Ch. 29

The house was the deadest it had been in weeks, every room emptied of all but the gnawing sense of a new order. Even the wolves downstairs had gone quiet, as if afraid of incurring their successors’ wrath by making a sound. Carolina and Xander threaded the steps up toward the alpha’s floor, their footsteps the slowest thunder.

He unlocked his door. It was a utilitarian space, desk, bed, and a closet still half-packed and unpacked from moves he’d never committed to. She crossed the threshold and hovered near the window, arms folded. Xander watched her, leaned back against the door like he wasn’t sure if this was the right play, only that it was the only one left.

She turned. “You going to brood all night, or do you want the rest of your prize?”

He blinked, half-wild, then grinned with an awkwardness that was somehow dead-on charming. “I think you’d tear my throat out if I said ‘mine’ two more times tonight.”

“Try me,” she said.

The first kiss crashed through her—nothing careful, just the tidal force of two people who’d run out of things to lose. Xander’s hands were huge, everywhere. He pressed her back against the window and kissed her until her teeth ached; she broke away and bit the edge of his jaw, hard enough to leave him striped and grinning.

They found the bed backwards, tumbling, Xander’s hands under her shirt. She yanked it off herself, impatient with the slow burn, and let him map her ribs with his knuckles. He was gentler than she’d expected, tracing the bruise at her side with almost reverence. She arched up and pulled his face to her chest, and he took the hint, mouth closing over her nipple. He sucked and grazed it with his teeth, the bright sting of it making her gasp, and then did the same to the other side, licking the dark skin until it shivered beneath him.

She let him have his moment, then tangled her fingers in his hair and dragged his mouth to her stomach, to the prize she’d denied him for weeks of fight and flight. He gazed up at her, some last flicker of question in his eyes, and she nodded. Please, said her hand on his crown.

He ate her like a wolf: relentless, patient, clever. She felt herself dissolving into the sheets, every sound she made echoing back through the hollow house. Xander kept at her until she bucked, her thighs locked around his ears, and she hiccuped a laugh after, wiping her palm across her nose.

He came up grinning, mouth glossy. “You taste like iron and honey.”

She licked his bottom lip, caught the taste, then shoved him onto his back. She wanted to mark him, to own him, so she bit down hard on his collarbone, right where the others could see. He groaned and arched and she dragged her nails down the line of his obliques, all the way to his waistband, leaving bright red shadows.

He reached for her, but she batted his hand away and straddled him, bare now, every part of her a dare. He watched her, not the way a man watched, but the way a wolf did: no surprise in her strength, only awe for the shape of it. She guided him in slow, the first push making him hiss, and then rode him for all the years she’d wanted something she could never name. He took her hips in his palms and let her set the pace, only taking over when her legs started to fail.

She flipped them, and he thrust into her, slow at first, then frantic. She clawed at his back and felt his control snap. He bit her shoulder, low and deep, where the Luna mark would live. She screamed, less in pain than in relief, as he finished inside her, the bond spiking hot and red through her blood. He didn’t stop, even as she shook and convulsed, didn’t let go until she’d come again, until all that remained was the taste of salt and the sound of their names in each other’s mouths.

After, Xander gathered her up, the sheets a useless tangle. They lay tangled, spent, his lips at her nape, her legs still trembling.

She whispered, “I love you,” and it scared her so badly she almost jerked away. He said it back, like it was just a fact, and she let it happen, let it root through her.

Sleep came for them—slow and animal, then all at once. If there were ghosts in the house, they kept to themselves that night.