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“If you can still bullshit, I did it wrong,” he muttered, sliding his cock through my slick folds. “No more secrets,” he repeated, notching the head of his dick at my entrance. Ravenous citrines landed on my face, expectant.

“No more secr⁠—”

He cut off my confirmation with a thumb against my clit. The delicious stretch as he inched inside me, one piercing at a time, had my head lolling back against the wood. And then he was moving, thrusting into me like a man undone, giving me little in the way of time to adjust. I needed the pain, needed the ache and stretch, needed the feeling of being wanted—needed—so desperately it hurt. Those tiny steel balls on his Jacob’s ladder were god’s gift to women, because oh my god⁠—

My nails dug into the edges of the narrow table, desperate for purchase as he invaded me wholly—equal parts exquisite agony and unbelievable pleasure.

When he had the control to slow down, I relished every single bar of that piercing as it slid against my slick walls. When he didn’t, I just hung on for dear life. With a snarl, Cyrus shifted, throwing my legs over his shoulders so he could get deeper, the angle more ruthless as he filled me entirely. Grip firm on my thighs, I wrapped my own hands around his wrists, egging him on as he jackhammered into me.

Head bowed back, body floating in space, I only realized I’d been screaming his fucking name when my throat ached.

“That’s right, Freya. Tell every motherfucker in this manor exactly who you fucking belong to.”

“Cyrus,” I panted as he swelled against my walls. Every stroke moving us closer—to release, to each other, to the bond now vibrating in my chest.

“Come, chérie,” he ordered, folding me in half like a fucking pretzel. Why was it so damn sexy to be manhandled like that? When I snapped my gaze to his, I found something unspoken staring back at me. Something we’d both buried for the sake of survival. But those citrines might as well have been a mirror for how bluntly they reflected everything I couldn’t say. Cyrus was here. With me, in every physical and ethereal sense of the word. Through everything we’d survived, he was choosing me—to do this life together, to merge body and soul with each powerful rock of his chiseled hips. Seeming to sense my own thoughts, he demanded, “Come with me, beautiful girl.”

I did. His thrusts turned sporadic, and I shattered around him as though his words held my pleasure at their command.

“Fuck—yes—Freya,” he snarled as he twitched inside me. Cyrus slipped out of me, wrapping his fist around his cock to give it a firm stroke. Hot ropes of cum painted my skin, a cocky smirk slanting his features. Shocked, my mouth hung open as I watched his release spurt across my skin beneath the rough jerks of his hand. Filthy. Marking me. Claiming me. I relished the primal symbol of it. Gasped as his fingers came to the hot, sticky mess, rubbing his release into my skin, ragged inhales lifting his chest.

“I accept,” he breathed.

“What?” I gasped, mouth still agape as I watched his fingers slide through his cum.

“You said you didn’t want to accept our bond until I knew everything. You keepin’ any other secrets?” When I shook my head, his smile softened. “Then I accept.”

“You’re mine?”

He smirked, tracing a lazy line around my breast, as though we had all the time in the world. “From the moment you spat in my face in that warehouse.”

EIGHTY-TWO

HELEN

CYRUS

Rapture.

I wrapped my hand around Freya’s slender throat, amused when she just smiled at me. Tilted her chin. Invited me deeper, my palm tightening. So I did. Pinned her to the fucking table beneath me, cock still pulsing inside her as her walls fluttered, milking every drop of release from me. The answering hunger that flashed in her hazel-lined jades told me I wasn’t the only one left unsated. Not for lack of pleasure. For lack of her.

I’d thought myself a connoisseur of sensation: elaborate hallucinogens I swore tapped into dimensions beyond ours; well-grown herb to slow my mind enough to digest the endless barrage of thoughts; the richest liquor to numb my fucking mother’s grating demands—and the grief after those demons tore Charles apart.

Hell, Cali and Jo had perfected tinctures that made this world seem so blessedly distant it ceased to exist. After we lost our brother, I’d spent a decent amount of time floating somewhere outside myself. If death was something a soul could easily achieve, I would’ve put a bottle to my heart and pulled the goddamn trigger years ago.

When sobriety was a prerequisite of my agenda, I’d buried myself in books and the work of it. When it hadn’t, I’d found a woman or two to smother the inferno with.

Across every experiment human or soul could think of, there’d never been a fix like Freya.

This wasn’t in my blood; no, this clever little soul had burrowed her way deeper, my marrow suddenly her home, my chest the container for a bond that was more force of nature than sappy poetry. Cruel as fate could be, there was no reality harsher than this: never again would the world be safe if it compromised her.

Unlike August, I’d have no qualms wearing their bones as fucking armor.

As our eyes locked, her mouthwatering breasts rising and falling with ragged breaths, I thought of both his agony and his restraint, and resolved to break the next motherfucker that got between him and his mate.

Because this was the kind of sensation that could crush a man to dust. This was what sent illogical dumbasses to war—launched fleets of ships.

Worse yet, I saw it staring back at me: that same resolve, that irrational, overwhelming desire to lock each other behind stone walls with a legion between us and the world beyond. Between her and every threat at our doors.