“Maeve,” he rasps when I pull my mouth away from his neck, realizing I’ve been biting him for far too long. I try to blink through the feelings rushing through me, but this must be what heroin addicts feel like when they shoot up.
Felix is in my veins. And yet, I want more of him.
When I lean into him again, we’re moving, and my back presses against the mattress, Felix bracketing himself over me.
“Tell me you want this,” he says roughly against my skin as he trails kisses down one arm, then the other.
“I want this,” I say, without question, my body already writhing under his touch, pressing up into him.
I gasp when he starts to loosen the buttons along the front of my shirt, baring my chest.
“Oh, fuck,” he hisses, his breath coming hard and fast. He raises a hand to my chest, dragging a calloused finger along the sensitive skin there. When he meets my eyes, I hold his gaze.
This is the hallway again, but better. More. I feel like a bottomless well, and I need him to fill me up.
Maybe what I’m doing back here in Silverville is more about stockpiling up as much Felix as I can get. Logically, I know this is only going to complicate things, but I’ve yearned for him for so long that this feels like finally relaxing after years of tension.
Could there be something to that? Having as much of Felix as I can now, so when I go back to Los Angeles, it won’t be quite so bad without him.
“I want to fuck you,” he says, the sentence so brusque, so straightforward, that it makes my core clench almost painfully. When he raises his gaze to mine again, his face is wretched, desperate. “Can I do that, Maeve?”
I’m nodding before he even finishes the sentence, and he brings his mouth crashing down into mine.
Chapter 16 - Felix
I am no stranger to my wolf’s urges and cravings. I’ve been privy to them my entire life. My wolf is the reason I fell into a well as a kid. It’s the reason I couldn’t leave a stone untouched. The reason Maeve was constantly pulling me out of trouble.
When I followed the wolf’s advice, I usually ended up in some fucked-up situation. Trapped, or facing down a guy much bigger than me. Three times, I ended up with something broken or sprained from climbing higher than I should have gone.
My wolf has been the reason for the coolest moments in my life, and also the moments I wish I could rewrite. The reason for my recklessness.
The reason I pulled Maeve into that alcove and kissed her like I’d been wanting to my entire fucking life. The reason I let myself go for a few precious seconds, shocked to my core when she kissed me right back.
Maeve was always the realistic one. I thought she might want someone a lot more serious than me. Someone is going somewhere a lot cooler than Silverville. Someone with plans to leave town after school, unlike me.
So I’ve followed my wolf into scenarios and felt the pacing and cravings of that animal inside me more times than I can count.
But this, right now—this is more pressure than I have ever felt from the wolf in my entire life.
He’s clawing at the confines inside me, pressing against the line between me and him so hard that I don’t realize I’m growling until the sound fills the space around me. The pressureis so great that I feel the faint, dull tingling that comes before a shift.
My wants are combined—a wolf’s sense of ownership, claiming, wanting to take Maeve as hard and fast as I can. And my human desires to do a good job, to worship at her feet, to bring her as much pleasure as I can manage. For her to run her hands through my hair and tell me that I’ve done a good job.
In a way, I suppose I’ve been waiting for Maeve’s praise my entire life.
Now, I slot my hips between her legs and grind against her, forcing myself to take this slower than the wolf wants to. Allowing myself to feel each shivering layer of desire.
Because there’s a voice somewhere in the back of my mind telling me that I might not be able to get her like this again. That this might be my only chance to open Maeve up like this, get to see every part of her.
And I’m not going to waste it.
I want to bite her again when I’m buried inside her. Before, when we did it standing in the middle of that room, it felt so unmoored. Like something was really missing. And now I know what it is.
You’re meant to be connected when you give a bite like that.
I’m not usually an inquisitive kind of guy, but questions have been buzzing through me since our first mating mark—would it be more potent if we did it the right way? Does how long you maintain the bite affect how strong it is? Where is the line you cross between keeping it temporary and making it permanent?
Likely, we learned about it in school. Maeve probably knows the answer.
