Page 41 of A Token of Blood and Betrayal (Kennedy Rain #4)

He was the kind of beautiful that only existed in fairy tales, in the stories that came with warnings and consequences scribbled into the margins.

He was all fallout and heartbreak wrapped up with cutting ribbons of gold, and he was just a man, quiet and powerful, a wild that was close enough to touch.

He shouldn’t have been there. He should have been furious with me for what I’d said, for threatening his alpha and forcing new rules on any paranorm who wanted access to The Rain.

But instead of staying away and prioritizing the pack, he was here, standing with me.

He wasn’t angry. He wasn’t even guarded.

He just looked at me like this moment had always been inevitable.

“I couldn’t stay away.” Simple words that held so much meaning. It was like I held all the power and magic in the world, like my pull was greater than Lehr’s, and he was willing to sacrifice everything for me. If I hadn’t already fallen for him, the confession would have pushed me over the edge.

“You stood up to Lehr,” he continued quietly. “Half the pack had to be ordered to hold position because they wanted to kill you. But my wolf?” He took another small step toward me. “My wolf wanted to roll belly-up so you could scratch his stomach.”

I’d burst out laughing when he’d told me his wolf practically pranced when I was around. He’d been agitated and on edge from being in the vampire compound, and he’d shot me a glare that should have scared me. Now? My laugh made him smile down at me.

“You’re so unbelievably brave and beautiful. I’ve always seen becoming a werewolf as a curse, but for the first time, I’m grateful for it. If I’d never been bitten, I never would have met you.”

He took my left hand, held it loosely, and waited like he half expected me to pull away.

Instead, I pulled him close. Our gazes connected.

Lightning struck through me, and I kissed him.

Or he kissed me. A rush of need erased the atoms between us.

It demolished every wall I’d built to keep him away from my heart.

I dropped the flashlight. He lifted me until my legs wrapped around his waist, then he turned and pressed my back to the brick wall.

Pressed his cock against me. I moaned and ground against him.

All the times I’d seen him naked. All the times I’d tried not to look, not to admire. Now he was mine. Now I could explore.

My fingers pressed into the hard muscles of his chest, drifted down to feel the abs beneath his T-shirt, then tugged on the button of his jeans.

“Kennedy.” He cursed under his breath. “Your staff keeps tabs on you.”

“It’s not that staff I’m interested in.”

He laughed, and it was so easy and real and contagious. I grinned and nipped his lower lip, which made him curse again.

“Where can we…?”

I didn’t want space between us, but he was right. We didn’t need spectators, so I wiggled my hips until he lowered me, then I grabbed his hand and pulled him after me.

We reached the back entrance to the ballroom. He kissed the curve of my neck as I pushed the door open. Before I stepped inside, he looped his arm around my waist and pulled me back against him.

“I’ve never needed someone like I need you.”

I rocked back against him, my body saying it was perfectly reasonable to strip naked on the threshold. But no. I needed a locked door and all the time in the world to be with him.

“Almost there.” I turned and kissed him, backing up until he was inside. I kept walking backward, kept kissing him, kept shaking when he gently nipped my shoulder and touched my breast.

He unbuttoned my pants, unzipped his before we reached the next door. I pulled his shirt off, held it tight in one hand while I searched behind me with the other. I found the doorknob. We almost tripped over each other entering The Rain’s small and blessedly empty library.

I barely got the door locked before Blake picked me up again, taking me to the couch in the room’s center.

With desperate kisses, he lowered me down.

My balance was slightly off, and my elbow hit the stack of books I’d left on a side table the last time I was there.

Stories and speculation on fey and vampires and a hundred other paranorms, djinn not being one of them, tumbled across the ground.

Blake knelt, shucked my pants and underwear off, then pulled my hips to the edge of the couch and spread my legs apart.

“Fucking beautiful,” he said. Then he lowered his head and licked. My body lurched. It had been so long, and he was…

My hips involuntarily thrust forward.

…skilled.

“Blake.” The sound came out more as a moan than his name. My body was already burning, almost liquefying, as he worked me. And I shouldn’t be so close… This shouldn’t be so perfect…

He had no magic in the Null, but he must have broken through its spell because I was on the edge, so close to going over.

“Blake.” This time his name had a desperate note, a note that said don’t stop, keep going, almost there…

His fingers squeezed my ass, his tongue thrust and licked, and I exploded apart, sweet pleasure burning through every remnant of me until he took me in his arms, holding me close, kissing and stroking until I was whole again.

“I want to do that every day of our lives,” he said.

I smiled. “I wouldn’t complain.”

He nuzzled the curve of my neck. He still wore underwear, which did nothing to hide how hard he was. Definitely needed to get those off him, so I turned in his arms, hooked my fingers over them, then pulled them down.

He watched me, heat in his eyes.

I took in his body, stopped midway. God, I needed that, needed him, inside me.

I started to straddle him, but he grabbed me, then laid me down across the cushions.

He hovered over me. “This doesn’t have to be quid pro quo.”

“What?”

“You’re hurt.”

“I haven’t thought about my arm since you showed up.”

“You just survived an attack.”

“I’ve survived worse.” Was he having second thoughts about this? Had he decided I wasn’t worth the consequences? “If you don’t—”

He traced the curve of my neck with his fingers. “I need to hear you say you’re okay. I need to know this isn’t a moment of weakness and you won’t hate me in the morning. I need you to say—need you to be sure—you want me. Because all your reasons for pushing me away are—”

I took his face in my hands. Made sure he was seeing me. “I’m okay, Blake. I’m clearheaded. I know what I’m doing, and I know that I want you. Right now.”

In case he didn’t get the message, I thrust my lower body upward, bringing him between my legs. Then I tilted my hips down, sliding myself against the length of him. Tilted back up then down again.

That broke him. He claimed my mouth, angled himself just right, and thrust deep.

“Kennedy.”

I loved the way he moaned my name, the way his breath quickened, his body went taut, his muscles hard and strong beneath my hands. He was stripped of more than just clothing and magic. He was so human and vulnerable and desperate for me.

That knowledge was empowering. I gripped his hip, silently commanding him to slow his movements.

He groaned but submitted, and I tortured us both by guiding him out one long inch at a time until he was just barely, achingly inside me.

Then I pulled him back in deep. I did it again, watched his head dip to stare at the place where we connected.

I watched too as I slowly slid over him again, knowing he was barely able to hold himself back.

I tilted his chin up. He met my gaze as I pulled him deep again and stayed there, loving the way he filled me, needing this release as much as he did. Expression almost pained, he waited for my move.

I didn’t want him to be able to wait. I wanted him out of control. I wanted him to lose his mind.

“Sit up,” I ordered.

A breath shuddered out of him. Then he complied, holding me tightly against him. Before he’d even settled back against the cushions, I took him deep and hard. I didn’t keep my movements slow. I thrust against him again, gliding him across that perfect spot.

A desperate ache flamed inside me, growing more intense as I rode him. Pleasure etched the planes of his face. I stared into his dark eyes, felt him shaking beneath me.

“Kennedy.” My name was a warning this time, a confession saying he was on the edge. About to lose control. That’s what undid me. I cried out and he grabbed my hips, thrusting into me as I sank down on him until his body gave up its war, shuddering as he came with me.

The waves of pleasure, his and mine, drained my strength. I collapsed on top of him. He held me. I’d never get tired of this, the feel of him out of breath and satisfied, his heart beating against mine.

He stroked my back, drew in the scent of my hair. “You…” One word. He didn’t say anything else. And he said everything.

“Kennedy,” Blake whispered.

Half asleep and a hundred percent satisfied, I snuggled into him. “Hmm?”

He adjusted the throw blanket we’d draped over us. “I wish I could stay here with you.”

Something in his tone cleared away my sleepiness. I moved enough to see his face. “You’re leaving.”

He smoothed back my hair. “I don’t want to. I didn’t plan on this.”

My eyebrows rose.

He laughed. “Okay. I’d hoped for this but thought you’d push me away again with all the reasons we shouldn’t be together.”

I pursed my lips, then said. “Fair.”

He leaned forward and kissed me. I pulled him close. For a moment, everything was perfect again—we were together, I was happy—but then he put space between us.

“I have somewhere I have to be,” he said.

A tendril of uneasiness curled in my stomach.

I don’t know if it was because he was leaving so quickly, if it was my nervousness over the spell, or if something else bothered me.

I just knew I didn’t want him to go, and I couldn’t ask him to stay.

For this relationship to have any chance of lasting, I’d have to accept him running off to do pack business.

“Hey.” He sat up straighter. The blanket fell to our waists. I grabbed its edge and pulled it up to my chest. I didn’t mean to make it a wall between us, but it looked like Blake took it that way.

“It won’t always be like this,” he said.

“It’s okay.”

“I have to deal with a few pack members. It’ll die down soon.”

“I know.”

“I should be able to come back in a few hours.”

In one hour, I would be meeting Astrid and the coven. It was actually good that he had to leave.

“It’s really okay, Blake. I get that there are things you have to do and things you can’t tell me because Lehr,” I tried not to snarl the name, “or the pack or werewolf-dom in general wouldn’t want me to know. I can’t tell you everything either.”

He searched my eyes. His face was too serious, his body a little too tense. I didn’t think he believed me. Then his mouth twitched. “Werewolf-dom?”

“It’s a word,” I insisted.

He chuckled, then made a big deal of scanning the library. “In which dictionary?”

“Shut up.” I slipped a hand behind his neck and pulled him in for another kiss. And another. I let the blanket fall and turned in to him. His hands dropped to my ass.

A phone vibrated.

Damn it.

He cursed. Kissed my neck. “I have to go.”

Biting my lower lip, I nodded and moved off him.

He cursed again, found our clothes and tossed mine to me. I pulled on my shirt while he pulled on his jeans. He’d accidentally given me his shirt too, so I started to hand it back, then stopped and frowned. The material felt odd. I looked closer, saw a dark stain across the middle.

“Is this blood?”

He looked over at me, then at the shirt. Blinked.

“No?” he replied in a way that translated into yes, definitely. “It’s not mine.”

“It’s not mine,” I said. My bandage was still completely white.

“I know. It’s um…”

Not his and not mine. “I don’t think I want to know.”

He cocked his head. “Do you? Want to know?”

He would tell me? It was wolf business. I’d just told him I understood he had to keep some things to himself. I certainly wasn’t telling him everything. Would I feel obligated to share my secrets with him if he shared his with me? Did he want to know mine?

I didn’t have the bandwidth to think about that now.

“I’m good,” I said.

He nodded. I couldn’t tell if he believed me or if he was disappointed in my response.

“I’ll call.” He gave me one last kiss, then slipped out of the library.

I stared at the door after it closed behind him. The conversation felt like it had ended on a wrong note, like he was unsure of me. Did that uncertainty mean he was questioning the way I felt about him? Or the way he felt about me?

God, I wasn’t going to be like this. I’d chosen to be with him. No regrets. This would either work out or it wouldn’t. Either way, I was all in.