Page 38 of Love's Ace

I needed to tell him I was fine.

I needed to tell him to get the fuck out of my bed and go back to his own.

Instead, I turned my body to his and slid my fingers through the cum on my skin. They came away sticky and warm, and I painted that mess on his stomach when I touched him.

I lifted it and slid my fingers to his wings again, stroking the mixture of our pleasure onto their base until Wren’s body gave another little shiver and I felt his cock twitch.

I settled there, with my arm wrapped around him.

Ineededto tell him to go.

Instead, I closed my eyes so I didn’t have to look at him as I spoke, because there was every chance he’d be the one to tell me to leave.

“Can you stay?”

I couldn’t breathe in the silence that followed the question, in how terrifying it was to open myself up even that much.

But Wren’s arm slid around me, pulling me close to him so he could yank the covers over us. He didn’t say anything until he had me settled against him, until his wings had folded back into his shoulders and I was pressed against his chest, caught up in the beat of his heart and the smell of our sex.

“I’ll stay.”

It was a whisper, barely audible.

And it was the sweetest thing anyone had ever said to me.

Chapter 15

Wren

Theo looked… soft whenhe slept. It was almost strange to think about the difference a few days made.

The first time I’d had him stretched out on a bed, he was tied to the posts and I was wondering if I could kill him without somehow sacrificing myself in the process.

Now, the only thing holding him wasme.

As much as I kept telling myself I needed to, as much as I knew Ihadto, I couldn’t make myself get up. He was wrapped around me like I was his only lifeline, and there was a softness to his face that I’d never seen before.

When Theo slept, I couldn’t see the monster inside him at all. When he slept, he was just soft brown hair and a face that was more angelic than it had any right to be. He was smooth skin and white scars that I hadn’t noticed before—above his brow, at the corner of his lip, one across the top of his cheekbone.

Like he’d been hit.

Like he’d been hurt.

Like I could see all the places the world had tried to break him, all the places that left him vulnerable to the Enmity. All the things that had somehow led him to me.

My eyes trailed down to the thread between us—that haze of pink was gone now, lust replaced with a deep red. We hadn’t even really fucked and the connection was solidified. Whatever hope I was holding onto, whatever silly idea that the Ardor would fade—and the line with it—was gone. It had been over twenty-four hours, and the crimson was so deep it nearly hurt to look at it. The line was so dark it looked like we’d known each other our entire lives.

It wasn’t going to fade.

My fingers twitched, smoothing along Theo’s back in a slow motion that made him turn into me. When he wasn’t awake and trying to tear my throat out, he seemed so hungry for my touch. He nuzzled my throat like my pulse was the only thing giving him the ability to breathe, and I traced the line of his back where dark wings would sprout if the transformation from human to monster completed and he became a full Enmity.

Just touching him there made me shudder—I’d let him touchmy wings. He’d held them in his hands so tightly I wouldn’t have been able to get away if he’d tried to rip them free.

And the feel of his fingers in my feathers…

Fuck. I forced myself to take a deep breath. I’d given in to his need last night—it was why I’d let him touch me like that. But I couldn’t keep telling myself that if I got hard just thinking about him stroking my wings with gentle fingers. I couldn’t tell myself it was Theo and his darkness—my desire to keep him from transforming, my self-preservation—that forced me to let it happen… not if I got so riled up thinking about it that I had to admit I could have gotten off on him stroking my wings alone.

I’d never let anyone touch them before.

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