He kissed the question right off my lips. With his tongue slowly exploring my lips, then diving down and running behind them, there was nothing I could do. I was utterly, completely powerless to this man, and even if he didn’t know it, I sure as shit did.
“Damon,” I said softly, “I... I don’t know why I gave you up the first time.”
“Because I was scared of going too fast. I was afraid that if I really fell for you, and we did all this stuff back then, that I’d become, well, this.” He gestured down his body, indicating the thicker-than-normal hair on his muscled legs.
“Poko says you’re going to be in control of it,” I replied. “He says that once you go through the big transformation ordeal, you’ll be able to shift back and forth and that’s how you’re supposed to,” I swallowed my words before I said ‘fight Devin’ because I really just didn’t want to admit that reality to myself.
Damon shook his head, taking a second to kiss me again before he did. “I just don’t know. But back then, I was really scared. I didn’t have anything to go on. My dad told me some stories, and then just kinda left me to figure it out on my own.”
I opened my mouth to protest, which Damon stopped with another deep, sweet kiss.
“He didn’t do anything wrong. That’s how my people work. They raise me, and then they give me over to the elder. Poko told you all that stuff though. I’m not sore at my dad or anything. Anyway, that’s not what we were talking about. We were discussing you, I think?”
His fingers curling against the back of my head was just so comfortable, so right. I never wanted him to stop.
“I just,” I trailed off, massaging his shoulder. “I don’t want to ruin it again. I’ve got you, and I think that’s what I want.”
“You’ve got me, yeah,” he said softly. “Can I admit something to you?”
I ran my fingertip along the razor-thin scar that stretched almost all the way between Damon’s eye and his top lip. “Anything.”
“I thought you were going to leave.”
“Why would I –”
He put up a hand. “You seemed spooked by that whole fated destiny, soul-mate business, and I couldn’t blame you if you were. When I went berserk, or well, one of the times I went berserk, I was panicked. I thought for sure there was no way you’d stick around. And you know what? I wouldn’t go after you.”
“But Damon,” I protested, “if what Poko says is true, that’d be the same as dooming yourself to these uncertainties, to shifting back and forth and all that. Why would you endure that kind of torture?”
Damon let his hand fall from the side of my face to his shoulder, and he pulled me close against his chest. “Because I would never hurt you Lily, not even if it meant losing my humanity. I’d rather live in the constant agony of waking up cut to pieces and not remembering what I’d done or where I was than cause you a moment of pain.”
I opened my mouth to respond, but my breath and my voice caught in my throat.
Finally, I answered. “I don’t know what to say to that.”
“Then don’t say anything.” He stroked my hair, tucking it behind my ear and kissing my cheek before turning my face to his and staring straight into my soul. “You don’t have to say anything. I’ve always loved you, Lily. From the second I saw you when I moved here, I knew I’d either have you or I’d have no one at all. This whole werewolf business just got in the way.”
Kissing his lips, then his chin, I rested my head against his chest. “Only you, Damon King,” I said smiling.
“Only me what?”
“Only you could be casual and flippant, and somehow unbearably sexy when you talk about turning into a wolf. And one other thing.”
“Yeah?”
“The only reason I didn’t run?”
I twisted in his arms, turning to face him. I drank in his eyes, his face. I wanted to remember every single detail.
“Is because it’s you.”
For a moment, he watched my face too, and then pulled me close. I heard him grimace when I wrapped my arms around his bandaged ribs, but he didn’t seem to mind as he closed his lips around mine, trailed them down to my neck, then back, leaving a wash of goosebumps in his wake.
“Damon,” I whispered. “How are you,” I gasped softly when his hands went somewhere no one’s ever had, except in a dream. “How are you making me feel like this? You’re supposed to be hurt.”
He grunted a laugh, and warmed a place behind my ear with the tip of his tongue that shot a tingle from my neck all the way down the front of my body. Right after the sweet sensation of pinpricks, his hands slid under the bottom of my shirt. Damon’s fingertips curling against my skin sent my mind shooting back to my dream.
I shuddered, remembering the way his teeth felt against my neck, how he tugged and pulled, so needy to have me that he hurt just a little. Somehow, the phantom reminder that his lust – his need for me – had put deep in my heart burned to be released, even though I knew they’d never been real before.
“I can’t help myself,” he muttered, trailing his kisses to the back of my neck. “I don’t know how I managed for so long. I guess.” He sucked a kiss on the nape of my neck as he caressed my collarbones with one finger and tugged the waist of my shorts with another. “Something about you, it makes me... it scares me a little, what you bring out in me.”
He dragged his teeth – square ones this time – gently along the curve of my neck, up my chin and slid his tongue between my lips. The taste of him entering me shot sparks along the sides of my face that made my scalp tingle. Down, between my legs, just inches from where his fingertip patiently drew a circle on my skin, tiny muscles clenched and released their excitement.
Damon explored me with his kiss, swirling his tongue behind my lips along my teeth, and finally, tentatively touching it to mine.
The instant I felt him against me, I pulled him harder, closer, and straddled one of his huge thighs. Rippling muscles surged through his jeans, and each tiny movement sent my pulse racing. Taking a deep breath, his scent filled my nose, then my lungs, burning all the way down.
“Keep me just like this,” I whispered in his ear when Damon pulled away and kissed my neck. “Don’t ever let me go. Forever and ever it feels like I’ve wanted this. I don’t know what I’d do if something happened to... mmm... to you.”
It was so weird to think of him as anything other than my boyfriend, even though I knew that things were different now. Figuring out exactly when they changed was impossible, but right then, it didn’t matter. Not one bit. His lips painted a path I’d always wanted them to, even if I never said anything.
“You’ll,” he looked up from a long, lingering kiss that sent a flutter of pleasure down my stomach. “Never want – never hunger, for anything as long as I can help it.”
“Anything? You sure about that?”
His smile told me everything I needed to know. And then his lips dipped below the collar of my shirt, lower than anyone had ever touched with anything – hands or lips or otherwise – and a flush crept up my neck, down to my...
“Why are you doing this? Why now?” I whispered, tangling my fingers in his long, wavy hair and sliding along his thigh. “What took you so... mmm... long?”
“I never wanted to hurt you,” he growled. “I didn’t want to get too worked up and, I don’t know, tear you apart or anything like that.”
“Oh Damon,” I said with a laugh on my lips, and then a gasp when he pulled my shirt down and kissed between my breasts. “Oh my God you could do whatever you wanted right now and I wouldn’t say anything to stop you.”
“Whatever I want?” it was his turn to quirk an eyebrow at me.
“Just,” I gasped, his tongue slid a hot streak along my skin and he pushed his hand a little further down against my softest place. “Just be gentle with me.”
“I’ll do what I can,” he said. “But if I get a little too excited, I—”
I pulled his face back up to mine and shushed him with a k
iss. “If you do, it’ll be just like the first time I dreamed about you. I didn’t even know it was you... except I did know,” he gave me another soft bite on the neck, making me groan. “If that makes any sense.” I barely managed to get the words out around all the groans he pulled out of me.
“Help me down,” he said with a soft grunt. “No, wait.”
With a smooth motion, Damon whipped off the loose-fitting, half-buttoned flannel shirt he was wearing and laid it flat on the ground. The sun behind him framed a body that was bandaged, but still bigger, leaner and wider at the shoulders I’d ever seen. Just staring at him took my breath away, even as my body yearned for him to be back where he had been – where he was supposed to be.
The word he kept using – mate – rolled around in my mind as he took my hand. His fingertips danced a trickling ballet up my arm, chilling me as they went. His lips followed from my wrist to my collarbone.
I let my head fall backwards, relaxed, as I breathlessly accepted the shower of tingling, sweet kissing up one side of my collarbone and down the other. He bit my shoulder, gently at first, but when I started moaning, a little harder.
The next pinch I felt was his big, strong fingers fumbling with my buttons.
“Need some help with that?” I couldn’t help but giggle.
A moment later he had my first one undone, and kissed where it used to be, his hot lips thrilling my skin. Then, more pinching, and a frustrated grumble. “These clumsy damn fingers,” he said under his breath. “I just can’t.”
By then, breath heaved my chest. My lungs filled and emptied hotter and quicker, and I couldn’t help myself. “Just rip it off,” I said with a wicked grin. “You know you want to.”
Tentatively, Damon looked in my eyes and gave the first button a tug. “You sure?”
“I have other shirts.”
To show him I meant it, I grabbed my blouse away from him and strained, popping the cork.
Half of Damon’s mouth turned up in a grin and the way he looked at me, I thought he was about seconds from ripping in. The hunger in his eyes, the lust burning in his fingers as they warmed my chest, my stomach, it was all just too much.
“Give in,” he said in a soft, tight voice. “Stop holding back. You keep moving away from me. You can’t anymore. That’s not how this works.”
“Oh?” I arched my neck and ran my hands through his hair before letting them go to rest on his powerful shoulders. “You’re in charge now? If that’s what you’re saying, then show, Damon.” I lifted his chin and smiled when his emerald eyes caught me by surprise with how brightly they twinkled. “Show, don’t...”
Tell, I would have said, if he didn’t take my breath away with how viciously, how hard and desperately, he ripped my blouse open and threw it away. Landing without a sound among the leaves on the ground, the gentleness with which the thing floated to the ground reminded me of how slowly Damon went, how careful he was.
I didn’t think it was because of his broken ribs, or his broken hands or anything else. It was because of me.
Hungry, desperate kisses went from the lower tip of my collarbones down my chest. He knelt in front of me, and was still only about a head shorter than me. With careful, slow motions, he circled my bare skin with patient fingertips.
“I can’t,” I gasped when his lips touched between my breasts, then the tip of his tongue warmed my skin and then he sucked for a moment. “I can’t take this, Damon. I need you worse than I’ve ever wanted anything before. How are you doing this to me? I can’t stop thinking about—”
“Shh,” he said in between kisses. “Be quiet. Let me take care of you, for once. Just relax, Lily.”
Slowly, his lips made their way to the catch on my shorts.
The tensing between my legs grew stronger and somehow sweeter, in anticipation of his kisses going further, going to a place no one ever had. All I wanted, right then, was for him to hurry up and get there.
But he made me wait. He made me patiently wait through nibbles that made me suck deep breaths, through squeezes of his powerful hands turned me almost to jelly when he kneaded my waist.
“May I touch you?” he said, looking up at me from where he knelt. To punctuate, he slid his tongue around my bellybutton, bit softly, and sucked a kiss below it, only inches from my waistband. “If not, I...”
His kiss trailed further, and his hands slid up my sides.
I was breathing too hard to answer. The thick, heavy air in the forest, and my own desire, made sweat ran down the sides of my neck. My breasts ached for him, my nipples stiffening to prove it. I grabbed his hands, and pulled them up, placing them on me and urging him.
“Just perfect,” he moaned between kisses. “Just like I always imagined. Like I,” he paused, pulling one hand briefly away to unbutton my shorts. “Like I always dreamed it would be.”
As he kneaded, he kissed lower, and tugged on my zipper with his teeth. Each time it slid a little further, he trailed it with a kiss until he got to the top of my panties. By then I was hopelessly awash in pleasure, grasping him and making him grip me harder and harder.
My own wildness surprised me, but every time I took another breath, it seemed like Damon’s feral essence bled through me, making my whole body ache and yearn for him – for my mate, for my alpha – to make me his.
“Is this okay?” he asked.
I shoved his head lower, laughing as I moaned when his tongue slid along the cotton separating his kiss from my skin. Damon’s hands circled slowly, lingering when my nipples stiffened against the fabric of my bra, until he couldn’t take anymore.
In one hard, fierce jerk, he ripped it apart from the middle out.
“That was expensive,” I said as his hands settled on my bare skin, and his hands became the first that weren’t mine to touch me there. “I’ve got others. Who gives a shit,” I added when I felt him pause.
His shoulders shook with laughter, and he massaged harder. The heat of his tongue sent a wave through me. Just being vulnerable and open enough with Damon to let him do this – to let him go to places I’d always been too afraid to allow anyone, no matter how bad I wanted it, that felt almost as good, maybe better, than what he was doing to me physically.
“Is this,” I put my hand on his shoulder to get his attention. He looked up. “Is this what you want?” I don’t know why it struck me right then, but there was no stopping the emotions that coursed through my body. “Is it really me you want, Damon?”
“You and no one else. No one else ever. I knew it the first time I saw you. No one’s ever made me feel like this before. Poko’s got his stuff about my fate... or the prophecy of our people or whatever, but I don’t care about any of that. It just doesn’t matter to me.”
“Are you sure? I mean, I don’t want to trap you or...”
“Hush,” he mouthed.
The feel of his tongue against my panties shut me right up. Gently, he pulled them down, and followed with kisses over every place he could possibly kiss. He grabbed my hand, eased me to my knees, and then onto my back.
“Are you sure you’re okay to do this?” I asked. My nerves made me talk, they always did, and no matter how much I wanted to shut up and just relax, I couldn’t. Well, at least until he covered my mouth with one of those huge hands, and laughed.
His tongue swirled along me, up and down. Very quickly, any nervous chattering I compulsively tried turned into whimpers of pleasure. He moved a finger along my folds, and between them, into me, and as I accepted him inside my body, I felt a surge of energy, like our spirits were fusing together. Heat slid up my chest and out of me in radiating pulses that matched the beating of my heart.
Damon’s gentle, sweet kisses sent me away, careening through the sky to a place I’d never been. A second finger joined the first, and as soon as that happened, my head hit the shirt, crunching the leaves underneath.
“Oh! Oh yes, I can’t... I can’t believe this is happening, I...”
I reached down and cupped myself in m
y hands as his tongue milked another breath from my lips. “Beautiful,” he whispered. “So sweet, so perfect, I can’t... I can’t keep myself in anymore, Lily, I feel it growing inside me, I—”
With a hand on his cheek, I looked down between my legs when Damon came up for a breath, and the pleasure momentarily stopped. Slowly, he turned his fingers inside me, curling them, almost like he was trying to see how far he could go with me still able to talk.
“Don’t make me wait, Damon,” I whispered. “Just... go easy on me, it’s my first...”
“Me too,” he smiled. “Though it feels like we’ve been here before.”
I wondered what his passing words meant, but once again, as soon as I felt those fingers turn, and that tongue against my flesh, I stopped caring. He flicked back and forth across my sweetest spot, and then pulled away.
“I want you back,” I said, smiling, “but I want what’s about to happen even more.”
All he did was smile.
He grimaced as he undid his jeans and slid them down. I reached for him, and felt his hardness fill my hands, growing with each passing second. He stared straight into my eyes.
“I wouldn’t do this if I didn’t love you, Lily. If I didn’t love you more than anything in the world, I—”
Clenching my eyes, and gritting my teeth, I guided him in. He gasped, and I did my best to keep from crying, though I wasn’t sure if it was the pain, or the ecstasy of years of release, or... what it was. Such intensity welled up inside me that I couldn’t stop myself.
The deeper he went, the more I wanted him, yearned for him, ached for him. I wrapped my legs around my mate’s muscular waist and just... waited for him to take me away.
“Whatever you want,” I said. “However you need me, I,” I paused, biting my lip as he moved almost all the way inside me, filling me, shaking me to the core. “I love you too, Damon.”
His heat inside me, his skin against mine, it radiated energy from inside my center all the way to my toes. As he pushed, they curled. As he pulled, I was able to breathe, but only for a moment. Every breath was him; every sound I heard was Damon.
Fated Mates: The Alpha Shifter Boxed Set (12 Book Bundle) (Insatiable Reads) Page 36
