Page 60 of Veil of Night & Flames

His cock strained against his jeans as he let the movie play. Cora in his lap, knees bracketing his thighs, her skin hot, her clothes somewhere on his floor. Her mouth on his throat. Her hands in his hair. The low laugh she gave him when he tried to be gentle, and she didn’t want gentle.

He rubbed his palm along the hard line of his cock through the denim and let the fantasy run.

And then the heat changed.

It rose up underneath the fantasy like a tide lifting a boat off the sand—taking him somewhere he hadn’t steered. The want in him doubled, then doubled again, and somewhere in there it stopped being his. It was bigger than his. Wilder.

It had no patience in it, none of his careful control, just a vast and total craving that poured into him from somewhere outside and drowned the line between his body and the feeling until there was no line at all.

He should have stopped. Some far-off part of him knew the heat was coming from the wrong direction—that this wasn’t his to feel.

He didn’t stop.

He couldn’t. It felt too damn good.

Because it wasn’t a fantasy anymore. It was happening to him. Hell, it was in him, as real as anything his own body had ever done. The slow drag of pleasure building low in his gut, the unbearable tightening, the sensation of being buried deep and held tight. The sublime sensation of moving, of skin against skin, and a warm, wet heat. Hell, it was like a wet dream but without the dream. With no pictures at all—just the pure, drowning, full-body fact of it, the pleasure of a man inside the woman he wanted, climbing toward a release that Chase felt in his own spine, his own balls, his own clenched fists, as surely as if he were the one moving.

It was, in fact, almost too much, and he fumbled to unbutton his jeans and wrap his hand around himself. Time to stop pretending this was his fantasy. This was more, and consuming, and all he could do was ride it.

The wild heat carried him, redoubling on itself, cresting higher than his slow strokes had any right to take him, the need building past anything he’d ever built alone in the dark, and Cora was the center of all of it, his Cora, conjured out of his own longing to fit the shape of the pleasure pouring through him, and he wanted her, needed her, felt himself impossibly close to having her.

His whole body went rigid. For half a heartbeat, the wrongness of it surfaced, and then the wave broke over him, and he didn’t care about the wrongness or anything at all. He arched up off the couch as it tore through him, harder than he’d come in longer than he could remember, and he cried out her name, lost in a mind-blowing cloak spun of lust and love.

He came back to his senses slowly, rolling to reach for her and pull her against his chest the way he always did after—and his hand closed around nothing.

He was alone. His hand in his open jeans, his heart slamming, the book on the floor where it had fallen. He wasn’t inside her. He hadn’t been at all. And yet he knew it wasn’t a fantasy.

It was a connection.

Mine.

A feeling, not a word. But Chase heard it anyway—a word filled with a satisfaction that wasn’t his, riding pleasure that he’d only piggy-backed on. A pleasure shared with the woman he loved.

He sat up. His hands had gone steady. The heat was gone, drained out of him with the thing that had hijacked it, and in its place was a cold, clean clarity.

He understood it now. The blood. His brother’s blood.

Their blood.

They’d shared that blood for longer than any human could contemplate. And now, it seemed, they shared it again. And in that moment, he knew exactly what was happening less than a mile away while he sat alone in his apartment with his hand in his jeans.

Something hard and cold rose up inside him. She’d agreed to the betrothal to save Chase’s life. That didn’t make her Adric’s, though. Not by a long shot.

And Chase was going to make sure she understood that very, very completely.

He buttoned his jeans, got to his feet, and headed for the door.

Chapter

Eighteen

Igrimace when I hear the snick of the lock. I love Tia, but she’s supposed to be at Riley’s now, and I just want privacy to revel. And wonder what the hell I’m going to say to Chase when I see him. Because Adric isn’t a secret I can keep. And even though I’ve been above board about wanting both men, I’m not sure either of them really gets that I mean it.

“I’m crashing early,” I call to Tia as the door opens. I start to roll onto my side, only to sit bolt upright when I hear, “No, you’re not,” in that much deeper, all-too-familiar voice.

“Chase.” I sit up, pulling the blanket against me, suddenly aware of every inch of skin under the sleep shirt I’d just pulled on. “What are you—you can’t just⁠—”

“The hell I can’t.” He shuts the door behind him with a control that’s worse than slamming it, then moves to stand at the foot of my bed and looks at me—just looks at me. Except this isn’t a man I know. This isn’t Patient Chase or Tender Chase or even Dark-and-Broody-Pass-Cora-to-her-Betrothed Chase.