Ridge stops.
For a second, he hovers over me, the heat of his body behind me burning like a furnace. I can feel the gusts of his breath against my neck and feel the pounding of his heart even though his chest isn’t even touching me. I can feel the tension in him, the way his cock pulses inside me, so close, held back only by a thread.
Slowly, he draws out, the friction of his cock against my inner walls making me shiver.
Then he turns me over onto my back again, and the moment our gazes meet, I know I’ll never be able to look away.
He slides back into me, and his last few thrusts are so deep and deliberate that I feel them deep in the pit of my belly, all the way down to my soul.
“I love you,” he whispers.
On the final stroke, he stills inside me, his cock throbbing and pulsing endlessly as he presses as deep as he can get, flooding me with his cum. My core clamps down around him, milking every last bit of his release, and even when he finally stops coming, neither one of us moves.
We just stare at each other, as if we’re each seeing some part of the other person for the first time.
I don’t know how long we stay like that, but when he finally pulls out, we both groan in protest, as if separating our bodies after such an intense experience is physically painful. It doesn’t hurt, but the emptiness I feel as he slides out of me makes me immediately pull him back toward me. I’m not ready to lose the contact between us just yet.
He doesn’t resist, settling down beside me and tugging me into his embrace. We lie in a nest of mussed blankets, some of them hanging off the bed from the force of our coupling. I turn into him, his arm beneath my head, his other arm draped over my hip, and our legs intertwined.
Ridge’s chest is slick with perspiration beneath my fingers, but his body is no longer that rigid stone he became when he was lost in his grief. All the tension has seeped away from him, leaving him languid and satiated.
“I don’t know how to feel,” he says, breaking the silence so suddenly that it startles me.
I glance up at him, brow wrinkling. “What do you mean?”
“About Lawson.” He swallows, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down. “We weren’t close. Not since we were kids, and that was a long damn time ago. But now, I don’t know. I wish we’d found a way to connect. There was so much bad blood between us.” His voice cracks on the last word, and he clears his throat, his gaze moving away from mine as if he’s embarrassed by his emotions. “Too late to fix it now.”
I trace my fingers over his chest but stay quiet. I get the feeling he isn’t done unloading, and I want him to. I want him to get all this off his chest. The longer he holds it all in, the worse it’ll be when it comes jettisoning out of him.
“He did some shitty things,” Ridge mutters. “No way around that. But with his last fucking breath, he told us exactly what we need to gain the upper hand on the witches. The last thing he did in this life was protect his fellow wolves.”
I make a noise of agreement. I never knew Lawson well, and I didn’t like him much, but seeing him tortured broke my heart. He didn’t deserve that. No one does. And still, he found a way to break out and come back to us.
He tried to atone.
“Does that absolve him of his sins against us?” Ridge goes on as if he’s read my thoughts, his gaze riveted on the wall be
hind me. “I don’t know. But it’s something, right?”
“It is something,” I agree, reaching up to cup his face in my hand.
I kiss him softly, forcing every last bit of love and empathy in my body into the kiss so that he can feel it. When we pull away, he slides his hands into my hair and presses his forehead against mine.
“More people than just my brother have died in this mess. So many more. Too fucking many.” His voice is rough and quiet, as if it comes from the deepest part to him. “And I plan to avenge them all.”
20
Trystan
Archer’s kitchen is alive with the smell and sound of breakfast cooking and coffee brewing. It’s the most normal, mundane situation I can find myself in these days, and it’s my favorite. Here in this room, nobody can touch us. We can laugh, we can eat, we can caffeinate, and through it all, all we need is each other.
Fucking sappy, sure. But it’s my reality now.
Although, this morning, none of us are laughing. It’s a grim goddamn day. Death feels like a sixth person in the room, and even the sky is gray and cloudy to match the mood.
I sip my coffee, watching Sable squeeze Ridge’s arm with a small, secret smile of comfort. When Archer, Dare, and I returned last night, we found the two of them asleep in each other’s arms. It’s still such a weird sensation, looking at another man holding my mate—naked, no less—and not feeling an ounce of jealousy. All I could feel was relief that Sable had been able to calm him down. She was there for him in a way none of the rest of us could be.
I mean, me in particular. I’ve come a long way since this woman came into my life, but I still don’t know fuck-all about comforting someone whose life has fallen apart. A dozen lessons on being an empathetic person couldn’t prepare me for that shit. Grief is complicated as hell. You add the fact that Lawson betrayed his pack, and there are all sorts of gray areas I’m not equipped to deal with.