God, he felt good pressed against her. Pure warmth and solid muscle. And was it just her? Or was his scent stronger than normal? The earthy hints that clung to his skin richer like after a fresh rain. She sighed and smoothed her hands from his shoulders to his neck, spearing her fingers in his hair at the back of his head. Her hips flexed on instinct, the press of her pelvis against his flesh making her crave an entirely different layer of contact. The weight of him. The length of him blanketing her body.
“Tate.” She fisted her hands in his hair and rolled her hips once more, demands she had no skill or knowledge on how to voice stomping through her with the all the stealth and grace of an elephant. Letting her head drop back, she savored the onslaught of sensations even as her mind grappled for some coherent way to communicate her needs. “Please.”
Arms tightening around her, Tate groaned. “Christ, you’re there already.”
Already where? Lost? Found? Insane? Any seemed appropriate answers considering the escalating need inside her, but all she cared about was touch. Tate’s touch. Preferably everywhere at once with no hope for reality to interrupt either one of them. She needed more of his hands against her skin. His mouth, or any other part of him she could wrangle actively participating in building the sensation pulsing in her core. “Why are you talking?”
“Fuck, Elise. You don’t get it.” Slowly, he sunk down so he rested on his heels, his lips licking and sucking a decadent path down her belly. “It’s your first shift. The sexual urge after is intense.” His tongue dipped just below her navel and pleasure stabbed straight to her sex. “I can smell you. Your pussy’s ready for me and I haven’t even touched you yet.”
A shiver rocked her head to toe, the coarseness of his words ratcheting her need higher.
But he was right. She was ready. Eager. Ravenous and insatiably determined to fill the void inside her. The low and husky words that came out of her mouth were a shock even to her own ears. “Then do something about it. Give your mate what she needs.”
A growl. Low and eerily ominous. “Elise, don’t push me. You don’t know how rough this could get. If you’re not ready, you need to tell me. You need to be sure.”
Oh, she was sure. Her body practically sang its agreement. Preened under the primal energy coming off him. She forced her eyes to open and met his heated stare, certainty and hunger thickening her voice. “I know what I want. And right now, I want my mate to take what’s his.”
His nostrils flared and the emotion behind his amber eyes shifted. Heated and deepened until only a predator stared back at her. He stood, each brush of his body against hers as he did and the intensity behind his gaze shifting the dynamic between them. A transition her everyday mind couldn’t quite comprehend, but that her instinctive self welcomed and accepted as right. Towering over her—holding her stare and pinning her in place with it—she was utterly bound. Captured without a single restraint. His voice was pure velvet. A command and an enticement all in one breath. “Say it again.”
“I want this.” More a ragged breath than a declaration, but her spirit soared with it. “I’m not afraid. Not anymore.”
“You might be before I’m done.” He skimmed his fingers along her jawline, the languid journey from the tip of her chin toward the back of her head deceptively soft in contrast to the edge in his voice. “Who do you belong to, Elise?”
Her stomach pitched and swirled to match the aerial acrobatics of her bird and her breath caught in her throat. Of all the sides to Tate she’d seen, this one was new. Dangerous. Demanding. Unflinchingly dominant. And the fledgling side to herself she’d only just begun to uncover easily stepped forward to answer. Flung every feminist and independent ideal right out the window and offered, “You.”
His fingers tangled in her hair, his big palm cradling the back of her head as he squeezed her hip with the other. His lips ghosted against hers and his chest teased her already tight nipples to the point she whimpered. “That’s right.” He tightened his grip, drawing the roots of her hair taut and dragging a startled gasp past her lips. “All mine.”
His mouth crashed against hers, the kiss he sealed his words with unlike any of the others that had gone before it. It was a declaration. A demarcation of life before and after this moment. And good Lord, did he feel sensational against her. Her breasts flush against his torso. His arms implacable bonds around her shoulders and waist. His hard length an insistent press against her belly.
In one impatient move, he lifted her up, guided her legs around his waist and stalked to the house, his ravenous, all-consuming kiss never flagging in the process. Her lungs burned with the need for more air, but the part of her brain normally focused on the basics of survival and rote functions was too caught up in his kiss to prioritize oxygen over his taste.
Why the hell had she ever fought this? Ever balked at surrendering to something so naturally primal and decadent. Granted, she’d never even been tempted with anyone but Tate, but to think of how much she’d missed in the time she’d known him left her halfway crazed and desperate to catch up.
Only when Tate kicked the cabin door shut and the cool shadows embraced them, did he slow his pace. He eased her to her feet just steps from the bed, each agonizing inch as he lowered her downward a tantalizing, erotic caress. Despite the care with which he handled her, his touch still reverberated with barely leashed control. A live wire cinched tight and primed to unleash its energy.
He nipped her lower lip and backed her toward the bed, his gaze stark with hunger and his voice pure possession. “What are you?”
Oh, hell.
The backs of her knees met the mattress and her sex clenched. “I’m yours.”
The low rumble that vibrated through his chest danced along her skin like sparks off a Fourth of July sparkler. A unique sensation her brain insisted could cause her harm, but that her body was too enamored of and curious to explore to heed its warnings.
He manacled one wrist with his fingers and lifted her hand, stroking his thumb up and down her pulse point. “Freely given.”
The contact rippled through her. Jolted her heart and sent goose bumps fanning out in all directions. “Freely given.”
He pressed her hand to his heart, the steady rhythm beneath her palm as unrelenting as his predatory stare. “Get on the bed.”
Run.
She zeroed in on the door.
“Don’t even think it.” Tate crowded closer, his chest rising and falling at an accelerated pace and a wildness painting his features. “If you run, I’ll chase you. You think you’re scared now, you’ve got no idea what you’d unleash with a hunt.”
A hunt.
Why the idea thrilled her, she couldn’t comprehend, but it went hand in hand with the compulsion she’d felt to high-tail it out the door. As if in doing so, she’d force him to prove himself. To test how far he was willing to go in staking his claim. In providing for her and their family.
It was primal.
Sheer animal logic.
“I’m not scared.” Not exactly, anyway. Anxious, yes. Uncertain, absolutely. But there was no way on Earth Tate would hurt her. That much she knew clear to her soul. Legs trembling, she sat on the edge of the bed and scooted backward. “And I’m not running either.”
“No. You’re not. Not yet, anyway.” One slow yet unceremonious shove of his training pants and he stood naked before her. The early afternoon sun cut through the wide wall of windows behind them and cast his prime body in a golden halo. In the two weeks since they’d begun their physical explorations, she’d had ample opportunity to see him. To touch and explore him all she dared. But in this second—seeing him this raw and exposed—was like seeing him for the first time. All of him. The core essence of him unveiled for her alone.
Keeping his unflinching gaze on her, he planted one knee on the edge of the bed, smoothed his hands along the tops of her feet to her ankles and eased them a
part enough to kneel between them. “I won’t hurt you, Elise. Won’t ever give you more than you need.” His hands slid higher, the rough pads of his thumbs dragging a wicked path along the insides of her shins. “But you’re going to feel me.”
A shiver wriggled down her spine and a tiny whimper eked past her lips.
The hum he answered with was pure contented alpha. The satisfied purr of a man confident he’d not only found but exploited a highly sensitive spot. He circled his thumbs along the inside of her knees. “You want that, don’t you? Want to feel my claim as much as I want to stake it.” His fingers tightened, and he firmly splayed her knees wide, fully exposing her sex. “What are you?”
Her sex spasmed and her back bowed, her taut, heavy breasts pressed upward and eager for his attention. The answer came easy. Stronger and more determined. “Yours.”
“All of you. Every inch.” He cupped her ass, lifted his gaze from her aching core to meet her stare and blatantly licked through her folds. “Mine.”
The word vibrated against her heightened skin a second before the wet silken heat of his lips surrounded her clit.
And dear God, it was sensational. Bliss in physical manifestation. The pull of his mouth. Each decadent sweep of his tongue. The implacable grip of his hands on her ass as he held her to his mouth and feasted, and the erotic image of his head working between her thighs.
She widened her knees and speared her fingers in his hair, shamelessly holding him to her and rolling her hips to meet each sensation. It didn’t matter that there were no shadows to hide her. No darkness to mask her insecurities and worries. This was Tate. Her mate. He wanted her. Flesh and blood. Heart and soul.
As easy as breathing, the sweet, aching tension of a nearing release rolled in. Drew the tender muscles of her sex tighter and tighter as the last of her inhibitions floated away. He slicked his fingers through her folds and circled her entrance.
Her hips lifted in silent invitation. Eager to feel them press deeper. To ride the wet friction he’d taught her to crave as they’d played and learned each other.
Instead, he lifted his head, palmed the insides of her thighs and dragged in a long, sensual breath, openly enjoying the sight of her bared to him.
She dug her nails into the back of his neck. “Tate.”
His exhalation was equally wicked. A sigh that said he welcomed the pain. A hunter in no hurry to finish its prey. “Easy, mihara. I’ll give you what you want.” He leaned forward, bracing one hand beside her head and caressing the curve of her hip with the other. At her rib cage, his hand shifted inward, then firmly cupped one breast. “Except tonight when you come, it’ll be on my cock, not my fingers.”
He punctuated the comment with a roll of his hips, nudging her clit with the broad head of his beautiful cock.
“Oh my God.” She held on for dear life, the grip she kept on his shoulders no doubt painful even with her limited strength, but she needed something to ground her. An anchor to hold her steady as the foreign sensation rolled through her. Back and forth, he guided his shaft against her. Forced her back toward the ledge he’d so casually pulled her away from.
His lips skimmed the tip of one nipple and his warm breath fanned light against her skin. “You’ll feel me just like this, Elise.” Plumping her breast, he flicked the tip with his tongue. “Inside you. Stretching you. Filling you.” He nipped the tip then surrounded the peak with his devious lips, drawing so deep that a tightly woven mix of pain and pleasure speared straight between her legs. For all the things he’d taught her—all the leisurely physical explorations he’d taken her on in the last few weeks—none were on par with this. This raw and unabashedly primal.
He shifted his attention to her other breast. Licked, nibbled and sucked her nipple and stroked her flesh until reality ceased to exist. There was only Tate. His scent. His touch. His taste.
With a frustrated growl, he sat back on his heels and palmed her hips. His cock jutted between them, its hard length a tantalizing weight against the top of her sex. “Last chance, Elise.” His fingertips dug into her flesh and he ground his hips against her. “I might be able to stop now, but once I’m inside you, I don’t think I can.”
Stop? Was he insane? “If you stop, I’ll hit you with my own car and not let anyone heal you.”
She’d meant it as playful. Even tried to inject some levity into her breathless voice.
But Tate’s response was unexpected, a hard, exhilarating edge she’d sensed countless times, but had never witnessed in full force. “I don’t think you’re thinking that one through, mihara.” His hands coasted inward, his thumbs teasing the seam where her inner thighs and sex met. “If you don’t heal me, then I can’t fuck you like you need to be fucked.”
It should have shocked her. Should have doused the moment or made her reconsider where they were headed. Instead, she bucked against him, the sheer rawness of his words and the primitive energy pouring off him waking a side to herself she hadn’t known existed.
And she loved it. Loved the freedom. The uncivilized and ravenous urgency that blasted wildfire hot beneath her skin. She squeezed his wrists and writhed against him, his hard shaft a delicious friction against her clit, but nowhere near what she wanted. Foreign or not, her body knew what it needed. What it craved to ease the insatiable ache. “Tate. Stop talking. Let me feel you.”
The snarl he answered with would have terrified her weeks ago, but tonight it settled something inside her. Incited a natural transference of power that might have felt wrong in the face of reality, but drifted through her now as soft and confident as a summer wind.
“Stop talking?” One blink and her hands were over her head, pinned beneath one of his own. He cupped the side of her face, a barely leashed power resonating through the touch despite its tenderness. “If I do that you won’t know what I’m thinking.” He traced her mouth with his thumb, the pressure behind the contact such she couldn’t help but part her lips. “Especially the dirty parts.”
Her eyes fluttered closed and a whimper slipped free.
“Oh, no you don’t. Eyes open.” He waited until she complied, the steel behind his amber gaze more effectively pinning her in place than his hands or his weight. Slowly, never breaking her stare, his hand slid lower. Down her neck. Between her breasts. Across her belly. “I want you to remember this. Everything you see. Everything you feel. Everything you hear.” He shifted his hips, grasped his cock at the root and slicked his cockhead through her drenched folds.
“Tate.” A whisper. A plea. A demand. Heck, she wasn’t sure what she was trying to convey with the simple release of his name from her lips, but it was the only word that felt right. That made sense in the moment. A bulwark in the middle of a raging storm.
He centered himself. Notched the barest tip of him at her entrance, then stretched himself above her, lacing his fingers with hers and pinning them on either side of her head. “What are you?”
Dear God. Every time he asked the question, the response stabbed deeper. Left her bared at the deepest part of her soul and trembling with need. But with him poised as he was at the mouth of her, it was pivotal. An indelible moment thick with meaning. She squeezed his hands and lifted her hips as much as she could with his thighs pinning her legs wide. “I’m yours.”
He pressed forward. An inch. Maybe less. But a revelation. “All mine.” The muscles at his abdomen bunched as he flexed deeper. A delicious and overwhelming stretch so far beyond anything she’d imagined her lungs seized. “Only mine.”
She fought to move. To pull her hands from his and tug him to her. To wrap her legs around his hips and glory in the feel of his hot, hard body. To claim his mouth even as his shaft sunk inside her. But breaking his hold was impossible. A cage her body reveled in even as it battled for more. “Tate, please.”
With a ragged groan, his eyes slid closed and he drove the rest of the way home, burying his thick length s
o his pelvis pressed flush to hers.
So good.
Pain and perfection.
Too much and not nearly enough.
She squirmed beneath him, greedy for more of the delicious dichotomy he’d created. To embrace the unknown stretched out in front of her and freefall into maelstrom of all that was him. “Please.” She arched her back and squeezed his hands in hers until her nails dug into his skin. “Let me touch you.”
“Not yet.” A ruthless denial on the surface, but a stark vulnerability rode beneath it. A tiny quaver that spoke of fractures webbing through his control. He slowly dragged his hips backward, the thick head of his cock rousing the tender, stretched walls around it and stealing her breath along with it. “Too soon.” As if to prove his point, he thrust forward and seated himself to the hilt once more.
Heaven.
A dark, velvet heaven rich with heat and succulent sensation.
Over and over, he lured her deeper. Pumped his shaft inside her until it seemed her blood pulsed in time to the rhythm he created. Until her thoughts had no room beyond assimilating the most immediate inputs bombarding her. His earthy scent. His labored breaths drifting across her sweat dampened skin. Each flex and release of his muscles and the demanding push and pull of his sex inside her. Time and reason had no place. No bearing on the course he set.
And her body was content to follow. To cede control and happily yield whatever he asked.
“Perfect.” His lips coasted against hers, his tongue licking inside her mouth to dance and duel with hers. He fisted his hand at the back of her head, drawing her head back for more of his demanding kiss. “So fucking perfect.”
Free.
How long she’d simply ridden the pulsing tide without realizing he’d released his hold, she couldn’t say. Didn’t care to evaluate in the wake of his drugging kisses. Only knew that a whole new realm of possibilities lay before her. A bold landscape to explore.
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