Storm and Fury by Jennifer L. Armentrout

29

The thin strip of light from the bathroom door pulled me from my sleep, alerting me to the fact that I had fallen asleep without Zayne.

After we got back to his place, he’d cleaned up in the bathroom and then had announced that he was making it an early night. The lights in the living room had turned off, a clear sign that he wanted his space, and I had stayed in the bedroom, thoroughly confused. Unlike all the nights before, he didn’t come into my room and it had taken an eternity for me to finally fall asleep.

But either he or Peanut was in the bathroom.

Sitting up, I slipped my legs out from underneath the blanket. The cement floor was cool under my feet as I padded quietly toward the bathroom. I placed my hands on the door. “Zayne?”

“Sorry,” came the gruff reply, several moments later. “I didn’t mean to wake you. Go back to bed.”

The corners of my lips turned down. He sounded...weird, his voice terse and strained, more so than normal. “Are you okay?”

“Yes,” he barked.

I bit down on my lip. Was he in pain? He’d been looking pale by the time we’d gotten back, but he’d insisted he was okay, and I’d asked that question about a half dozen times. Knowing I probably shouldn’t, I went ahead and opened the bathroom door.

What I saw was a bloody mess. Zayne was in front of the mirror, shirtless, and he was... He was plucking something out of his chest with...with tweezers? Bloody towels were on the vanity and there was something milky in a mason jar.

“Good God,” I exclaimed.

“Dammit, Trinity,” Zayne growled as he turned away from me, reverting to my full name. “Do you ever listen?”

Not particularly.“I was worried.”

“I’m fine.”

“You do not look fine.” He was a ghastly gray color, and his fingers, slippery with blood, trembled around the silver tweezers. “What happened?”

“It’s nothing,” he grunted, turning back to the mirror.

“It doesn’t look like nothing.” I inched closer to him, grateful that the sight of blood didn’t freak me out, but what he was trying to do to his chest did. “Can I help you?”

“Yes. You can help by going back to bed.” He did a double take. “And is that Elmo’s face on your shorts?”

“Don’t talk smack about my shorts.” They were a gift from Jada—a gag gift, but they were the most comfortable shorts I’d ever owned. “Look, I really don’t need you passing out or dying from trying to do surgery on yourself. So, stop acting like a stupid alpha male and let me help you.”

His back tensed and then he looked over his shoulder at me. “Did you just call me a stupid alpha male?”

“Yes. I did.”

One side of his mouth kicked up as he dipped his head, looking down at himself. Several strands of hair fell forward, shielding his face. “That damn imp got me in the chest.”

“I know, but you should be healing...”

Reaching for the towel, he sopped up the blood leaking from his chest. “Yeah, well, one of its claws broke off in me. Got most of it out.”

Ice trickled into my veins. “You...you have an imp claw stuck inside you?”

“Yeah, hence the tweezers.”

I wasn’t sure how much help I’d be with my eyesight, but I had to be better than him digging around in his own skin. “Give me the tweezers. You need to get it out. Now.”

Zayne’s head swung toward me sharply and he looked at me like I’d grown two heads.

“What? I can get the claw out. Me trying has got to be better than you digging around in your own skin.”

“Are you sure you can do this?”

I narrowed my eyes. “I may be half-blind, but I will, without a doubt, do a better job than you’re doing at this moment.”

He stared at me for so long that I thought he was just going to tell me to go back to bed, and if he did, I might hit him, but then he grunted out, “Fine.” Turning back to the sink, he turned the water on and dipped the tweezers under the flow. “The claw is only about an inch long. It’s black.”

Only an inch long? Jesus. I took the tweezers from him and then openly checked out his chest. The area he was digging at was above his right nipple, and I was eye level with that sucker.

I squinted, not seeing anything beyond torn-up flesh. “I’m going to need to—”

“I know what you need to do.” His warm breath danced across my forehead. “Just do it.”

Drawing in a shallow breath, I placed my fingers on either side of the deep cut and then pulled the sides apart. Zayne hissed in a breath, and my head jerked up. Those pupils were vertical again.

“Sorry,” I whispered.

“It’s okay.”

Leaning in, I tried to ignore the minty scent that mingled with the metallic scent of blood as I looked for this inch-long claw. “How long did it take for you to realize a claw was stuck in you?”

“About when I got up and thought I was going to vomit. That’s when I realized I wasn’t healing. So, about an hour ago.”

“You’ve been digging at this for an hour?”

“Yes.”

“That’s pretty terrible.” When I peeked up at him, I saw that his jaw was tense. Sliding my hand along his skin, I pulled at the tear a little more. “Sorry.”

“Stop apologizing.”

“Kind of hard not to when I’m pulling apart your chest wall.”

He coughed out a dry laugh. “You’re not pulling apart my chest wall.”

A second later I saw a small piece of blackness stuck in the middle of pink flesh. “So, um, are you still mad at me?”

“Mad at you for what?” he asked.

“For jumping off the building?” I got a good grip on the tweezers.

“I was trying to forget about that,” he said dryly.

My gaze lifted to him. I wanted to ask him if he was trying to forget what happened afterward, too. The question burned the tip of my tongue, but I swallowed it back.

“I’m not mad at you, Trin.”

Encouraged by the fact my nickname was back in usage, I drew in a shallow breath. Concentrating on the claw, I lined up the tweezer and said a little prayer. “You didn’t come in the room tonight to say good night...or anything.”

He was quiet for a moment and then said, “That wasn’t because I was mad at you.” Zayne sucked in a sharp breath as I slid the tweezers in. “You have a really steady hand.”

“I do.” I bit down on my lip. “So, why didn’t you?” I closed the pointy end of the tweezers around the edge of the broken-off claw.

“I’m not sure I want to talk about that when you’re digging around in my chest.”

Despite what that could mean, his words did make me grin as I tugged on the piece of claw. The tweezers slipped, and Zayne jerked. “Sorry.”

He drew in a long, slow breath. “It’s okay.”

I tried again, getting the tweezers to latch on to the claw. “I’m kind of surprised an imp got an upper hand on you.”

“Thanks for pointing that out.”

“I’m just saying.”

“I was kind of distracted.”

“Not my fault.” I tugged again and felt the claw start to give.

“I’m going to say that it was partially both our faults.” Zayne tensed.

The damn claw wasn’t budging. “Just how distracted were you?”

Zayne hesitated. “I think you could...feel just how distracted I was.”

Hand stilling, I looked up at him. “Yeah, I could.”

The centers of his cheeks flushed a faint pink. “Well, there’s your answer.”

A slow grin tugged at my lips. “You’re blushing.”

His eyes closed. “You know, most people wouldn’t point that out.”

“I’m not most people.”

“I’ve noticed.” A smirk appeared. “Haven’t figured out if that’s a good or bad thing yet.”

“Wow,” I murmured, and then I yanked hard. The claw slipped free as Zayne cursed under his breath. “Got it.”

Stepping back, I held up the claw as I wrinkled my nose. “That’s supergross.”

“Thank you.” He exhaled loudly and then reached for the towels, but I beat him to it.

Setting the tweezers aside, I picked up the towel and stopped the new flow of blood that was leaking out of him. The gnarly wound in his chest was already sealing up.

His hands fell back to his sides as I wiped up the blood. I healed quickly, but it was insane how quickly Wardens recovered. The color was already returning to his face.

“You look a lot better.”

“I feel better.” His gaze caught and held mine and then his gaze dropped, and I felt the intensity of his stare, all the way to the tips of my toes, before he dragged his gaze back to mine. He folded his hand around my wrist. “You have blood all over your hands.”

I didn’t say anything as he took the towel from me, and I didn’t fight him when he set the towel aside and led me to the sink basin.

“I can wash my own hands,” I told him.

“I know.” He turned on the water and then opened a drawer and pulled out a tub of foaming hand soap. “Did you get any sleep?”

“A little.” I looked up and saw us in the reflection. His head was bowed, brow lowered in concentration as he pumped soap onto my hands.

I got a little lost staring at our reflections, him so much taller and larger than me, blond and golden where I was darker. My gaze dropped to our hands as he slid his over mine. The water bubbled pink and red as it swirled down the drain. He washed my hands until there wasn’t a speck of blood left, and then he retrieved a fresh towel from another drawer.

Drying my hands, he turned me away from the mirror. “You know what you asked me earlier?” His hands left my wrists and slid up my forearms. “About why I didn’t come to you tonight?”

My heart rate sped up as I nodded.

“I couldn’t, because I didn’t think I could lie beside you after what happened on that rooftop.” His voice was deeper, thicker, as his hands gripped my upper arms. He lifted me with ease, sitting me on the edge of the vanity. “And not touch you.”

The heat from earlier returned, dancing over my skin. “What...what if I wanted you to touch me?”

His eyes flared an intense pale blue. “And see, that’s the problem.”

“Why?”

He lifted his hands, tangling his fingers in my hair as he dragged the strands back from my face. “Because we shouldn’t, Trin. It will complicate things. Look at tonight—we weren’t paying attention. The imp could’ve taken you. You could’ve been hurt.”

“But I wasn’t.”

“I was, and that shouldn’t have happened.” His gaze searched mine. “I should know better, Trin. I know what happens when I don’t have my head in the game. We make a good team—”

“We really do,” I cut in, curling my fingers along the edge of the vanity. “We make a damn good team.”

“Which is why this would be a bad idea.”

“I think that makes it a damn good idea.”

His laugh was strained. “Of course you would, but it’s more than that.”

“I’m not your father—”

“Jesus, I’d hope not.”

My eyes narrowed. “And I’m not Layla,” I said, and something raw flickered across his face, gone before I knew what it was. “You just need to learn how to multitask.”

“That’s all?” He laughed.

I nodded.

“Even if I learned to do that, you’ve been through a lot.” One of his hands skated up my neck. Fingertips followed the line of my jaw. “I’m older than you.”

“Oh, come on. You’re barely older than me.”

Thick lashes lowered as he traced my cheekbone, drawing a fine shiver from me. “You came here to find Misha, and you trust me to keep you safe while you’re doing that. This feels—”

“Right,” I suggested helpfully. “Because that’s how it feels to me. Like I’ve been...” My cheeks flushed. “It feels right, Zayne. Are you saying it feels wrong?”

“No. I’m not saying that.” Those lashes lifted, and there was intent in the way those pale eyes locked on to mine, to the shadows forming around his mouth. “You want to kiss me again, don’t you?”

Every muscle in my body went tense. “Yes. I want—”

Zayne kissed me.

It was such a soft, beautiful kiss at first, his lips brushing across mine once, and then twice, and then the kiss deepened and there was nothing questioning or tentative about it. The kiss felt scorching, demanding and soul burning, a raw combination of pent-up need and explosive want.

He pulled me to the very edge of the vanity as he came forward, pressing with his body between my legs, and when he kissed me again, he left me breathless and exposed like a live wire. I curled my legs around his lower back as I slid a hand down his chest, mindful of the healing wound. His hand slid under my arm, down my back, and I thought I might be getting drunk on his kisses.

And then he was lifting me off the sink, backing up as I clutched at his shoulders and then the soft strands of his hair. He nipped at my lips as he bumped into the wall, and I laughed into his kiss, and he growled back at me. Somehow we made it into the bedroom and then he was laying me on the bed and he was coming over me, his body large and warm as he braced himself above me.

With the light of the bedroom to guide me, I reached out and touched his face. He turned into the touch, nuzzling my palm as he shuddered. When his eyes opened, I swore they glowed.

Neither of us moved or said anything for a long moment, and I swore to God, if Peanut decided to pop up right now, I would find a way to bring him back to life just to straight up murder him.

Peanut didn’t appear but Zayne’s stillness was starting to worry me. “Zayne?”

His throat worked on a swallow. “There’s something I should tell you.”

“What?” My gaze searched his face as I drew my fingers over the curve of his cheek.

He turned his chin, kissing my fingertips. “I’ve... I’ve never done this before.”

My fingers stilled. My entire body stilled as his words sunk through. “You mean...you haven’t done this?”

“Well, I’ve done this. I’ve done...stuff, but I haven’t had sex.” His gaze found mine and a small grin appeared. “Now you look struck speechless.”

I blinked. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to, but I’m just shocked. I mean, you’re—you’re you. You’re beautiful and you’re intelligent. You’re kind and you’re funny and—”

“And annoying.”

“Yeah, that, but—”

“And overbearing.”

“And that, too, but—”

“But I still haven’t done it,” he said.

“Why?” I asked, and then immediately felt like an ass for doing so. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have asked that.”

“It’s okay. I...I just haven’t.”

I was shocked, but I was also...relieved in a way. “I haven’t, either.”

A slow, heart-wrenching smile pulled at his lips. A real one, and it was the kind of smile that could break hearts and rebuild them.

“I don’t know where this is leading,” I said, tracing the curve of his shoulder. “I just know that I like you, Zayne. I really like you, and that has nothing to do with everything else that’s going on. I want you, but we...we don’t have to do that.”

“No, we don’t.” He lowered his head and kissed the corner of my mouth, then he spoke again. “But there is other...stuff we can do.”

And this time, when Zayne kissed me, he sipped from my lips, drank from my moans, as he ran his thumb over my cheek, tracing the bone. His touch was featherlight, but I stirred restlessly. Lust pricked my skin as he moved his fingertips down my throat, over my shoulder. A small sigh escaped me.

I hadn’t been lying when I said I liked him—that I liked him a lot, and knowing that, feeling that, scared me a little. He was the first guy I’d ever been really attracted to, but it was so much more than that. It was his strength and his kindness, his beliefs, even the ones that had shocked me in the beginning, and his quick-wittedness. It was his inherent protectiveness, and even when he doubted himself, it somehow made him...human to me.

Something else lingered at the fringes of my thoughts, a sense of familiarity with him, of many moving pieces finally clicking into place.

It just felt right.

Zayne felt right.

Slowly, he moved his hand down the center of my chest. “You have no idea how long I’ve thought about this.”

I placed my hand on his side, moving it toward his back, kneading the cords of bunched muscles. He dropped his hand to my hip and tugged me down, along the bed. Then he rose above me, using one arm to support his weight. Using one thigh, he parted mine and then lowered himself. Hard lines pressed against soft ones, and when he moved against me in a slow, undulating grind, I gasped and stiffened at the bolt of pleasure it sent through me.

“Is this okay?” he asked.

“Yeah. Yes. Totally.”

He chuckled against my mouth as he rocked his hips again. Following his lead, I tipped my mine up as he shifted his head, moving his lips across the cheek he’d caressed moments before. “Have you thought about this? Us? Wondering what it would be like?”

“Yes,” I whispered, spreading my legs, cradling his body. “I have.”

His remaining hand slid up the flare of my hip, up my stomach. He stopped just below my breasts, his thumb brushing over the swell. My breath caught as his kisses reached the corner of my mouth again. I turned my head slightly. Our lips brushed.

“You don’t have to worry about this going too far,” he said.

My fingers curled against the skin. “I’m not. Are you?”

“Always,” he murmured, and before I could question what he meant by that, he brought his head to the space between my neck and shoulder. Lowering his hands to my hips, he nuzzled my neck. He let his hand stray higher, nearly reaching the peak of my breast.

I didn’t move, didn’t say anything. Just waiting...waiting to see what he’d do.

“You tell me when to stop and I will.”

“I know.” My voice was thick, raw. “I...I trust you.”

Zayne stilled and then he pulled away. For a moment, I worried that I’d somehow said the wrong thing, but then his hands reached for the hem of my shirt. “I would like to see you, touch you...taste you.”

His words sent a dark shudder through me. “Yes.”

He lifted up my shirt and I rose on shaky elbows as he pulled it off over my head and then my shorts went next. His sharp intake of breath was lost in the pounding of my heart. I lay back down, left only in thin undies, knowing that with his Warden eyes, he could see everything, and I fought the urge to cover my chest.

“You’re beautiful, Trinity.”

Then he lowered his head, flicking his tongue over a particularly sensitive part, causing me to moan and clutch his shoulders. He laughed against the skin of my breast, but it quickly turned to a groan as my hands ventured farther south, flattening over his lower stomach. He felt like satin stretched over rock, and I was enthralled by the way his muscles bunched under my touch.

I lifted my gaze as my fingers trailed over each hard ripple. “You’re perfect.”

“Mmm?” He pressed down, moving his hand and then his tongue to my other breast. “Do you want me to stop?”

“No. Not at all. Not even remotely.”

“The best thing I’ve heard all year.”

My laugh ended in a gasp as Zayne rolled me over him and sat up, my knees sliding on either side of his hips as he pulled me onto his lap. I gasped as the softest part of me pressed down on the hardest part of him. He still had his pajama bottoms on and I was still in my undies, but I could feel every inch of him.

His fingers sifted through my hair as his hand curved around the back of my head. He tugged my mouth to his and kissed me as I clenched his shoulders, allowing myself to settle into him. His answering groan sent shock waves through me.

“This seems very un-Warden-like,” I whispered.

The hand at my hip tightened. “You’d be shocked by all the un-Warden-like things going through my head right now.”

I shuddered, feeling dizzy and warm and alive. “Then show me.”

And he did.

My head fell back as my breath came out in short gasps. His hands and mouth were greedy, and I loved it. My lower body started moving in tiny circles, and good God, I thought I could feel his pulse through the cotton of his pants.

I couldn’t remember ever feeling like this, definitely not with Clay and not when I touched myself. This was... God, this was so much more; it felt like molten lava was running through my veins. Desire swirled inside me, leaving me feeling out of control and dazed.

My body arched into his, aching for him in such a way that it almost frightened me, but I did trust him. I trusted him with everything.

And when his mouth tugged on my breast and his tongue rasped over my skin, I stopped thinking. It was all about feeling and the raw, exquisite sensations shooting down to my core, warming and dampening me.

Myhands slipped over abs that dipped and rippled. My hips rocked against him, and when he whispered in my ear, his voice was thick, smoky. I was panting against his mouth, my fingers trembling as they slipped over his skin and wrapped around the band of his bottoms. He was grabbing them, too, shoving the fabric down as he rose just enough to get the material to his thighs, and then there was nothing between us.

“God,” he growled against my mouth.

His hand clasped my hip, urging me to move, to take what I wanted, but I didn’t need urging. My body moved against his and he moved against me. The heat of his body, the friction and the dampness, and the way he nipped at my mouth—it was all too much and not enough. Tension between my legs built quickly, stealing my breath, shocking me. The coil tightened deep inside me, and our movements became almost frantic. His growl of approval seared my skin, igniting the fire, and I came in a blinding rush, muscles tightening and loosening all at once. Never, ever had I felt something so powerful, so deliciously obliterating.

Zayne’s quickly followed, the hoarse, soul-deep shout smothering my cries as the release shook us, and then his mouth was on mine and he kissed me, and he kept kissing me as if he wished to not simply taste me, but devour my very being, and I...I wanted to be devoured.

I didn’t know it was even possible to be kissed like that.

I don’t know how, but we ended up on our sides, our faces inches apart, our legs tangled and his one arm under my ribs, curled around me, and the other around my waist. I didn’t think I was ever going to breathe normally as we lay there, my heart still pounding.

“That was...” I cleared my throat. “I didn’t know it could feel like that without even, you know, doing it.”

Zayne’s arms tightened and he pulled me to his chest, flesh against flesh. “I didn’t, either.”

I smiled, and when he kissed the corner of my lips again, my smile grew. He guided my head to the space below his chin, and I was surrounded by his warmth.

I had no idea how much time passed, but I could feel the lure of sleep tugging at me. “Are you... Are you going to stay with me tonight?”

His lips brushed my forehead. “Sleep, Trin. I’m not going anywhere.”