Page 125 of Silent Fire (Sin & Steel #6)

Noel looped his arms around Tomas’s neck, clinging to the solid weight of him as they traded messy, openmouthed kisses.

His mate was everywhere—the searing glide of skin, the rasp of his stubble, the low rumbling growls that vibrated straight to Noel’s core.

He was utterly surrounded, consumed in the best way.

Tomas broke the kiss with a guttural groan, rocking his aching cock against the crease of Noel’s thigh. “Need you,” he panted against the thundering pulse in Noel’s throat. “All of you, carino . Need to be inside you.”

Hearing that wrecked plea spurred Noel into action. He hooked a leg over Tomas’s hip, using the leverage to flip them in one smooth motion until he straddled those powerful thighs.

Tomas’s eyes went comically wide for just a heartbeat before that familiar fire blazed in their depths once more. His strong hands settled at Noel’s waist, gripping hard enough to leave marks as he ground upward with a feral snarl.

“Told you couldn’t handle me, mi lobo .” Noel gasped at the delicious friction, head tipping back as he rose up on his knees.

He reached back, grasping Tomas’s rigid cock and giving a firm stroke from root to tip.

Tomas’s stomach muscles jumped beneath Noel’s thighs, his growl morphing into a guttural moan.

Glancing down, Noel drank in the sight of his mate—chest heaving, muscles taut and straining, cheeks flushed with arousal. He was a vision of rugged masculine beauty, completely undone yet radiating quiet power.

Noel sank back down, guiding Tomas’s cock to his entrance. He sucked in a breath when he felt something wet bathe his hole.

“Natural lube,” Tomas growled softly. “Just hold steady, mi pecado bonito.” My pretty sin.

“That is so hot.” Noel felt another spurt then a third, his ring of muscle relaxing.

He locked eyes with his mate as he slowly impaled himself in one long, steady glide until he was fully sheathed. The burn radiated through him in dizzying waves of sensation.

Tomas watched him through eyes gone black with want, lips parted on a ragged exhale. His hands roamed restlessly over Noel’s thighs, hips, waist, like he couldn’t stop touching every inch of bared skin.

Neither of them moved for a breathless eternity. They simply existed in that suspended moment, bodies joined in the most carnal way as the air thickened with their mingled breaths and the scents of sweat and musk.

Then Tomas surged upward, capturing Noel’s mouth in a bruising kiss as he rolled his hips in a slow, relentless grind. Noel gasped into the kiss, clinging to those broad shoulders as pleasure lanced straight to his core.

It had been so long, he’d forgotten what good sex was, although it had never been this good.

Tomas growled against his lips, one hand fisting in Noel’s hair to angle his head for deeper plundering. The kiss was pure possession, all teeth and tongues and molten hunger. Noel surrendered to it utterly, letting the firestorm entirely consume him.

Noel dragged blunted nails down the slopes of Tomas’s back, relishing the way those muscles rippled and flexed beneath his palms. He was utterly consumed, lost to everything but the taste of Tomas on his tongue, the scorch of calloused skin against his own.

“ Dios, carino ,” Tomas rasped out, voice fractured. “You feel like heaven.” He brushed a featherlight kiss across Noel’s swollen lips, his gaze scorching. “ Mi cielo .”

Tomas set a punishing pace, each powerful thrust burying him deeper into Noel’s heat. He met Tomas surge for surge, nails scoring lines of delicious fire down his mate’s back.

“Yes, move for me, little flower." Tomas’s rough demand sent a full-body shudder through Noel. "Let me see how gorgeous you are when you're falling apart on my cock."

A breathless whine spilled from Noel’s lips. He braced his hands on Tomas’s shoulders and obeyed, rising up with shaky thighs until just the thick head of Tomas’s cock stretched him wide. Then he sank back down, a guttural moan torn from both their throats.

Noel set a rolling, sinuous rhythm, grinding down to meet each of Tomas’s powerful thrusts.

His head lolled back, lips parted on a litany of breathless curses and wordless pleas.

The angle was perfect, dragging Tomas’s cock over that bundle of nerves with each downward grind until Noel was trembling on the razor's edge.

“That's it, mi alma ,” Tomas growled, voice wrecked. “Let me see you. All of you.”

His hands roamed freely, gripping Noel’s hips to help set a punishing pace that robbed the breath from his lungs. Sweat beaded on their skin, muscles straining with the effort as their rhythm grew frantic, wild, all thoughts of finesse abandoned.

The world had narrowed to this—slick flesh, rasping breaths, the obscene wet sounds of their joining. Noel was lost to everything but the exquisite drag of Tomas’s cock filling him again and again, stoking the inferno coiling low in his belly into a raging blaze.

Noel could only keen his mate’s name like a prayer, a benediction. The world fractured and fell away until there was nothing but Tomas surrounding him.

His release barreled toward him, inexorable and unstoppable. Noel keened, body seizing taut as a bowstring as the first hot spurts striped their bellies. Tomas snarled, rhythm faltering as he chased his own crest with animalistic intensity.

“Mine.” Tomas sank sharp teeth into Noel’s shoulder, the pain morphing into pleasure.

Noel hung suspended in freefall, his mate snarling, anchoring Noel to him as he thrust, then Tomas followed over the dizzying edge, grunting fiercely as he buried himself.

Tomas drew his head back, extracting his teeth, then slid his tongue over where he’d bitten Noel.

Holding his mate close, Tomas brushed his lips over Noel’s face in a series of tender, reverent kisses.

They clung together, chests heaving, bodies slick with sweat as their harsh pants slowly evened out.

When Noel finally drifted back to awareness, it was to find Tomas gazing at him with a look of such naked adoration that it stole his breath all over again. Those rugged features were softened by an open vulnerability, a rawness that mirrored the yearning Noel felt echoing in his own chest.

“ Mi alma . Mi elegido ,” Tomas murmured, voice rough but brimming with a depth of emotion that had Noel’s heart squeezing. “You own me, carino . Mind, body, and soul.”

Instead of being terrified of what he’d just done, Noel felt—

A sharp pain hit his side before he heard a loud pop, followed by two more. Tomas flipped them over, and they crashed to the floor, Noel’s elbow slamming into the nightstand.

Something wet caught his attention. Noel’s gaze drifted downward. Why did his side feel like it was burning? Blood. Lots of blood smeared his skin, and Tomas’s too. His mate lay motionless on the floor. Noel’s legs still curled around him, but Tomas wasn’t moving. “Tomas?”

Noel looked down again and saw it. A hole in Tomas’s stomach. He checked his own body and saw a matching hole. A scream tore out of him as blood seeped from his wound.

The door burst open, men shouting, chaos erupting, but Noel couldn’t focus. Tomas.

“He’s n-not m-moving.” He pulled away from his mate, shaking him. “Tomas! Wake up, please!”

“Get the doc here, now!” Diablo shouted.

“Noel.” Santiago crouched beside them, draping a sheet over Noel’s shoulders. “Need you to move, carino .”

“I’m-I’m not leaving him.” Noel reached for Tomas. “I’m not leaving my mate.”

Santiago’s expression softened. “Not taking you away from him. We just need to check your wound.”

“My wound?” Noel tried to concentrate and saw Matias at the room’s entrance. His face was grim, jaw tight.

Matias turned to the others. “Find the shooter!”

The men scattered, but Matias approached with calm steps. He cursed when he saw Tomas but didn’t ask what happened. A ringing started in Noel’s ears, getting louder, drowning out the voices around him.

“I-I don’t feel so good,” Noel murmured as the room spun before he collapsed.

Chapter Nine

Tomas just sat there, hands resting on his thighs as he watched the steady rise and fall of his mate’s chest.

This shouldn’t have happened to Noel. Tomas knew in his busted gut that bullet had been intended for him. It wouldn’t be the first time Noel was caught in the crosshairs. That was just part of pack life.

But the bullet wanted a two-for-one. Went straight through him, a clean shot. What a joke. How was an unnatural hole in your body clean? It should’ve stopped there. Shouldn’t have tried to take out Noel. Tomas was the one who’d gone down, but the bullet had lodged in Noel’s body.

Sighing, Tomas sat forward, resting his elbows on the side of Noel’s hospital bed. The stitches in his side pulled. Dr. Martin had stopped the bleeding and sewn Tomas up. As bad as new. It still hurt like a son of a bitch though. Every wrong twist or lean and Tomas was cursing.

He raked a hand through his hair, biting back the curse when pain shot up his side.

“Need you to show me your eyes, little flower.” Tomas dropped his hand.

“Need you on the back of—” He swallowed the tears down his burning throat.

“You open them eyes and I won’t argue when someone says you kicked my ass, cría de foca .

” A small laugh snuck out past the pain.

“I pulled you into that room the night we met, my whole fuckin’ world realigned. ”

Tomas picked at a loose string on the inseam of his jeans, listening to squeaky wheels of the meal cart as it made its rounds.