Page 28

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SONYA

T he cave's firelight flickered across Landon's bare torso as Sonya pressed a torn strip of her shirt against the claw marks raking his ribs.

His breath hitched when her thumb brushed a bruise blooming along his collarbone.

"Still playing hero?" She dabbed at dried blood crusting his jaw.

"You shifted once and decided to wrestle three of Roman's henchmen?"

His calloused fingers grazed the bite mark on her forearm—already knitting itself closed. "Says the woman who got attacked because you ran after me."

"I couldn't let you think what you thought. I could sense that's why you took off. Roman wanted to threaten me, but also, he knew you'd listen. I was dumb enough to fall for it."

He grabbed her wrist and held her eyes.

"No. I was. I should have known better. This just as all been…. a lot."

She let out a harsh shallow laugh.

"Yeah, I'd say that's understatement of the year."

His thumb traced the fading violet lines along her side, warmth lingering where their skin met.

"Why do your wounds look like they're not even from today?"

"Perks of being a shifter." She leaned into his touch, the cave's chill evaporating where their bodies nearly touched. "Yours'll be gone by dawn if you'd stop moving ."

He caught her wrist, eyes are darker green even when reflecting firelight. "Your turn." He nudged her onto the bedroll, his mouth brushing the shallow cut above her hipbone. She arched into the contact, claws pricking her fingertips when his tongue flicked the tender hollow beneath her ribs.

"Landon—"

"Still healing." His lips traveled up her sternum, pausing at the pulse hammering in her throat. "Admit it. You like having someone patch you up proper."

She tangled her hands in his auburn hair, tugging until his laugh vibrated against her skin. "Says the man trembling because I touched his?—"

His teeth closed over her earlobe. "Not trembling."

The lie dissolved when she rolled him onto his back, moonlight catching the fresh scars mapping his chest. Her tongue traced a bite mark on his pectoral, salt and pine lingering on her lips. He hissed, hips jerking as her mouth drifted lower.

"Still not trembling?" She breathed against his navel.

His fingers spasmed in her hair. "You're...distracting the medic."

"Good." Her tongue swirled the sensitive crease of his thigh, reveling in his choked gasp. When she took him in her mouth, slow and deliberate, his groan echoed off the stone walls. Firelight gilded the sweat-slick planes of his stomach as he bucked upward.

"Sonya—"

Sonya hummed approval, fingers carving crescent moons into the shuddering cradle of his hips. His broken litany of curses dissolved into breathless laughter that caught like spider silk in his throat—a sound she swallowed whole when her teeth found the quivering tendon of his inner thigh.

She took him deeper, worshipping every strained vein and salt-bitter drop with a devotion usually reserved for battlefield prayers. Her tongue mapped old rhythms—the desperate rock of his hips against her mouth. His groans built like storm waves against cliffs, each ragged breath a confession she drank greedily.

When his hands fisted in her hair hard enough to sting, she hollowed her cheeks and let vibrations hum through him. His cock jerked against her palate, that final strangled cry tasting of pine resin and vulnerability as he spilled himself down her throat. She held him through the aftershocks, nails bloodless against his hipbones, until his release became indistinguishable from the sweat and iron tang of their joined survival.

Sonya's smile cut through the cave's shadows as she straddled Landon's hips, her torn pants hanging low enough to reveal the dimpled curve of her backside. Moonlight through the cave mouth caught the fresh scar bisecting his abdomen—still pink, still pulsing with the heat of accelerated healing.

"Second wind or last stand?" Her thumb brushed the ridge of his hipbone where purple bruises flowered beneath tan skin.

His calloused palms slid up her thighs, pausing at the lace-edged ruins of her underwear. "You're still wearing more than me."

"Complaints?" She snapped the frayed elastic against his skin, earning a hiss that dissolved into laughter. His hands found her lower back as she shimmied free of the tattered fabric. Firelight gilded the sweat-slicked hollow between her breasts, the rhythm of her breathing hitching when his thumbs found the twin moles beneath her left rib.

"Sensitive there?" His grin flashed wolfish in the dimness.

"Observant." She ground her hips against his renewed hardness, relishing his choked exhale. The first slow slide of him inside her drew twin gasps—half pain, half relief—their bodies still thrumming with leftover adrenaline. Her claws pricked his sternum as she arched, every nerve alight with the stretch and burn.

"Easy." His hands stilled her hips, breath hot against her collarbone. "Not a race."

"Could've fooled me." She rolled her pelvis in a practiced circle, swallowing his groan. "Earlier, when you charged those Hunters?—"

"Had to protect my bait." His teeth grazed her pulse point. "Worked, didn't it?"

She slammed her hips down, stealing his smirk. "Work this."

Firelight caught the flex of his jaw as he thrust upward, their rhythm fracturing into something desperate. Her nails carved into his shoulders when he hit that sweet spot—the one that made her vision blur at the edges. Sweat-slicked skin slapped together, the musk of pine resin and sex overwhelming the cave's mineral chill.

"Look at me." His palm cradled her cheek, thumb brushing the split in her lower lip—already sealing itself. "I need to?—"

"Then need harder." She rode him with punishing precision, tendons standing out in her thighs as the coiled tension in her gut threatened to unravel. Distant thunder shook the cave's stalactites—or maybe it was Landon's growls humming beneath her palms where they pressed against his heaving chest. His calloused fingers found her clit, dragging with the efficiency.

When his hands slid up to claim her breasts, the sudden crush of their bodies knocked the damp air from her lungs. Her peaked nipples scored fire across his sternum with every desperate arch of her spine. Deeper—he sheathed himself to the hilt with a roll of hips that ground her pubic bone against him, the stretch blooming through her pelvis like storm clouds splitting open. Her inner muscles fluttered vainly against the invasion, betrayal written in the way her nails drew fresh blood from his shoulders.

"Fuck, Landon—" The curse shattered into a gasp as he hit that ravaging angle, the impact resonating through her ribs like a war drum's pulse. Her vision whited out when he buried his face against her throat, teeth scraping her healed lip as the cave's ozone sharpness mixed with copper and sex.

"Com—"

Her laugh came out ragged. "Bossy for a man at—ah!—at my mercy."

Sonya's world tilted before her spine registered the movement—one heartbeat she was on top of him, the next, pinned beneath him. The impact knocked a punched-out sound from her lungs as he drove home.

"Mercy's overrated," he growled against her collarbone, and she almost laughed at the irony of his control fracturing even as he pinned her wrists.

Stone groaned above them, vibrations from their collision dislodging mineral droplets that fell cold between her shoulderblades. Her climax tore through muscle and marrow—not water but wildfire consuming a drought-stricken forest, incinerating every nerve. The scream she couldn't swallow ricocheted through cavern arteries, answered by a deeper snarl as Landon's hips stuttered. Molten heat pooled where their bodies locked, his trembling arms caging her as if the aftershocks might blast them both into the cave's dark gullet.

They lay tangled in the aftermath, her fingers combing through the auburn curls at his nape. His breath steadied first, lips moving against her hip in silent words she felt rather than heard. The fire popped, embers dancing in his exhausted eyes when he finally looked up.

"Next time," he traced the fresh teeth marks on her inner thigh, "we do this without the near-death experience."

She kicked her leg over his shoulder, grinning at his startled yelp. "Where's the fun in that?"