~ CASIMIR ~We lay together for a long time in silence, both of us regaining our breaths. I prayed she was returning to her equilibrium better than I was. My body quivered with a strange joy and terror at the same time. And yet, I didn’t want to move. Didn’t want to break the spell she’d cast on me. Something flowed between us. Something that my heart ached for—and yet… I wanted to recoil from it.The tug of war was exhausting, but that just gave me more reason to stay there.I sighed heavily when she turned her head to face me and our noses almost touched. She stared at me with the same combination of joy and fear in her eyes that trembled in my chest.But as I shifted my weight so I wouldn’t crush her, a memory triggered in my mind.…laying in warm furs that stuck to the sweat on my back, her lush body under mine. Even her eyes smiled when she turned to look at me and combed the hair off my forehead with her long, elegant fingers.We both smiled. I’d never felt anything so simply, p

~ JESSE ~I didn’t need a drink. Or drugs. Dancing with Cazz was intoxicating all on its own.I’d been nervous when we arrived, hanging back a little. But he didn’t let go of my hand, and he kept the bond open, offering assurances and encouragement, pulling me immediately onto the dancefloor and beginning to move.‘Keep your mental defenses high—against everyone but me,’ he sent as we walked together into that sea of feral, writhing bodies.I’d already been doing the exercises Maya had taught me while we were walking there—envisioning the high walls surrounding me, peppered with gates and doors and windows… examining all of them, making certain they were locked and barred—except for the door that was Cazz.That one I left wide open.I swallowed as we were engulfed in that ocean of wolves, but I could feel Cazz growing more relaxed. And when he pulled me to him, his hands on my back, his body rippling, and encouraged me to just put my hands on his shoulders and move with him…It only t

~ CASIMIR ~I closed the space between us, tongue between my teeth, biting back the urge to just strip her bare and take her. There was so much opportunity here, I wanted to savor her.But while my heart pounded with anticipation, and her eyes held that heat for me, I could still scent her uneasiness, and sensed a self-consciousness in the bond that kept pulling her eyes towards the door, and made her movements stiff.A surge of frustration came, but I tamped it down, and instead kissed her, letting her feel my demand, but keeping it slow.It would be a unique challenge to compel her with skill rather than the power. To thrill her to the point that she forgot where we were, or what she was afraid of.I was up to the challenge.And so I set to my task, not breaking the kiss, but letting my hands roam all over her body, teasing, pressing, sliding, tracing lines to make her skin pebble and her small hairs rise.I listened for the moments her breathing picked up—or even better, caught and

~ JESSE ~There was a jolt of fear in him before he locked himself down. At first I thought he’d shut off the bond, but as I began to push up, intending to get off this ridiculous couch and talk to him, he kept that hand planted between my shoulder blades and shook his head—and never dropped eye contact.‘I’m still here, I’m just…’I could feel his fear, I realized. Feel the way he wanted to squirm with the discomfort of that little honesty. It made my heart swell.“Cazz, what are your boundaries?” I murmured, wanting to reach for him, but sensing that he might actually bolt if I did.His brows pinched, and he tilted his head with a strange smile. “I'm going to bind you, and you're asking my boundaries?” “Yes.”He huffed, shaking his head. “You always find a way to surprise me, Jesse.”“Good.”He huffed again, then started to stand up. But I grabbed his hand and yanked him back down.“Don’t deflect. Answer the question.”He stared at me warily, but he didn’t fight me, and settled bac

~ JESSE ~ There was a moment, twenty minutes in, when I was so buried in need, so frantic for him, I almost wanted to cry. The drive within me was so strong I couldn’t think about anything else. Everything disappeared, but Cazz and the incredible sensations he was wringing from me. And he was still only teasing me, though his breathing was so harsh it rivaled the thud of the bass vibrating in the walls around us. It occurred to me as I leaned back against the bonds as Cazz passed over me again, that this feeling was why every man in my life had always been so ridiculously fixated on sex. Was this what it was like for a guy all the time? Cazz had long since unzipped my skirt and pulled it off because it kept bunching under my thighs, but I was still wearing my bra, and frustrated because it muffled the sensations of my nipples against the couch as he drew patterns on the insides of my thighs with something so soft it rivaled the furs on his bed, letting it brush against my core at