Page 62 of Lucky or Knot
Fuck it, he wouldn’t care. I didn’t think.
Raven leaned his head on my shoulder in a way that pressed literally every button in the universe that a protective alpha who’d recently realized he was hopelessly in love could have, and then I was setting him down gently in the bathroom, flipping on the shower, and helping him undress.
The massive erection I’d grown in those couple of minutes couldn’t possibly have escaped his notice; my breath came fast and shallow, and my hands shook as I gently unbuttoned his shirt, tugged down the zipper on his trousers, knelt to ease one strappy sandal and then the other off of his bruised feet. But he didn’t remark on it, and when I set the second shoe aside and knelt up to tug his trousers down off his hips, his cock hadn’t stirred. I took a hint and didn’t touch it, but I did press a kiss to the mark on his thigh where he’d been grazed by flying concrete in the stairwell.
Steam billowed up around us, the heat of it already starting to soothe the last of my aches.
That was nothing to how deeply it soothed my most instinctive nature to slide Raven’s shirt off his shoulders, leaving him bare to me, and help him into the shower’s warmth and comfort.
Mine. Really mine, now that I’d disposed of that fuckingbastard who’d tried to own him, and had never shown a shred of worthiness of the honor.
Of course, I’d only done the easy part, hadn’t I? Made a fool of myself on a stage, taken some severe physical damage, and knocked Cunningham on his bleeding ass. Any dumb beast could’ve pulled that shit off.
“You were the real MVP tonight,” I said, the words coming out softly, mingled with the rush of the shower. I’d put Raven under the hot water, and he’d closed his eyes and tipped his head back to let it pour down through the mess of his hair. The water swirling down the drain was running brownish, mostly from where it hit me around his smaller body. Gross. Hopefully he’d think the shower was gross only because of tonight’s shenanigans, and not suspect the preexisting condition. “Getting away from him to come and find me was genius. And getting us out of there when I was incapacitated. And taking care of Louie. You think fast on your feet. Thank you for trusting me.”
He opened his eyes and blinked at me.
“You earned it,” he said simply, and sucked in a shuddering breath. Psyching himself up for something?
I tried to brace myself for what came next. Letting me down easy, possibly. Except that it wouldn’t be easy. If he tried to let me down now, it’d hurt worse than that fall in the stairwell. That, I’d healed from.
“I always assumed my way was the best way,” he said after a moment. “My people’s way. That everyone fends for himself, takes the consequences of bad decisions alone. We don’t—” His chest heaved with another convulsive deep breath. “We don’t love.” The words came out so quietly I almost didn’t understand what I’d heard. “That’s not something we do.”
Then it sank in.
And the tightening, twisting pain in my chest did, in fact,hurt worse than the fall. Yep. This was the fairy version of “it’s not you, it’s me.”
My arms shook with the need to pull him close and never let him go. I might lose my mind if I never kissed him again.
But Raven had just gotten away from one greedy, possessive alpha who didn’t care about what he wanted.
“You don’t need to explain,” I said, and I sounded like a robot, because if I let the slightest emotion seep into my voice, I’d lose my fragile grip on my self-control. “You don’t owe me anything. You own me, actually.”
“For the sake of your mortal sensibilities, I’d like to say I don’t really own you, but in order for the magic to work, it had to be real.” He went all shifty, gazing over my shoulder. “I don’t suppose you can feel it?”
“I can feel it. I’m always going to know where you are. Do you feel it too?”
His eyes snapped back to me. “And that doesn’t bother you? That you—that we’re—you’ll never be free of me!”
Maybe I hadn’t collapsed in tears, but that didn’t mean I was running on a long fuse, either. What I had left of my patience abruptly exploded.
“Okay, your kind doesn’t love,” I snapped, leaning forward into his space, wishing I could keep all the hurt and heartbreak inside, but knowing I’d lost that battle. “You won’t ever feel about me the way I feel about you. Fine. I fucking get it. And it’s all right, because I did everything because I love you, not because I expect you to love me. But do you not understand what it even means? In the abstract? Raven. I love you. Of course I don’t want to be fucking free of you! I want to mate you, and keep you, and never let you go, and I want you to want that too, except you can’t. Okay? It’s not complicated!”
He gazed up at me, long lashes glittering with water, lips parted. Like something out of a story, one of those water spiritsthat were so beautiful actual gods fell on their knees.
“Tony, ah. We don’t love, but we—that is, I mean, I—oh—”
One kiss, just one, bending my neck down so I could nip at his lower lip.
“Mmm. It’s not that, it’s not that I don’t know what love is, but I’m trying to—”
I didn’t want to hear it. He could toss me the rest of the way off the metaphorical cliff in a few minutes.
Another kiss, and he melted against me, tipped back over the arm that went around him without my conscious volition. When I pushed a thigh between his legs, he moaned, and now his cock had joined the party. Mine hadn’t ever gone down, and it stabbed him in the stomach without shame.
Raven pulled his mouth away, thrust against my leg, and bit the side of my neck, teeth sharper than a human’s, stinging, fucking perfect.
“That’s what you do, isn’t it?” he gasped, and nipped me again, and now it was my turn to tip my head back and groan, that bite zinging all the way down to my balls, weakening my knees. “Bite. To mate. To show how you feel. I can’t tell you the way you’d want, but I can show you, too, if you let me.”
