Chapter Eight: Fire In The Veins
The training courtyard was thick with sweat, sun and challenge. Dust coated my knees, my knuckles were sore, and the air between us seethed with something hotter than effort. Lucien loomed over me, his chest bare and self-gratified, his chest shining with power and sweat.
"Again," he growled, circling around to face me like an animal stalking game. "Unless you surrender."
I shrugged my shoulders, above the pain that had spread into my muscles. "You're having too much fun."
He grinned. "I enjoy watching you fight."
This wasn't all true. It wasn't just the fighting —it was the tension which clung to it. The push and pull of power. The way that my body responded to his, every move with the probability of collision.
We battled again—fists, evasions, feet scrambling in dirt. I evaded a blow and thudded into his chest, sent him stumbling back and pinned him hard against the earth. My thighs clamped his hips to place, my hands holding down his wrists by his head.
I was panting. So was he.
His eyes flashed into mine, something wild at their center.
"Going to lose because you're afraid I will win?" I jeered.
He didn't flinch. "You already did."
My breath was held. I ought to have stood up. Should've rolled off of him. But his body was warm beneath me, and the weight of his stare kept me pinned. His lips parted slightly, and I could sense the shift—the flame—between us intensify.
Then he rolled me onto my back.
I was stunned as my back hit the floor, his hips between my legs, his hands locked around my wrists now. The angle was switched, but the power doubled.
"You're reckless" he told me, his breath on my ear.
"I know exactly what I'm doing," I answered, whispering just loud enough.
His hand tightened ever so slightly for a moment before he released his grip and stood up, extending his hand. "That's enough for today."
I accepted it. Electricity sparked where we touched, but I was not talking.
The rest of the day came in fragments—training exercises, pack members' angry stares, Rhea's questioning glances. But none of it mattered.
I could not sleep that night.
My skin hummed where Lucien had touched me, where his hips had occupied the space between my thighs, his breath skimming the curve of my ear like an unkept promise.
I paced my room, overheated in my own skin, the sensation of his fingers repeating and repeating like an evil loop. I was going to go on and splash cold water on my face when the door creaked open.
Lucien.
He stood there, shirtless, chest swelling and falling as if he'd just come back from a run. His sweat sheened on his skin in the moonlight that streamed in through the window. His golden-glowing eyes locked onto mine with lethal intent.
Neither of us moved a muscle.
Then he shut the door behind him and took two strides across the room.
"You should be sleeping," he snarled, his voice as rough as rocks.
"I might say the same to you."
His nostrils flared. "I won't sleep with you in the same room."
My heart pounded frantically.
"I can smell you," he snarled. "Your desire. It makes me fucking mad."
"Then do something about it."
I was thrust against the wall in a flash, and his body against me. His arms cradling my wrists against my head. Not hard. Firm. Unmovable.
"Tell me to stop," he growled in my ear.
I didn't.
I let my head roll back, exposing my throat to him. His breathing hitched.
"You're going to send me over the edge," he said to me.
"Maybe I do,"
Lucien's lips crashed against mine.
It was not soft. It was savage. Wild. Starving. His lips devoured my head like he'd starved for a millennium to taste me. His tongue bored deep into my mouth, invading, exploring. I kissed him just as hard, moaning on his lips as his thigh settled between my legs.
I rolled my hips against him. He growled low in his throat—a savage one, so savage it made my heart jump. His arms dropped to my hips from my wrists, pulling me in tight so there was no space left between us.
He lifted me up as if I weighed nothing. I wrapped my legs around his waist, holding myself tight to the heat of his body.
He escorted me to the bed, but we never made it that far.
We collapsed onto the couch, hands knotted in hair, lips fighting. His teeth sank into my lower lip, and then he kissed his way down the line of my jaw, along my neck, and to my collarbone.
"Your skin… " he whispered. "I dream about tasting you."
He licked a line down to the edge of my shirt and growled. “This needs to go.”
I froze, breathless, then nodded.
He peeled the shirt off slowly—like it was sacred. Like he was unwrapping something forbidden. His eyes swept over my exposed skin, reverent.
“You’re perfect,” he murmured. “Bruised. Flawed. Fierce.”
Then his mouth was back on me again—kissing, licking, sucking down my belly, my breasts. At the line of my jeans at the waist, he paused.
"Let me touch you," he murmured, his voice a plea and a command entwined.
I pushed his wrist down.
He groaned when his fingers brushed the hot wetness between my thighs through the stretch of cloth in my shorts.
"You're wet," he rasped. "From kissing me?"
"You talk too much," I panted.
He grinned—then ground against me. I felt him, hard and thick in his sweats, rubbing where I ached.
He thrust his hips.
Once.
Twice.
My head dropped back, and I screamed.
"Fuck," he growled. "You're going to make me come like this."
He kissed me again, messier this time, one hand pressing against the side of my head, the other gripping my ass as he ground into me with increasing desperation.
We were dry-humping, fully clothed, and yet it was the most intimate thing I’d ever experienced. The heat. The friction. The raw hunger.
He pulled away suddenly, panting.
"If we continue," he said, his voice strained, "I'll do that. On this couch. And I won't be gentle."
I touched him, famished. "Then don't be."
But he took my hands in his, nipped at my knuckle, and shook his head.
"No," he panted. "You'll be better than that. When I take you for the first time, Elara… it won't be fast. It'll be slow. You'll be screaming out my name in your lungs loud enough for the entire damn pack to hear."
I swallowed hard, whirling with want.
"You already have me," I panted.
His gaze flashed darker, raw passion licking across them. "Good. Because no one gets their hands on what belongs to me."
Then he left me—broken and aching.
And I knew… it wasn't lust.
This was a wildfire of making out with slow-burning embers.
And both of us were going to be tired.