Chapter 15 - Byron

Olivia reaches for my hips, grabbing them and pulling my entire body flush against hers, and it's like something breaks within me. I can't hold back any longer; if she wants it, I'm hers. Grabbing her hips, I lift her up, letting her wrap her legs around my waist.

In a moment, I'm slipping my hand up her skirt, pushing her panties to the side, my fingers finally, finally touching her again. It's like a drowning man coming to water, and the way she moves against my hand tells me she feels it, too.

I want everything from her—everything I can get, every single way that I can have her, but right now, my brain is insisting that I stop fucking around and just get my dick inside her. When she fumbles for my belt, undoing my pants and dropping them to the ground around my ankles, a shock of adrenaline goes through me.

This is happening.

When her hand wraps around my dick, I bury my face in the crook of her neck, breathing, biting, tasting her, thrusting into her hand, pleasure sparking behind my eyes. When she squeezes her arm between us, positioning my cock at her entrance, I hesitate for the slightest moment, and I know she feels it.

"I'm on the pill," she breathes, and I bury myself inside her. She cries out, the noise bouncing off the trees around us, but I don't care about anything except feeling more of her. She digs her heels into the small of my bag. I grab a handful of her hair and pull her head back, tipping her chin up to kiss and bite at her neck.

She is so beautiful out here, in the moonlight. Ethereal.

"Byron," Olivia whimpers, and I drop one hand to her hip, holding her there as I lift her, repositioning so I can drive even deeper inside her. And then she's grasping at me, her hands bunching in the fabric of my shirt, her mouth opening as she comes apart, her eyes fluttering shut, face tipped up to the canopy.

The second she's done, I pull out of her, breathing hard as I come to the side, using my hand to finish the job. It's like a mirage in the desert. My body aches to be inside her again, unsatisfied and incomplete.

A moment later, I feel her hands on my chest, pushing me away, and I stumble back, nearly falling over until I regain my balance and yank my jeans up my legs, eyes wide as I stare at her.

"What?" I ask, still breathing hard. "Are you okay? Did I hurt—"

"I told you I'm on the pill," she says, her chest rising and falling, face tipped down. She looks furious, like a supervillain about to strike. I hate that it makes me hard again.

And then it clicks. What she's saying.

"Yeah, I—"

"What? You thought I was lying?"

"No, I mean—"

She stalks toward me, face twisted in a grimace. She looks like she wants to shove me, hit me, but keeps her hands to herself. I almost wish she would hit me, get some of that anger out in a way that I understood. Instead, tears spark in her eyes, and I drop my hands, trying to figure out what I did to take us from being closer than ever, to her expression looking like this in a matter of seconds.

"You thought—what? That I want so badly to have your babies that I would trick you into it? Is that the kind of person you think I am?"

"Olivia, no, I—"

When I reach out to take her wrist in my hand, to kiss the inside of her palm, she rips it away, and I feel like I'm falling in midair with nothing to hold onto.

"Don't fucking touch me, Cox. Ever again."

She turned on her heel and started marching in the direction she was going before I found her the first time.

"You want to find who cursed you, right?" I ask, my voice ringing out after her. She stops, her back to me, but I can still see that she's breathing hard. "I'm your best bet. I'm working on it, and I'm getting close. And I think I have some answers about the mayor."

Slowly, she starts to turn back to me.

"Olivia," I say, voice choked. "I know things aren't…right. Between us. But I want to keep you safe."

"—yeah, because if I die, then you die, and you're scared that there are no video games in the afterlife."

I want to laugh at the idea of that, but I know it's not the time. I know that if this was two years ago, when she first came to Rosecreek, we'd be rolling over the idea, wondering if you could play against Elvis or Julius Caesar. Instead, she's staring at me like she wants to rip my face off.

"I just want you to be okay," I say, hands up, "please— please come stay at my place. We can—"

"You know what's going to happen if I stay at your place," she says, her voice flat, "and I am not doing that again."

"I'll sleep on the couch," I say, hands up, "or, you can lock me in my computer room. I just—I'm going to feel a lot better if you're at my apartment with me."

She stares at me for a long time, her arms crossed, but the vampire attacks must have freaked her out, because she eventually lets her arms fall, nodding. When she looks up at me, I can see the fear there, in her eyes, and it pisses me off.

Why Olivia? Why not target someone else on the team? Why do they have to make her afraid to sleep at night?

Is it because she was close to uncovering something?

"Okay," I say, nodding. I start to hold my hand out to her, then realize she definitely doesn't want that, so I keep it at my side. "Okay."

Olivia is missing , Bigby sends, a moment later.

Her scent leads into the woods , Percy adds.

I have her, I send back, before they can come looking at catch a different scent—one that will tell them exactly what we were doing out here. The last thing I need is for them to make any assumptions about us.

"Come on," I say, and she follows me through the woods and to my building.

After bringing Olivia inside my apartment, I get to work ensuring my new security system is engaged at every single exit and entrance. I set up motion-detected lights and cameras and even go so far as to calibrate lasers to detect movement in the hallway, in case the vampires try to be sneaky.

I made a note to talk to Triste about what she could add to this set-up.

"Damn," Olivia says, when I'm finished. "Maybe I should have been staying here a long time ago."

I stare at her, and she shakes her head, putting a hand to her forehead.

" That is not what I meant," she laughs, "I think I'm just ready to get some sleep."

"Right," I say, nodding, "I think—I think you still have a pair of shorts here, if you want them."

I don't think , I know. Because they're tucked into the bottom drawer of my dresser, and I pretend not to notice them each time I put my clothes away.

"Yeah," she says, "that would be great. Could I get a shirt as well?"

My throat feels swollen, stuck, so thick I can't swallow, but I nod, turning and grabbing the shorts for her and one of my old t-shirts from the drawer.

"Classy," she says, holding the shirt up. It's from Comic-Con back when I was a teenager. It's one of my favorites, and, when she comes back out a moment later, wearing it, it's like I can't breathe.

Why am I holding myself back from her, again?

Family, my brain says. She wants kids .

I clear my throat and gesture for her to take the bedroom, then turn and march myself to the couch. I stare down at it, wondering if it would be dramatic to ask her to duct-tape me down. Then, I hear the click of the lock on the bedroom door and nod before dropping down onto the couch heavily.

For some reason, I have a terrible feeling that things are just going to keep getting worse before they ever get better.

***

I wake up to the sound of someone in the kitchen, and my entire body freezes. As slowly as I can, I reach down, trying to find my knives, cursing under my breath when I realize they're in the bedroom with Olivia.

How the fuck did a vamp get past my systems?

As carefully as possible, not stepping on any creaky parts of the floor, I get to my feet, creeping into the kitchen. Is the vamp…looking in my refrigerator?

His front is facing the light, illuminated, and his back is just a silhouette. Grabbing a knife from the counter, I launch myself at him. He rears back instantly, pushing me back so I hit against the pantry hard .

It knocks the air out of me, and I gasp, reaching for the knife where I dropped it. It doesn't smell like a vamp—he smells like a shifter—like—

"Don't fucking move!" someone yells, and I turn to see Olivia standing in the entrance to the kitchen, a shotgun pointed at the man standing in front of me.

"Don't shoot!" I say, at the same time, he says, "Well, hello , cutie. Where the hell did you come from?

"What?" Olivia says, blinking, when he turns around, offering me a hand up. I take it, scowling at him and thinking about how I've calibrated my systems to ignore my DNA and Olivia's DNA so I wouldn't have to disable it each time I came home.

"Zane," I say, setting the knife on the counter so it clatters. "What the hell are you doing here?"

"Byron, who is this?" Olivia asks, still holding the gun like she might still need to pull the trigger. I grab the barrel, pointing it to the ground and sighing.

"He's—"

"What?" Zane says, giving Olivia a dazzling smile and picking the knife up from the counter, spinning it on the point of the blade. "Byron never told you about his big brother?"