I can. Touching and kissing until he’s hard again, then drawing him inside me once more to ride him hard and deep.

He groans, rough and low as I move slowly, doling out punishment and pleasure until he flips us so that I’m on my back and he’s moving in a way that makes me insane in the best possible way.

Slow at first, almost punishing in how good it is. A long drag out and a hard thrust back in as I moan and gasp and beg until there’s just the steady pounding of him into me, the bed rocking, his hand sliding under my rear to tilt me up so he hits something that makes me cry out with the kind of pleasure that pretends to be pain.

He knows my body like he knows his own. Exactly where and how and how hard, and he uses every bit of it—drawing back when I’m close just to feel me clench around him, then giving it back harder until I can’t do anything but hold on and take it.

“Mine,” he says against my throat.

“Yours,” I whisper, because it’s true right now in this room, with his weight pinning me and his cock buried in me and his pulse hammering where my mouth is pressed to his neck. He needs to hear it, and I need to say it, and neither of us thinks about how it’s only part of the truth. Because part is all we have tonight.

His control snaps, and the careful, contained man I know comes apart over me, his hips driving harder, his hand fisting in my hair, making the wildness climb higher and higher until I cry out his name when I explode, the orgasm tearing through me, my whole body locking around him and then breaking apart.

He follows me over a heartbeat later, spilling into me on a sound that’s half groan and half my name. I hold him through every shudder, my arms around his back, my legs around his hips, both of us slick and shaking and wrecked.

For a long moment, neither of us moves. His weight pins me to the bed, and I don’t want it gone. I can feel his heart slamming, slowing, steadying.

And in his soft embrace, I don’t let myself think about tomorrow, or the betrothal, or the man in another realm who owns just as much of my heart as the man in my arms.

Chapter

Fifteen

It’s about fifteen minutes from Chase’s apartment to the Science Center if you walk like a normal person, but I’m hoping it’s doable in ten for a girl who slept later than she meant to and is now powering across campus in yesterday’s clothes with no makeup, no fresh underwear, and exactly the same hair she had last night—only slightly brushed out to remedy Sex Hair.

It’s not that Chase didn’t try to wake me up. He did. But I told him I didn’t have a morning class, and he was naive enough to believe me.

So now I’m running, our quick kiss goodbye still lingering on my lips, and my hand clutching a notebook and pen Chase gave me because I don’t have any of my school stuff with me.

I’d thanked him, then taken off running. That kiss is now six minutes behind me, and Valdez will be starting class in five. In other words, I need to haul ass.

I jog faster, wishing I could text and run at the same time so I can clue Tia in on my whereabouts. She probably tracked my phone—we set that up a while back—but our deal is that we call if we’re staying out all night so the other doesn’t worry. And so that we can do the girly sharing thing if sex might be on the table.

That call is going to have to wait. She’ll forgive me, though. If I’ve learned anything about Tia, it’s that she’s incapable of staying mad about a sex thing. Unless it’s a stupid, idiotic sex thing, but I’m clear there. Chase has the Tia Seal of Approval.