Page 99 of Watch Me Burn
Relief crashes through me with enough force to make the room tilt.
My wolf has returned.
There’s a new layer of tenderness beneath the savagery now, a protective care even in his roughest touches. But he’s still mine.
Peace washes over me, a peace I haven’t known since the miscarriage. We’re different now, both of us changed by what we’ve lost, but the core of what connects us remains.
His hands drift across my body, reverent and slow, like he’s memorizing terrain he was afraid he’d never touch again. I stare at his masked face, willing him to tear it away and show me the truth. Let me see the man beneath. But this—having him back, finding our way through the wreckage to each other—it’s enough for now.
“Mine.” The growl carries equal parts possession and oath.
“Yours.” My eyes lock onto his and don’t waver.
It’s the truth. When I told Damien about my wolf, it hurt to know I had to let him go. But the decision was right. It had to be made.
For months, I’ve indulged in impossible fantasies that I could somehow have both men. That my paranoid suspicions about them being the same person would prove true. That reality would bend and let me keep everything I wanted.
Part of me still craves that fictional merger. The man who claims me in the dark, combined with the one who could offer me something resembling a future. Two incomplete halves forming one whole person.
But if I have to choose, there’s only one choice to make. The man who makes me feel more alive is the only choice there is.
Chapter twenty-four
Luna
He presses his forehead to my back as I raise mine from the table, both of us gasping. Our reflection stares back from the window. I drink in the image. I love watching us this way. My skin flushed and damp, my hair plastered against my neck in sweaty tangles, shoulders trembling with residual tremors. I look absolutely wrecked, as wrecked as I feel. And the sight thrills me.
He pulls out, and his large hands trace the curve of my spine, his fingers gentle before he helps me stand, lifting me onto the table and sliding me back.
It’s been a week since the doctor cleared me, and my wolf has spent every night inside me. We’re back to how we were before. It seems I measure everything in my life these days in terms of before I lost our baby and after. I still feel the loss acutely, but his touch drowns everything out.
“It’s so unsanitary what we do on this table.” His lip curls up on one side as I twist my aching shoulders. “Can you untie my wrists? I’m getting stiff.”
He reaches behind me and snaps the zip ties. I rub at the pink lines carved into my skin, but he’s already tugging me closer to the table’s edge. My arms shoot back, and I brace myself on my hands so I don’t tumble backward.
“What the—” The words dissolve on my tongue as his thick finger glides along my slit, scooping up our combined orgasms and pushing them back inside, and a whimper escapes my lips. “What are you doing?”
“You don’t seem to want to leak on the table. I’m just helping you out.”
“It would help me out better if you wiped it down with Lysol before you left.” My eyes drift to his cock. It’s softened but is still partially rigid. “How can you still be hard?”
He smirks, and his fingers flutter over my clit now. “Your pussy must be magical.”
I shudder, fighting the distraction. “I’m serious. How is it physically possible for you to stay hard as long as you do? Do you take Viagra?”
His nostrils flare under the mask like a bull’s. “I do not take fucking Viagra.”
I laugh at the offended growl that rumbles through him. “Well, it has to be something artificial because no man can stay hard for that long without it becoming medically dangerous.”
He leans in, his voice teasing as his fingers restart their gentle assault on my clit. “Aww, are you worried about my cock, little doe?”
“I’m worried about my cock.” I curl my fingers around his shaft. He grunts and bucks his hips, pushing his erection deeper into my grip. “See how good it is when you let me keep my hands untied.” I grin with a satisfied smile.
“Don’t push it, Luna. And it’s only a brief reprieve. I’m tying you to the headboard when we get upstairs.”
He grunts out the last few words because one of my hands has found his balls, cupping and rolling them in my palm.
“Mmhmm.” I brush the thumb of my other hand over his leaking tip. Then his words register, and my hand stills. “Wait. What did you just say?”
