Page 223 of These Tears

‘Wanting is good,’ I murmur, ‘ordering is not.’

He goes rigid before he relaxes again. His breath fans over my neck as my heart beats the last of my sense away.

‘The chains are off,’ he says quietly, ‘the wound is cleaned, the clothes are on.’

His eyes travel down to my mouth as he abandons the apple on the table.

‘And?’ I ask.

A muscle works in his jaw as his other hand coils around me and he turns me slowly around to face him.

‘Can I kiss you, Leah?’

‘Mm,’ I echo. ‘Can you?’

We lean into each other.

He deliberates through a few uneven breaths as I tip up my chin. His eyes search mine, then my mouth, as if checking for the first sign that want has become something wrong.

My palm snakes up his thigh to answer his uncertainty.

It will take time.

Old stains won’t wash out because I kissed him once in a room made of wood and iron and told him to stop chaining himself to the past.

And then… he begins humming the tune I’ve heard so many times.

I tilt my head, frowning at him as his eyes keep roaming my face, his palms scorching over my tracksuit.

‘What is that?’ I ask.

He stops just to say, ‘It’s an old song.’ Then he dips his head to my neck and inhales. My eyes close on their own at the scrape of his beard over my pulse. ‘Join Me in Death. By HIM.’

My brows gather before I can help it. ‘That is a deeply macabre choice for a post-wolf-attack, self-chaining, impending-birthday-party kind of afternoon.’

The corner of his mouth moves against me as he smiles weakly. ‘You asked.’

The rest of my cleverness slips out of reach as his lips begin a slow ascent up my neck with a patience that I almost resent. A kiss beneath my ear. A kiss along the tendon. Another pressed into the pulse he has already ruined.

I lose a breath. Try to hold on to the next.

His hand shifts at my waist, hesitant in its search. It’s not long before his fingers find the small gap where my top has ridden up at the small of my back.

My arms come around him softly, then tighter. Fingers climbing up the back of his sinewy neck until his hair starts curling around the tips.

His first touch spreads directly over my spine and I still. He does, too.

His palm rests there like a question for a suspended second. Heat seeps from him into me, and back. I feel every callus, every tremor, every inch of control he is trying to keep between want and taking.

With my hands still in his hair, I guide his mouth to mine.

The kiss starts soft enough to frighten me. A brush. A breath. Fragile people avoiding wounds. His fingers spread over my skin, mine tighten in his hair, and whatever remains of the room loosens around us.

The table, the apple, the remainder of blood outside, the wolves, the chains, the moans…

There’s just the heat of his mouth and the devastating way he lets me finally pull him closer.

The low growl of engines tears through the hush outside. I’m not even sure I hear it.