Page 16

Luna
The descent is steep. Too steep. The kind of fuck-you, hope-you-have-good-balance kind of steep that makes my stomach lurch as the wraith horse angles downward. Which means, unfortunately, or maybe horrifically fortunately, I have to lean back.
Straight into Elias.
I brace myself, expecting a snide remark. A joke. A taunt. But what I get instead is,
“Oh, fuck me.”
It’s not loud. Not meant to be heard. Just a soft, strangled whisper under his breath.
And that’s when I notice, He’s tense. Not his usual, lazy, smug kind of tension. No, this is something else entirely. His entire body has gone stiff behind me, muscles locked, like I’ve just triggered some kind of full-body catastrophic shutdown.
And,Oh. Oh.
I shift slightly, just enough to confirm what I already know. He’s hard. Under my ass. I cannot fucking believe this. A strangled sound vibrates against the back of my head, his head. Elias is malfunctioning in real-time, the heat of his body radiating into my spine, his hands clenched around the reins.
I should move.
I don’t.
Not because I want to stay here. Not because my brain is suddenly providing me with a very detailed, very graphic mental image of exactly what he looks like under all that infuriatingly casual, slouchy clothing. Not because I just realized, for the first time, that Elias is…
Muscular.
Like, properly muscular. Not in an overdone, look-at-me way, but in a lean, effortless way that says I don’t work out, I just exist like this. And fuck me, he smells good. Like cedar and smoke and something sharper, something that shouldn’t be attractive but somehow is.
I blame Silas. It has to be his influence. His bond twisting inside me, changing me, corrupting me from the inside out. Because there is no fucking way I am sitting here, fully aware of how hard Elias is against me, and not moving.
Another wheezing breath from behind me. I glance over my shoulder just enough to catch a glimpse of his face. Big mistake. His jaw is clenched so tightly it looks painful, eyes squeezed shut like he’s actively praying for death.
I arch a brow. “You good back there?”
“No.” His voice is wrecked.
I grin. Darkly. “What’s the problem?” I press, just to be an asshole about it.
He inhales sharply, exhaling through his teeth. “The problem is that you’re sitting on my dick, Evernight.”
I hum, tilting my head like I’m considering this. “Sounds like a you problem.”
His breath catches. I feel it. Oh, this is fun. I shift just slightly, just enough to make him suffer, and the noise he makes. A barely-contained, almost guttural sound, like he’s using every ounce of self-restraint he has not to buck up into me.
I grin wider. “Something wrong, Elias?”
“I hate you.”
He doesn’t sound convincing.
I turn back around, facing forward, still not moving.
“Sure you do.”
The hill levels out beneath us.
Elias shifts back. So, naturally, I move with him. His whole body locks up. A sharp inhale, a barely contained noise in the back of his throat, something between a whimper and an exorcism, before he growls, low and strained, “Evernight.”
I hum, tilting my head. “Yes?”