My tongue darted out to wet my lips, and my thighs trembled from clenching them so tightly. I really needed to stop. I had to focus. Eryn said I would be drawn to him, that my body would betray me and basically become enemy number one in the battle for control. She also said—fuck.
I glanced up to see Ezra’s chin slightly tucked. Just enough for him to be able to look down and watch me. His nostrils flared slightly and faint movement out of the corner of my eye told me he was gripping the granite and having to repeatedly adjust his hold. His breathing was just as heavy as mine, like the thoughts running through my head were on repeat in his as well.
Or because he could feel my emotions.Double fuck.Eryn said that was part of the bond and if he felt even a smidgen of what I was right now…
“I reject it.” The words were out of me so fast, there was no time to think about the consequences.
My heart pounded. One beat. Two. Nothing happened. I frowned, worried that I’d done it wrong. I waited another few seconds but nothing changed and when I looked at Ezra, he hadn’t moved.
“Why are you still here?” I tried to glare, but the words came out too breathless to be convincing.
His lips split into a slow, smug smile. “You have to mean it,” he rasped, and his hand left the counter to hover over my chest.Only one finger made contact with my skin, and it felt like a jolt when it landed, right between my breasts. “In here.”
He shifted forward just enough for our hips to align. For a very large, very solid part of him to graze against the one tell I couldn’t conceal. If he pressed any harder, the evidence would soak through my shorts, and there would be no more hiding. He rolled against me, a slow, controlled motion that had me answering in kind before I could lock myself down.
“By the way you're gasping, I think rejecting the bond is the very last thing on your mind.”
CHAPTER 16
Ezra
Our breaths mingled together, a cloud of humid air pushing back and forth between us. Her lips were just out of reach; a tiny dip forward and I could taste her again. I couldn’t hold back my groan at the thought. What would it be like to kiss her without fear and adrenaline fueling her actions?
Would she be shy or just as wild and untamed as before? I caught her by surprise last time, but she recovered quickly and gave as good as she got. The guilt caught up to me later, after the djinn were taken care of and my fury at her putting herself in danger faded. I’d instigated the bond that night, taunted it and woke it from its slumber without her consent.
That wasn’t my intention, just a consequence of my actions in the heat of the moment. But ever since then, we’d been a ticking time bomb whenever we made contact. Touching her without her knowing the truth was a double-edged sword. I was so thankful for the honor but felt guilty as fuck afterward because she wasn’t aware of what it did to our connection. Thanks to all our skin contact lately, I could easily sense her emotions. It washow I knew she was about to unleash a wave of magick on Cova earlier.
Which,thatwas the sexiest damn thing I had ever seen in my life. I’d been half hard ever since. Well, until now. Now, I was at full mast and ready to fucking go. Rubbing the head of my dick against her belly was pure torture, but not one I could stop. Gods, I could come just like this if she’d let me.
Both her fists landed a solid punch to my lower stomach, and I curled in on myself with a grunt.
“Fuck, babe. What was that for?”
The warmth in her cheeks looked less like arousal and more like anger now. There was a spark in the depths of those gray eyes, a warning flare that maybe I’d gone too far. The new ache in my abs definitely confirmed that theory. What set her off? Only a second ago, she was putty in my arms, and there was no way I misunderstood the damp heat I felt from the front of her shorts.
She wanted me.
“Why the hell didn’t you tell me?” she snarled, winding her elbow back for another strike. “I looked. Like. An. Idiot. Let go of me, I’m not done hitting you!”
She was a feral wildcat, spitting and trying her best to claw her way out of my hold. Her punches were millimeters away from a very sensitive and important part of my anatomy; there was no way I was setting her free to try again. Her wrists were locked in my hold, trapped between us as she struggled, and failed, to make me to let go.
“In case you haven’t been paying attention, I’ve been a little preoccupied with saving your life,” I replied, then hissed when her nails managed to claw the tender skin just beneath the waistband of my pants.
“That’s no excuse!” She wriggled and dug those nails in further. Seeing that her efforts were getting her nowhere, Raniceased trying to claw her way into my intestines and leaned back against the counters, panting. “You should have told me from the very beginning.”
She was right. And she was wrong. She deserved to know the truth, and it was unfair of me not to tell her, but I also knew she wasn’t in the right mental space to handle that information. Or the burden that came with it. I opened my mouth to tell her so, but felt the sharp point of her knee graze my thigh.
I had the span of a heartbeat to react and barely kept her from jamming my balls up into my stomach. Oh, she was a vicious thing. Using my grip on her wrists and her loss of balance from her strike, I spun her all the way around until she faced the counter.
Releasing her wrists so she wouldn’t faceplant into the granite, I moved in and made sure there wasn’t enough room between us for an attempt like that again. Her entire back molded to my chest. Each of my heavy breaths pushed against her until her only option was to lean all the way forward to escape the contact.
But that pressed her ass—her deliciously full ass—right against my dick in the absolute best way.
“You haven’t completed nearly enough training to pull off that move, babe,” I murmured into her ear. “But I greatly appreciate the attempt.” I rolled my hips and chuckled at the squeal she emitted in response.
“Get off me,” she demanded.
“Not until you promise to stop trying to break my dick,” I bargained. “Now that you know about the bond, there are rules we have to go over, and I can’t have you maiming me every time one of them pisses you off.”
