Chosen

Chosen
Oakley

Ian scoops me into his arms and carries me over the threshold of the long-missing front door. What’s left of the cottage is painted in shadow, and rain patters on the top of my head and my shoulders. I barely notice the clouds now blocking whatever moonlight there is to be had, but it doesn’t matter. 

None of this matters. 

He lays me down in the only sheltered corner of the cottage. A bed of moss and forest debris creates a nest of softness I melt into the moment my back touches the ground. I dig my fingers in and flex them over his shoulders, his bare chest, and down, mapping every sharp angle, rigid muscle, and scar, but he doesn’t lower to meet me. 

Rainwater drips from his hair and down his nose, falling onto my parted lips. His eyes, still trapped between his true self and his ever-shifting beast forms, search mine in the silence broken only by our racing hearts. 

“Stay here,” he says slowly, and he rises, angling into the rainy darkness falling like a blanket over the cottage. 

“Wait!” 

He’s gone, already stepping back over the threshold into the night, and a horrible, weighted desperation settles directly on my heart. I hadn’t noticed it before. There’s been too much going on, too much to learn, too much struggle to survive. But now, in the quiet, in a nook of safety where we’re finally alone, and there are no one else's thoughts and opinions clogging up my mind, there it is, that little golden thread binding me to Ian.

And it hurts. 

I roll onto my side, sheltering my body from the rain dripping from holes in what’s left of the roof, and curl into a sharp kind of pain that radiates through every muscle and bone. It’s exhausting. I feel like every beat of my heart is trying to awaken something… and failing. Like I’m so close to feeling better, and then it’s snatched away by the time I take my next breath. 

I know that mates have an uncanny ability to not only read but feel the pain and emotions of their partners. It’s common knowledge, part of the sacred code written in the stars for those lucky enough to find their fated person. Is this how Ian feels right now? Like he’s being shredded? Like every step he takes, every decision he’s making out there in the woods, is a battle he’s not sure he can win?

Fatigue sweeps through the pain and pulls me under until my eyelids begin to droop, and I can no longer fight it. I let it carry me away, and the sleep that comes next is a dark, empty kind of rest I’m not sure I’ve ever experienced before. I’m freezing and damp. I still feel it even in a deep sleep. But somewhere in the dark dreamworld, warmth begins to creep in, a dry, comfortable kind that shoves me deeper into sleep until every jolt of pain just fades. 

I wake to a gray darkness. It’s likely morning, the earliest hours. I should still be asleep, but a storm thunders nearby, soaking the far side of the cottage with rain. I stretch my arm over the warmth resting beside me, feeling… Ian. 

He’s right next to me, lying on his back, my cheek pressed into the notch between his chest and neck. His chest rises and falls rhythmically. He’s sleeping–totally, blissfully at rest. 

We’re dry, which I find hard to believe based on how hard it’s raining. I look up and squint at the roping shadows hanging low over our heads, blocking the rain. 

Me sitting up causes Ian to stir. He rolls onto his side, gathering me by the waist and pulling me closer. I slowly lie back down and stare at the bundles of sticks and layers of moss creating a makeshift roof. 

He made that for us. A little slice of home. 

A knot forms tight in my throat. My body quivers while I hold back shallow sob. Ian’s grip tightens on my hip, and he slowly raises his head, his blue eyes looking into at mine. 

He’s himself again. All skin and heat. All weight and muscle rising over me–a promise of safety, of comfort and protection. Everything my mate should have been. 

“Oakley,” he says so quietly I almost miss it over the rain. 

I’m sure there’s more he wants to say, more we both need to say to clear the air. Plans must be made. A future decided. But when he cups my cheek and lowers his mouth to mine, all of that fails to matter. Just like I did last night, when our nightmare situation caught up to us in droves, I decide that nothing matters but this. 

So does he. 

His lips part over mine in a slow, methodical kiss that awakens every nerve ending along my spine. I arch into the sensation of his tongue dragging a line across my lower lip, and my breathy sigh sends a tremor through his body. He adjusts his weight, his knee pressing between my thighs as he moves his body over mine, shielding me from the darkness still alive and raw all around us. He traces his fingers over my jaw, then lower, mapping the dip of my throat, then my collarbones, and lower, pausing on the fabric on the rather boyish shirt I was given by Juliette. 

His mouth meets mine again, but softer, a gentle, lingering peck. I nod, giving him the silent permission his entire body begs for, and he unties my shirt. The baggy, poorly fitting fabric falls away, exposing my skin, and droops over my shoulders. 

I close my eyes against the sensation of his lips pressing a long kiss to my shoulder, then down, lingering on the rise of my right breast. 

He gently tugs the fabric of the shirt apart, button by button, until it opens, and I am laid out for him in nothing but my skin. 

I reach for him, clasping the back of his neck and drawing his mouth back to mine. I don’t understand what comes over me, but the kiss that follows is everything I am, every ounce of energy I have, driven by words I can’t bring myself to say. 

Take me. Claim me. You can have it all. You can do whatever you want because I need this. I need to have this one piece of us.

I sweep my tongue over his, and he groans. His hand travels down my belly, stopping on the waist pant of my leggings, then dips beneath the fabric. My body is all sharp sensation and heated blood. 

He mouths my name against my lips. It’s breathy and desperate, like he’s on the edge of oblivion and holding himself back. I used to think I wanted softness. I wanted easy and routine. I didn’t think about this. Passion. Love. Everything I thought I knew and what I now know to be true converge when his mouth leaves mine and presses a rough, nibbling kiss to the slope of my breasts. He slips his fingers into my leggings. 

“Oh!” I arch my neck, my breasts rising to meet his mouth. So sensitive. Everything is so, so sensitive and I can’t–I just can’t– “Please!”

His teeth graze my nipple before his tongue starts a slow, lapping dance from breast to breast. His breath comes in shallow grunts and groans that leave me just as breathless, and his fingers slowly draw a line down over my underwear. 

He cups me. Down there. I’m utterly unprepared. 

My hand leaves the back of his neck. I run my fingers through his hair and tug, briefly considering whether I’m hurting him, but he hums with approval, sliding his fingers over my wet panties again and again, before pulling them to the side. 

I close my eyes, my cheek pressed to the top of his head, my lips parted in quick, breathy moans and whines that are so foreign I’m not sure they’re falling from my tongue. Heat explodes through my body, settling like a tight, dead weight in the apex of my thighs, where his fingers begin a rhythmic dance over my clit. 

“Oakley.” He draws his tongue over my nipple. “Fuck.”

A tear slips between my lashes. I’m not sure why, but even the sensation of it sliding down my cheek is heightened, almost enough to send me slipping over an edge so sharp I might actually cry if it doesn’t happen. 

I writhe, my hips rising to meet each slow turn of his fingers. “P-please–oh, Goddess!” 

Ian slips one finger inside me. My head falls back, and I swear, against the gray, rainy sky, stars erupt. 

He pumps his finger in delicious strokes, filling me in a way that seems impossible, all while continuing to circle my clit with his thumb. His body presses against mine, and I feel him, hard and wanting against my thigh, still covered by his pants, which feels so incredibly unfair. I reach down to touch him, and he gasps out a breath. He’s hot, and he fills up my hand, and then some, beneath the fabric. My whine of need comes from somewhere so deep I almost choke on it. 

“Not now. Not like this,” he says, breathless, raising his head to whisper the words against my lips, then he presses a second finger inside of me. 

He catches my moan of shock and unreal pleasure with another biting, damning kiss. He picks up his pace, expertly matching each of my moans and whispered pleas with his strokes, and then, in a blinding crescendo of my voice, my body, and his shutter of relief, I come undone at the seams. 

My inner walls quiver and pulse around his fingers as bright, hot pleasure rockets through my body and renders any thought but this–and him, and us–totally irrelevant. 

I struggle to catch my breath as I come back to life. His fingers are still buried inside me, still slowly stroking, riding out every sensation pinging through my muscles. I gasp when he pulls out and carefully readjusts my underwear. I’m still hanging somewhere between the dream realm and our brutal reality when his touch leaves me altogether to pull my discarded cloak over us like a blanket, and he tucks me protectively beneath him. 

I press my cheek directly over his heart, which races and occasionally skips beats. 

The earliest hours of morning creep back into our little hovel. Neither of us speak for a long, long time. 

“Whatever happens,” he whispers, “I need you to know that I would have chosen you. I would have chosen you even if you weren’t my mate. I’d pay any bride price to meet you at the top of that hill on the festival grounds.”

I close my eyes against a torrent of tears threatening to make themselves known. 

“I’m going to do everything in my power to be there to take those vows with you. I promise.”

There’s nothing I can say. Nothing to convey the rush of hope mingling with the heavy sense of knowing simmering between us as he curls around me, sheltering me with the warmth of his body. 

He falls back asleep with his hand cupping my cheek, his thumb still swiping my tears away. I fall asleep, my eyes open to the rising stripes of rainy sunlight, questioning how much time we have.