Page 33 of Skyla

He tugged me closer until I ran into his legs, shifting me to straddle his lap. I’d never been this close to him before. Red hair and pale gray eyes that were bright and alive, but in a different way than Silver’s.

“Didn’t think you’d let me do this.” His voice was rougher than the others. And there were different rumors as to why. The most common was his name. That a long time ago, when he patched in, he was buried alive in a grave and told to survive, and he’d screamed so much he permanently damaged his vocal cords. Other people said it was why he was so quiet. No one knew the truth except him and the other leaders. I’d never asked.

“I wasn’t sure I would,” I admitted.

Grave’s hands curled around my hips, pulling me down into him and the fact that he was hard. “What changed your mind?”

“A little early in the morning for you to be this hard, Grave.”

He pulled me closer again, grinding me down onto the erection straining through his pants. “Always hard around you.”

Doing what I did for a living, you wouldn’t think words like that could make me blush, but they did. “I’m angry,” I said. “And hurt. I also know it’s not all because of you guys. But I can’t help how I feel. It hurts when I feel like everything in my life is gone and replaced with things I didn’t want. Even if they’re beautiful things,” I added softly.

Grave looked at me. I knew some of his expressions, but not the ones he used in quiet moments like these. “I’m not used to your language,” I whispered. “You may have to translate for me until I understand.”

He smirked, voice low. “If I touch you more than this are you going to cut my hand off?”

“No.”

Slowly, his fingers rose up under the hem of his hoodie—or was it mine now?—until he reached my skin. The roughness of his fingers against it, the soft scrape of his nails, had me shivering.

Curling his hands around my back, he yanked me so my body pressed against his chest and he could whisper. It felt intimate, even though we both knew I could hear him with my fae senses now.

“Tell me.”

“Tell you what?”

Grave’s fingers kneaded along my spine, massaging and teasing. “How you wanted this to go.”

With them?

I—

No one had asked me that exact question before.

How had I wanted it to go with them? We’d been doing this dance around each other since the very beginning. But I’d always known they were a danger to me because of who I was. There was no counting the number of times I’d fantasized about finding one of them waiting for me outside the club after a shift and taking me somewhere to finish what we’d never started. And those fantasies inevitably ended up with me panting, gripping the sheets in one hand and my vibrator in the other, desperate formore.

But what had I actually envisioned?

Nothing. I hadn’t had a plan. Forced into hiding because of who I was, there wasn’t a future. The future wasn’t guaranteed, even now.

Letting my head fall against his shoulder, I inhaled the richer version of the scent currently wrapped around me. “I just wanted a choice.”

“You hadn’t chosen?” His tone was mild. Careful.

Hadn’t I? It wasn’t like I’d ever choose to go to Blazing Legion. What if I just… wasn’t ready?

“You know what I mean,” I whispered. “None of this was me choosing. None of this was my fault.”

“So choose now.”

It sounded so simple, but it didn’t feel that way.

Grave pulled one of his hands out from beneath my shirt and lifted it to the back of my neck. “We wanted it to be your choice. But we weren’t going to let them touch you.”

Smiling into his shoulder, I finally let myself touch him, skimming my hands along his ribs. “I didn’t know you could talk so much.”

“You said you needed to translate.”

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