Page 87 of Tracking Snow

Those assholes hardly think I'm an innocent little human, but that's beside the point. He's making what we're doing even more dirty, more wrong, and my inner muscles clench and squeeze with intense need in response. I whimper.

"Don't make a sound." Then he lets loose and pounds into me, and I can't breathe.

I could kill him. I could marry him.

The scream sits trapped behind my sternum, pressing up into my held breath, my thighs trembling, every muscle in me clenched around silence and him, and the voices drift and scatter, engines turning over one by one, all those nice clean concerned citizens heading home to sleep well.

Not one of them has the faintest idea that the white-haired menace from the magic bar is the only reason their church is still standing. That I saved every last ungrateful one of their lives tonight by seducing an overprotective fire mage who was fully prepared to kill for me.

Technically, again.

You're welcome, I think at them, and come apart against his hand.

He follows me over with his face buried in my neck, a sound like a struck match crushed silent into my skin, and the red of his eyes flares once through my closed lids and dims.

For a while, there's just breathing. We're both drenched, dust sticking to sweat everywhere, the loft ticking around us as he cools.

Four lifts his head, hair a tousled mess, and looks down at me with that goofy smile, the one that shows up before he decides anything.

"For the record," he says, "stakeouts are my new favorite."

"You said this sounded boring," I shoot back.

"I was so wrong." He kisses my shoulder, then my mouth, and then notices the pew. Two perfect black handprints scorched into the back rail, fingers and all. Past them, scorch marks track everywhere he touched tonight, palm-smears down the organ case, a charred crescent where his hand gripped the sill. He makes a small, guilty noise and rubs at one with his thumb, which does nothing.

"Amen," I say because it feels both wildly appropriate and inappropriate.

Fifteen minutes later, I’m walking toward Poison Apple on wobbly jelly legs. I can’t help but sneak glances at The Seven walking along with me.

Specifically, One. And he’s...

Holding

My

Hand.

After our tryst, Four kissed me sweetly and said he needed to rest. In a blink, his eyes turned pale, and I was looking at One.

One studied me with such intensity before leaning over and kissing me gently, though I felt so much behind it that he was holding back. As if he were afraid of breaking the moment.

"I take it you were around for some of that," I said when he broke away.

He laughed and shook his head. "Yeah."

For a moment, their personalities all seemed closer together. The Seven didn’t feel quite as separate as I’d thought.

"You’re staring," One says, not looking at me even as he gives my hand a squeeze.

"I just didn’t think you were a hand holding kind of guy," I chuckle, swinging his hand a bit before moving closer to him.

He took so long to warm up and I know aside from Seven, he probably had the most reservations about me, but it felt like all of that had melted away. And what was left in the place of mistrust, cold tall walls, and the super speed at which he ran away was kind of...domestic.

My boyfriend was walking me home after our date.

Granted, our date had been spying on a bunch of bigoted jackasses who had formal meetings, and then to distract my boyfriend from burning the whole place down I had to let him rail me within an inch of my life until I nearly went blind with the strength of my orgasm...

But yeah. This moment feels domestic. In a way that exactly suits me.