Grace of a Wolf

Chapter 146: Grace: Zero to Sexty

Caine tries to jerk his hand back, but I hold on, my fingers tightening around his wrist. No way I’m letting him pull away now. The strange current between us is back, and I’m determined to figure it out, damn it.

Otherwise I can’t hold Bun.

"It’s too dangerous," he snaps, but his resistance is already faltering. Though his muscles remain taut with tension, he stops trying to break free of my grip.

"I’m never going to learn to control whatever this is if you don’t touch me," I say, my voice far steadier than the lack of certainty in my head. I can feel it, but it doesn’t mean I’ll be able to control it. Still, I want to try. "You can’t protect me by keeping me in the dark about my own power, Caine."

He groans, dropping his head forward until his dark hair falls across his face. "Look at yourself, Grace. You’re exhausted. Weak. You need rest, not... experiments."

"I feel fine right now." I straighten my spine, trying to look stronger than I probably appear. "You just need to stop if I start looking... bad."

A corner of his mouth twitches up despite everything; I can see it, even from this angle. "You’ll never look bad."

I blink, momentarily thrown off balance. "Are you seriously flirting with me in the middle of this conversation?" I push indignation into my voice even as I fight the smile threatening to form. Butterflies dance in my belly.

He looks up with a sigh, but his mouth is still half-quirked in amusement. "You’re killing me, Grace."

Goddess. Every time he says my name...

Dear and darling do it, too.

Basically any time he looks at me like that, I’m drowning in a sea of tingly, throbbing feelings.

"I thought you were the one killing me, though?" I counter, trying to make the atmosphere a little less... seductive.

He growls low in his throat. It doesn’t help the throbbing down below, damn it. "That’s not what I mean."

Okay. Better not to talk at all.

"Hush. I’m concentrating." I turn his palm around, my heart racing as I slide my hand against his. Even the slide of his callused palm against mine sends frissons of excitement through my skin, and I fight the urge to wiggle. If I do, my reaction will be obvious, and the last thing I need is to be obvious.

I lock our fingers together, squeezing slightly as I focus on the strange sensation flowing between us and not the throbbing between my thighs. This time it’s easier to feel. Not just sense, but actually feel the current passing from me to him.

My eyes squeeze shut as I concentrate harder. My face scrunches. I probably look ridiculous.

Whatever this energy is, I need to grab it, control it. But it’s like trying to hold water—completely fluid, passing through my mental "hands" no matter how I try to grasp it.

Then, behind my closed eyelids, I see it—a glowing golden thread. No, not one thread—countless threads, pulsing and alive, connecting our joined hands. I can see our fingers, or at least strange, luminous outlines of them, like x-ray images dunked in a sea of iridescent rainbows.

Fascinated, I mentally reach out, stroking the threads with my consciousness. They respond, vibrating like harp strings.

Caine groans—not in my mind but out loud, the sound rumbling from his chest and shaking the bed a little.

My eyes snap open, but I don’t lose the sensation. The golden threads remain visible in my mind’s eye even as I focus on Caine’s face. His jaw is clenched, cheeks flushed with heat.

I stroke the energy threads again, experimenting, and his whole body goes rigid. His eyes darken, pupils expanding until there’s barely any gray left, and they drop to fix on my lips.

The intensity he exudes steals my breath.

"Um, I think I—" The words die in my throat as he lunges forward.

His mouth crashes into mine, desperate and hungry. The force of his movement sends me falling backward onto the bed, his weight pressing me down into the mattress. The energy between us explodes from controlled threads into a raging river—wild, untamable, impossible to grasp.

But I can’t focus on that anymore. Not with his lips devouring mine, his tongue pushing into my mouth with bruising urgency. His hands move down my body with frantic need, finding my breasts and squeezing them through my shirt, fingers digging in hard enough to make me gasp against his mouth.

The air around us suddenly smells sweet. My skin’s on fire. One of his hands shoves up my shirt as I try to wrest his off; we’re a tangled mess of kissing and shirts and oh my Goddess, his hand is in my bra and he’s pinching my nipple hard enough to hurt.

Except it doesn’t.

It does, but it doesn’t.

I give up on pulling his shirt off and grab at his other hand, shoving it down to my pants. noveldrama

"We can’t—" Caine murmurs against my lips, even as his fingers fumble for the zipper.

"Can," I say, even though energy’s surging through me at an alarming rate and I have literally zero control over it. But if he doesn’t touch me, I might actually die. My entire body’s strung tight, going from zero to sexty in one kiss.

His lips slant over mine again, his tongue shoving past my teeth in a crude and way-too-sexy-for-these-sloppy-noises enactment of what exactly he wants to do to my body.

And he’s taking too damn long to get my pants off.

So I help him, popping the buckle and jerking them down my hips, kicking them off in panicked need as he rips off my panties. Just rips them off. It must be a thing for him, because he destroyed Lyre’s shirt the last time, too.

"Fuck, you’re wet," he mutters against my mouth as his fingers slide through it all.

I whimper, my entire body ready to explode. He leans back, pressing gently against my core with a finger as he growls, "Do you have control, Grace?"

The lie feels natural. I should lie. Say yes, let him do whatever he wants to me, and damn the consequences. I want it more than anything.

But... those consequences aren’t small.

So I shake my head slightly as he stares down at me with arousal-darkened eyes and whisper, "Not yet."

"Take control, Grace." His finger slips in with the slightest stretch, and I arch my hips with a moan. "Now."