I just stared at it for a second, all of a sudden seeing the similarity between him and Zack. It came and went, that brotherly bond. They’d spent so much of their formative years apart, the distance made sense, but right now, I could see it. He was equipping me, prompting me, sending me out to see to a problem only I could deal with.
But what of Mason and me?
I let the towel fall suddenly, just standing there for a second, stark naked, the seed of one of his men drying on my skin. He froze, his eyes flaring bright as the moon beyond as they raked over me, taking every bit in. But he mastered himself, again, prompted me, again, by pulling the shirt over my head but leaving me to pull my arms through. I nodded to him, grabbing his beer and swallowing a mouthful of sourness and him before turning on my heel and stalking outside.
Micah was easy to find, standing in the circle of moonlight beneath a full moon, communing with it maybe, clad only in his board shorts, his long tawny hair rumpled and messy. He had to have heard me approach, as I wasn’t quiet with it, dead leaves and twigs crackling beneath my feet, yet when I laid a hand on his shoulder, Micah jumped. He spun around, eyes bright, fists balled, ready to…?
“Paige…” He breathed my name with way too much reverence, his fists opening and reaching for me, then stopping. “What are you doing up?” he asked, much more calmly. It was an act, of course, which made me wonder what else he put on for me. I lifted a hand, the cold light exposing the faint crisscross of scars across his chest, some that I’d left there. I fitted my fingers to a long sweep coming down one shoulder, but his hand snapped out to wrap around my wrist and hold it there.
“I hurt you,” I said.
“It’s what I’m good for,” he said with a harsh laugh. “Taking and dealing out a beating.”
“No.”
“Yes.” He angled his head down to meet my eyes. “Don’t go romanticising me into something I’m not. You’ve got blokes who are falling over themselves to bestow hearts and flowers on you, blokes who built a whole fucking future in the hope you’d walk into it, and then you’ve got me.”
“And what are you?” I asked and actually meant it. We’d had so little time to get to know each other, frog-marched from one clue to the other in an attempt to find out what the hell my aunt had done. He shook his head, a desperate look coming into his eyes, his lips pulling back in a snarl.
“There’s a reason why he came through me. Not Mason with his loyalty, not Dec with his laughs. Me.” He jerked a thumb at his chest, and I grabbed it, smoothing the fingers out and linking them with mine. “I’m a thug. I didn’t wait for you to come to me, to choose me, to tell me that you loved—” His eyes went wide, and I wasn’t sure if he was aware of just how much pain I could see revealed right then. “I bit you in some fucking perversion of the mating rite. He was riding me so fucking hard, and I could see it, all of it. What it’d be like, that you’d be mine. That we’d sleep tied up in each other, grow wrapped around the other person like two trees. I saw you, I saw you swelling with child. I saw…”
He shook his head, his face closing down hard, a defiant anger rising instead.
“I’m sorry. I—”
He was silenced by my hand slapping down over his lips. I felt them still move as I herded him back, stumbling over rocks and grass and sticks until his back slammed against a smooth barked gumtree. I felt the breath hiss out of him before I moved my hand and then reached up to push his head to one side.
This felt so different. He let me hold him in this submissive position, whereas Declan had opted to give me this himself. I could feel Micah’s mark on my neck tingling as I held him in position, the two of us thrumming like an electrified wire. I knew he had to be waiting, for me to bite him, for me to do something, the weight of it, the night air, the moon, all bearing down on me.
But I don’t think he expected me to move in and place a gentle kiss on the throbbing vein there.
I couldn’t do this again so quickly. Whatever had possessed me with Declan was completely and utterly tapped out now, and Micah had a point. We’d been jammed together clumsily by supernatural forces, and continuing that wasn’t going to help anything. I softened my grip, my hands, everything, melting into him, which seemed to allow the tension to leach out of his body. He turned back to me, collecting me in his arms and holding me close, then dropped his head down to rest it on mine and let out a long sigh. For a moment, I just listened to the night birds and the thud of his heart.
“We didn’t do things the way we probably should’ve,” I said, and he tensed again at that. “But that doesn’t mean I regret it for a minute. Everything I’ve seen of you tells me you’re a good man.” He snorted, but I charged on. “Are you tough, blunt, and no bullshit? Hell yeah, you are. But with everything I’ve been through, you think I don’t value that?” I shifted so I could look up at him, and he met my gaze shyly. “We still need to get
