She collapses against me, trembling and spent, and I hold her tight, not letting go even as the aftershocks run through us both.
She takes a shuddering breath and laughs, low and sated. “Took you long enough,” she murmurs, her words hot against my skin.
I kiss her shoulder, grinning like a fool. “Worth the wait,” I say, and mean it with everything I have. She lives under my skin now, a bright spark in my chest that I never want to be without. And suddenly, Kai’s earlier declaration makes total sense.
I love her too.
FORTY-NINE
FINN
We’re somewherearound the fifth day mark now, and we’re all exhausted.
Sol is yet to knot, or even fuck Lani, and I can tell he’s running out of patience with it. He tries – carefully, every time, like he’s weighing her needs against the limits of his own body – but she shuts him down without fail. She’ll take the softer things from him. The purring. The slow touches. The grounding presence he brings into the nest, like something solid she can anchor herself to. But the second he tries to push past that, to give her more, she turns on him with a sharpness that would be vicious if it weren’t so…controlled.
It’s honestly a little entertaining to watch.
Mostly because it’s not directed at me.
She saves that particular edge for Sol and Kai, snapping at them one minute and dragging them back in the next, like she can’t quite decide whether she wants to fight them or ruin them. With Koa, she softens. With me…
I exhale slowly, dragging a hand over my face.
With me, she waits.
And that’s worse.
Because I can feel it building.
Every time she looks at me, every time she shifts closer without quite closing the distance, every time she asks – quiet at first, then less so – for me to bite her, to finish what we’ve all started. I’ve given her everything else. My hands, my mouth, my knot, over and over again until I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve had her shaking beneath me, breathless and open andminein every way that doesn’t matter in the long term.
But I haven’t marked her.
Haven’t sealed it.
Haven’t crossed the one line that would make this permanent.
Something in me won’t let me.
It doesn’t make sense. Not when every instinct I’ve got is pulling in the opposite direction, urging me to take what’s already being offered, to lock it in before anything has the chance to shift or break or be taken away. I want it. Christ, I want it enough that it’s a constant ache under my skin, a tension that never fully releases no matter how many times she comes apart in my hands.
But every time she asks?—
I hesitate.
And she’s noticing.
Of course she is.
Lani doesn’t miss anything, not even like this, not even when the heat has her stretched thin and hypersensitive and running on instinct more than thought. If anything, it makes her sharper, more focused on the things that matter.
On the things I’m not giving her.
Across the room, Kai swears under his breath as Lani twists out of his grip, her laugh bright and breathless as she dodges him, only to end up half-colliding with Koa instead. He catchesher easily, steadying her with a hand at her waist, his voice low and coaxing as he murmurs something I don’t quite catch.
“Shower,” Kai mutters, running a hand through his hair. “You said you’d shower.”
“I said I’d consider it,” Lani shoots back, already leaning into Koa like she belongs there. “Different thing.”