Page 85 of Fearless

Thepowerof him. He was strong beyond comprehension. Each time, each new position, left her stunned and marveling. Left her melting and reeling.

It was raw and savage, the way he took her up against the wall. He pounded into her, boiling with the primal lust her egging-on had brought up in his blood.

Ava pressed her head back and dug her fingers into his shoulders, her breath a high whining sound she didn’t recognize, the pleasure just as desperate as the act itself.

He cursed as he came, his hands locking onto her ass, body bowing with the force of climax.

Ava almost swooned as her own orgasm tackled her.

For a long moment, they panted and spasmed and waited for their breath to stop pluming like smoke.

When Mercy finally withdrew, he lowered her slowly to her feet, kept an arm around her as she swayed.

“Baby,” he said, and he sounded drunk. “C’mere.”

She squinted, in the dark, and finally realized what she was looking at. He’d pulled his shirt all the way up, his golden skin silver beneath the moon, the shadows carved deep between the pads of muscle.

“What?” Her brain wasn’t working right; it was on a delicious post-coital vacation.

“Bite me.”

She shook her head, trying to clear it. “What?”

One hand held his shirt up out of the way, and the other cupped the back of her head, brought her face in close to his chest, until she drew up on her tiptoes and was eye-to-eye with the smooth skin covering his heart. “I want you to bite me. Right here.”

“Are you serious?”

“Very.”

Ava tried to take a step back, but he held her fast. “Mercy–”

“Just do it.” His voice was ragged now. “Please, Ava, just because I asked.”

Like she’d asked to be done up against the wall.

Fair enough.

She leaned in – salty smell of his skin, faint whiff of the soap in his shower, salt on her tongue – parted her lips, and set her teeth against his pec.

“Hard,” he instructed. “Leave a mark.”

She glanced up at him from beneath her lashes, saw the harsh line of his jaw tensed, the intensity of his black eyes fixed to her mouth, and her stomach turned over, heat filling her again.

She put pressure, felt his skin dent beneath her teeth.

His hand pressed the back of her head. “Harder.”

She hesitated.

“You won’t hurt me.” In a low, dark voice: “I want you to draw blood.”

She clamped down,hard. The copper tang of blood hit her tongue and she drew back, licking her lips, the blood-taste moving deeper into her mouth, down her throat.

Mercy didn’t even flinch. He leaned down and kissed her, and she wondered if it tasted the same to him, like the realest thing in the world.

**

Suspicion was acidic, eating one drop at a time at a person’s sanity and confidence. But suspicion only got you so far. Maggie had suspected for days now that there had been a tidal shift between Mercy and Ava, some line crossed that had changed everything; shoved all the old affection and trust into boiling, deeper waters that would drown them or burn them. She wasn’t a tenth as oblivious as Ghost – she’d seen that propensity in Mercy from the get go, years ago, the way he wanted something shiny and special to keep in his pocket.

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