Page 16 of Glass
7
POPPY
He’s kissing me.
All of the completely logical thoughts I had two minutes ago completely disappear the moment his lips cover mine. I’ve been kissed before but not like this. I whimper into his mouth, and he takes advantage of my parted lips to deepen the kiss, teasing my tongue with his.
This is a terrible idea, but after lying alone in his tent for a couple hours surrounded by the scent of him… I am embarrassingly weak to him. Blame it on the mate bond.
He pulls away for a moment so we can both suck in ragged breaths, and I blurt out, “Let’s go back to the tent.”
Felix lowers one eyebrow and looks at me with a question in his eyes.
“Someone could see us out here,” I add, desperately hoping he’ll read between the lines and not make me say what I’m thinking out loud. There’s no one out here but us, it’s still the middle of the night for a couple more hours, but now that he’s kissed me, I’m itching to touch him.
It defies logic that I would want to go to bed with this man who’s holding my siblings hostage. I realize now that I greatly underestimated the strength of a mate bond, and it feels like a dangerous thing. But so much of the past few years has been about control–controlling my own circumstances while also trying to gain control over the family’s history.
The idea of letting go of control just for a little while doesn’t seem so bad. Especially with someone who looks like Felix, cut and strong, dark hair falling into his eyes in the moonlight.
“Come on,” Felix rasps and grabs my hand. He practically drags me the direction he came from, back toward camp.
When Doc and I arrived, the only person I saw or spoke to was Felix. I could hear voices coming from the other tents set up around me, and I’m still itching to know if my siblings are in one of them, but I’m trying to play by Felix’s rules. I’ve gotten this far by being careful not to burn bridges. And if the kids are here, they’ll still be here come morning, I rationalize with myself.
It doesn’t take long to get back to the small green tent, and it makes me feel silly for feeling so turned around. My instincts should be better, it’s only the distraction of thinking about Felix that threw me off, I’m sure of it.
Felix releases my hand so he can kneel to unzip the tent but then pauses on the threshold. I don’t want to stop and think about what we’re doing. I want to be impulsive for tonight before my whole world changes; I’m about to be responsible for the pups my parents left behind. My heart swells at the thought and it spurs me into action.
I kneel next to Felix and nudge him out of the way to climb into the tent first. He sucks in a sharp breath as I take care to give my ass extra sway for good measure as I crawl on my hands and knees across the sleeping bag to make room for him.
“Damn,” he mutters.
I turn and sit on the open sleeping bag that’s positioned over a thick pallet of blankets. The sleeping bag is lined with soft fleece on the inside, and I run my fingers nervously across it while I lift my chin and look Felix directly in the eyes.
This is the most brazen I’ve ever felt. I’ve seen mate bonds, my brother Paxton’s bond with Tasha is especially remarkable, but I still wasn’t prepared for this onslaught of feelings andneed.
“Are you sure about this?” Felix asks. His hands curl around the edges of the tent’s entrance, pulling the tent in on itself slightly as he fists the nylon.
In answer, I lean forward and grab a handful of his t-shirt, yanking him toward me. He could resist, but he comes to me easily. He kisses me firmly on the lips before turning to zip the tent closed behind him.
With the door zipped closed, we lose the moonlight to guide us. The inside of the tent is pitch black, leaving us to feel for each other in the dark.
One of his hands slips through the strands of my hair to cradle the back of my head. He pulls my face to his and kisses me. My knees are propped up between us, forcing him to drape himself over them to kiss me. It’s still not close enough somehow.
I part my legs to either side of him, and he takes the hint. Felix sits back, putting his hand on my hip to guide me forward onto his lap. I rest my leg on either side of him, reveling in the feel of his hard length beneath me. Have I ever felt more powerful than I do at this moment? This man is clearly important to The Lost, and here he is underneath me , at my mercy.
“What are you thinking about?” he asks, his voice gravelly as he nips at my ear.
I shudder at the feeling of his teeth against my sensitive flesh. I feel needy and hot, and I need him to fix it, immediately. “I’m thinking that this feels too good.”
“No such thing.” He snorts a half-laugh and then his lips are on mine again. I like that he can’t seem to get enough of me because the feeling is mutual. Everything about being a shifter makes us rely on instinct, but this is next level. I move with him like we were created as one and split at birth—two-halves of a whole spending our lives waiting to find each other again.
“Did you ever worry you might never find your mate living here?” The question slips out between us, forcing him to pull his head back so he can get a good look at me.
“What?” He shakes his head, amused, until he seems to realize it’s a serious question. For a second, I panic and wonder if I’ve misinterpreted things and somehow we’re not actually mates. Finally, he says, “No, not really.”
“Hm.” I wrap my hand around the back of his neck and pull him closer to me, trying to erase his answer with more kissing. I know I haven’t spent much time worrying about my own mate bond, but I was traveling so much… I could have found my mate bond any time. He moved purposely away from other shifters, and he never worried what that might mean for his mate bond? What if we hadn’t found each other?
I’m overthinking things, but once my brain gets started it’s so hard to stop.