Turn 12 of 21

Kiss him

MC closes the distance.

It is not a hesitant thing. She pulls her head forward against the grip of his hand in her hair, and the resistance lasts exactly one second before his fingers release their hold and slide down to the back of her neck, and then her mouth is on his. The contact is immediate and total and it lands like a detonation — his lips are hot against hers, hotter than any skin should be, and the points of his canines catch on her lower lip, not breaking the skin but present, sharp, a reminder of what she is kissing. The sound that comes out of him is involuntary and devastating, a groan that drops below hearing and into vibration, shaking through his chest and into hers where they're pressed together, and his hand on the back of her neck tightens and pulls her in.

The transformation completes. She feels it happen — not gradually, not in stages anymore, but all at once, a cascade that rolls through his body like a wave breaking. His skull finishes its reshaping under her palm, the brow ridge settling into something broad and heavy and ancient. His shoulders widen with a sound of bone and tendon rearranging that should be horrifying and isn't, because his mouth is moving against hers and the kiss has become something fierce and desperate and unrestrained, six months of held-back want crashing through a dam that was never going to hold. His hand slides from her neck down her spine, and the grip is possessive, the fingers spanning half her back, and he pulls her against him with a strength that lifts her slightly off the mat.

MC's hands move. Both of them — one sliding into the thickened hair at the back of his skull, the other pulling at the waistband of his shorts, and the sound he makes when she does is a growl that she swallows directly from his mouth. The heat between them is incandescent, the air around their bodies shimmering so intensely that the mirrored wall shows nothing but a blur, two forms melted into a single incandescent shape. His mouth leaves hers and travels — her jaw, the hollow behind her ear, the line of her throat where his canines had rested minutes ago — and each point of contact burns, each press of his lips a brand, and she is arching into him before she has decided to, her body responding to his with an urgency that bypasses thought entirely.

"You stayed," Valko says against her neck, and the words are half-swallowed by her skin, delivered in a voice that is barely language anymore, more vibration than sound. His hands find the hem of her tank top and pull upward, and the air hits her bare skin for exactly one second before his palms cover it, hot and rough and enormous, and the touch sends a shudder through her that has nothing to do with the temperature. The pigment lines on his torso are pulsing fast now, synced to a heartbeat that has accelerated for the first time tonight, and she can feel it against her chest where they're pressed together, a drumming that matches her own.

He pulls back just far enough to look at her. His face has changed — the bones heavier, the features broader, the eyes fully black and depthless and burning with something that is not animal and not human but some third thing that is entirely his own. His chest is heaving. The dark pigment lines trace paths across skin that is no longer smooth, and the muscles beneath them are arranged in patterns that belong to something built for pursuit and endurance and holding on. He is terrifying and beautiful and he is looking at her the way someone looks at the thing they've been starving for.

"You stayed," he says again, and this time it breaks in the middle, and his hand comes up to her face, rough fingers framing her jaw, thumb tracing her cheekbone with a tenderness that the rest of his transformed body cannot quite reconcile. "You — stayed."