Page 130 of Torment Me Knot
“You don't get it.” My thumbs press lightly against her jaw. “You walked out of that house thinking you were doing us a favor. Thinking if you weren't there we'd be better off, that leaving was the kind thing.” My voice cracks and I push through it. “You were wrong, Sera. We were terrified and furious and none of us slept, and we would still do every second of it again.”
Her throat moves.
“We came here because we love you. Because you are ours and we are yours and we don't leave our own behind.” I hold her gaze. She is trying to look away and I don't let her. “Not ever.”
She blinks rapidly and presses her lips together.
“You don't—” she starts.
I go up on my toes and press my mouth to hers. She goes completely still before her good hand fists in my jacket and pulls me closer. It isn't soft or gentle. It's two days of a bond gone painfully quiet.
Her mouth is warm. Blood and exhaustion under the taste of basil and blood orange. I want to bury my face in her neck and never leave. When I pull back, her hand stays fisted in my jacket. She studies me like she doesn't know what to do with this.
I rest my forehead against hers and stay there.
“We love you,” I say softly. “All of us.”
Chapter Forty-Two
Aubrey
Espie pulls back from Sera and pain cramps through my stomach so hard I have to brace a fist against it. I breathe through the wave. Three counts in. Three counts out.
The pain eases by degrees. Not gone. Just survivable. The nausea’s been building for hours but I ignored it.
I cross to Sera, so close I feel her body heat through the kevlar. “Why did you go? Why did you leave us?”
Her throat moves. “I thought it was the right call.”
“You should have known better.” I pull in a breath that doesn't fully stabilize. “I needed you here, but you went anyway, and I'm—” My hand presses back against my stomach. The cramp is still there, and underneath it something else tightens that has nothing to do with heat. “I'm so angry at you, Sera.”
“I'm sorry,” she says.
“I know you are.” I look at her. The bandage. The jaw. Two days of her down here alone, and she texted Levi and then turned her phone off. I know why. It doesn't make her jaw easier to look at.
“You left me.” The words come out quiet. “You left all of us, but you left me. And I had to lie in the nest while your scent got quieter and I couldn't—” I stop. “I wasn't going to stay behind while you were lost.”
“I know,” she says again, a crack down the middle of it. “I know, Aubrey.”
“Don't do it again.” My voice has gone flat. “Not ever. Do you understand me?”
I get both hands in her hair and pull her mouth to mine. She's right here, eye level, nothing between my mouth and hers except the half second before I close it.
Her good hand catches my shoulder. I walk her back until the wall is at her shoulders and press the full length of myself against her.
I kiss her like I’ve been holding it back since the day she left. Open-mouthed. Reckless. Nothing restrained. She freezes for half a second. Then she exhales sharply through her nose and kisses me back, her hand sliding up into my hair, gripping tight enough to drag me closer.
Slick gathers between my thighs as I grind against her. Slick gathers between my thighs and there is nothing reluctant about it. I pull my mouth from hers to kiss her jaw, her throat, the hinge below her ear. She tips her head back and groans as her fingers weave through my hair.
Her hips roll forward against mine, slow and deliberate, and her scent turns sharp and warm between us. Blood orange and cedar flood the tunnel. My cedar answers immediately.
I pull back.
Her pupils have blown wide. Her mouth is wet and still parted and she is breathing through it, a little ragged, looking at me like I just knocked the ground out from under her.
“I'm glad we had this conversation,” I say.
Ezra steps up beside me and looks at Sera.
