Page 299 of Pucking Feral: Part Two

I don't know what it is. It's small and warm and it has no fucking business being inside me, nestled in the black like an ember someone dropped into snow.

I don't trust it.

But I don't snuff it out.

My breathing evens out in increments until I realize I'm sagging against her like a pathetic whelp, my hands still clutching her against my body.

I lift my face out of her collarbone.

Her ocean eyes find mine, soft in the glow from the fire I built for her. There's blood on her lips from my split lip, and blood on her shoulder where my mark is already silvering into the shape of my bite. It sits layered over the others, and beneath all of them, the old burn scar she gave herself to escape another monster.

"Welcome back," she whispers, kissing me again.

My jaw works. "I didn't go anywhere," I manage.

"You did." She brushes wet hair off my forehead, her fingers gentle. "But you came home."

I don't know what to say to that, so I don't say anything at all.

We sit there together, still locked together in the middle of fucking nowhere, both of us soaked and battered and covered in scrapes and mud and each other's blood.

I've never felt less in control in my entire life. And for the first time, the absence of control doesn't make me reach for a knife.

I'm so fucking out of it, I barely register her reaching up to trace the fresh mark on her shoulder, wincing slightly at the tenderness. I watch her, unsure if it's regret, but when she cranes her neck to look at it, she smiles.

"It's pretty," she murmurs.

"It's a bite wound," I say flatly.

"Shouldn't that make it prettier to you?"

She pokes me in the sternum and I catch her finger.

She grins wildly at me, her eyes flicking to my own shoulder.

Something… stings.

There's a hot, throbbing ache in the flesh there beneath the cold, separate from the scrapes and the bruises and all the places the ground beat the living shit out of me.

This is different.

I twist my head to look.

Teeth marks.

"You bit me."

I press two fingers against the wound.

It stings worse.

I press harder.

She lets out a cute little satisfied sound and leans forward to kiss it apologetically. The stinging sensation flares at the touch and my cock twitches inside her.

"You're fucking insane," I mutter.

"That's rich, coming from you," she breathes, nuzzling into my neck.