He didn’t know how many orgasms she’d had by the time he finally couldn’t stand it any longer, but it had to be a bunch. Every time she’d come and start trying to push him away, he’d ease up just enough, and just long enough, until she came down from that one and he’d start building her up again.
He sat up, fumbling and finally getting his jeans unfastened and them and his briefs shoved far enough down his hips before lining up his cock and sinking home with a relieved sigh.
Her eyes flew open. Wrapping her legs around him, he leaned in, bracing his hands on either side of her head as he slowly fucked her. So sweet, so tight, so hot and ready for him, he paused at the bottom of one thrust, an agony of self-control.
Scooping her body up against his with one arm, he kissed her, hard, fiercely. “Mine,” he sent to her again through their quickly strengthening mate bond.
Trailing kisses down the right side of her throat, he felt her arms encircle him as he started nibbling, nipping, making her gasp.
He slowly started fucking her again, his lips pressed against the top of her right shoulder.
“Mine,” he whispered aloud this time, just before he pistoned his hips, hard and deep, at the same time he bit down.
She let out a screaming cry, but around his cock her pussy spasmed as she came. Teeth still buried in her flesh, he began fucking her hard and fast.
“That’s right, my mate. You come for me, just like that. You keep coming for me.”
Her nails raked along his back, his shirt keeping her from gouging them into his flesh, and still he held on, still he fucked her, still he bit down, enjoying the taste of her blood mixing with the taste of her juices in his mouth.
“Yes!” she gasped out loud.
“Gonna fuck my mate real good,” he said, struggling to hold back, wanting at least one more out of her. “And for the rest of our lives together, you’re going to know what it’s like to be a well-loved woman.”
The next cry she let out was also accompanied by another wave of her pussy clamping down on his cock.
She wasn’t in her fertile time, he could tell that, and had no worries at all when he took that last, hard, final thrust and howled around the flesh of her shoulder as he came. Only then did he loosen his grip with his mouth, licking and soothing the marks that were already starting to heal. He rolled onto his side, taking her with him, tucked against his body as she started to cry.
“What…what just happened to me?”
He heard that in his mind, and it made him chuckle as he kissed her forehead. “What happened, my love,” he spoke aloud, “is that I just claimed you as my mate.”
Startled, she looked up at him, eyes even wider now. “You…I didn’t say that out loud. I only thought it.”
He leaned in and kissed her. “No, you did not say it out loud. You didn’t have to.”
The kiss apparently distracted her from her tears. It helped boost his interest, too, because inside her, his cock began to harden.
This time, he rolled onto his back, holding her hands and urging her to sit up on him. As she stared down at him, fear and pleasure and passion and wonder all mixed into her beautiful expression, he forced all other thoughts out of his brain.
“What are you?” she whispered.
“I’m yours,” he said. “Forever.”
“I…” She stopped rocking her hips against his, but he noticed she didn’t move from where she was still impaled by his cock. “Wait! We didn’t use condoms!”
He brought her right hand up to his mouth, turning it so he could feather kisses inside her wrist. “We don’t need them. I’m clean, I know you’re clean from the way you smell, and unless I’m mistaken, you’re also on the pill. Plus it’s not your fertile time of the month.”
Her gaze widened even more.
He grinned. “Fuck the next one out of me, my beautiful mate. We will talk shortly.” He let go of her left hand and reached between their bodies to find her clit.
Her eyes dropped closed and she let out a soft moan as she started rocking back and forth. Within seconds, she was bouncing up and down on him, coming again.
Waiting until he knew she’d finished, he grabbed her hips and thrust up into her, soon adding a second load to her delicious body.
Going limp, she collapsed on top of him as he held her.
“What’s happening?” she whispered. “Who are you? Why do I feel like this? This is crazy. I don’t just sleep with a guy I only met a few minutes ago!”
He rolled them onto their sides. “I have to show you,” he said.
Malyah stroked his cheek as she stared into his eyes. “I can’t believe… I don’t even know you and… It’s like something came over me that I can’t control.”
He turned his head, planting a kiss on her palm. “Something did, and you couldn’t. You are my mate and you felt it, too.”
He didn’t want to pull away from her, but he untangled himself, kicked off his shoes and socks, removed his jeans and briefs, and then his shirt.
Standing there, naked, he stared down at her. “Don’t scream.”
“What?”
He shifted.
* * * *
One moment, Joaquin stood there in front of her. The next, a huge brown and black wolf with Joaquin’s brown eyes stood there, staring at her.
The scream died in her throat, cut off to a terrified squeak as her brain tried to process the impossible.
And still, she heard his voice.
“We are wolf shifters. Dewi, Beck, Badger. Martin. Peyton and Trent. Gillian and Asia. The reason Beck looks at Nami with such hunger is because she is his mate. The way you are now mine.”
He shifted back into Joaquin. “We are called the Targhee pack. This land is our pack compound. Your brother and other sister, and brother-in-law, they don’t know any of this. Nami knows because Beck is a wolf, too.”
She felt like her brain had exploded. Unable to process everything flooding into her mind, emotions and thoughts and even memories she had no idea where they had come from…
“You’re apparently regaining memories they’d changed for you. When your father tried to come back into your life? Dewi and the others, they helped. Your father and his friends actually abducted you. Dewi, Beck, and Martin rescued you. Dewi is a Prime and helped change your memories of the events. That’s a whole ’nother conversation we’ll have to have, about things like that.”
For the absolute first time in her life, Malyah had no idea what to say. She didn’t think she could speak.
She was too busy trying to remember how to breathe.
Those were exactly some of the memories now in her head. Some of the dreams she’d had—nightmares, really—for weeks.
She’d thought they were just nightmares.
“Am…am I going crazy?”
“No. Maybe it’s from us mating, and me being an Alpha. Normally, the memories Dewi blocked would have stayed blocked.”
He walked over and squatted next to her. Between trying to breathe, and trying to keep her eyes off his gorgeous, naked body, she just sat there in shock.
Joaquin reached in and took her hand in his, pressing it to his cheek. “I know this is hard to believe. Every human mate who finds out about shifters like this goes through shock. Badger told me both Ken and Nami had an adjustment period as well. Ken actually fainted.”
She blinked. Between that and breathing, it was all she could manage.
“Do you want to see me do it again?” he asked.
She thought she slowly nodded.
He smiled and released her hand. Then he stood, backed away, and did…it…again.
The wolf stood there, staring at her.
Slowly, she leaned forward, staring at it. Reaching down to her inner thigh, she pinched herself, hard, making herself wince.
The wolf made a chuffing noise that reminded her of laughter.
“You are not dreaming,” she heard Joaquin’s voice speak in her head. “And yes, it’s the mating bond. Wh
en we’re close like this, we can hear each other’s thoughts.”
“Oh…my…god…”
He changed back to Joaquin. “We do, however, have one slight problem,” he said.
“What?”
He gave her that playful half-smirk again. “As much as I want to spend the rest of the night doing nothing but making love to you, we need to hide this from Beck and your sister for a few days. Hopefully until after their wedding. I don’t want to interrupt things.”
“Why?”
“I am not Beck’s favorite person. And I need to formally present you as my mate to Peyton. He’s our pack Alpha.”
“How…how is this possible? Any of this?”
“It’s just what we are.”
“But…” She swallowed. “How can I feel this about you? And how…how did you do that? The turning into a wolf stuff?”
“The whole immediate sexual desire thing is a little easier to believe when compared to the wolf shifter news, isn’t it?” He grinned, and she realized that handsome, playful expression would be her undoing. She loved it.
It shocked her to realize she loved him.
She found herself nodding. This was the kind of stuff that happened in romance novels and movies. Not…not in real farking life!
“We need to get you back to your cottage and take a shower. If we don’t, every wolf in the room at dinner tonight will know exactly what we’ve been doing.” He held a hand out to her.
It took her a moment to find the strength to reach out and take it. He effortlessly pulled her to her feet, as if she weighed nothing.
Another thing that made her heart flutter in a wild and good way.
A way she didn’t want to stop anytime soon.
Chapter Eleven
Malyah was glad Joaquin knew his way around, because she couldn’t have gotten them back to the guest cottage if her life had depended on it. She’d blindly followed Joaquin into the woods and belatedly realized it was a good thing he’d led her out there for the reason he had, and not a nefarious one.
Well, she didn’t consider it a nefarious reason in retrospect.
Beck and her sister might have other ideas, though.
“Hey, you weren’t kidding when you said you were a big, bad wolf, were you?” she asked.
“No.” That smile again, playful.
Wolfish.
“You are the one who called me a wolf first, if you’ll recall,” he reminded her.
“What happens now?” she quietly asked.
He stopped and turned to her. “We do our best to play things cool around the others until the wedding. Then I’ll talk to Peyton and find out if he will assign me to Tampa.”
The thought of him not being in Tampa ripped at her. “And if he doesn’t?”
He shrugged. “Then I turn in my resignation and move to Tampa anyway. Unless there’s somewhere else you’d rather live.” He cradled her face in his hands, his sexy brown gaze intent on her. “You’re my mate. You and I…I won’t let anyone separate us.”
Relief fluttered through her, and it was only then she realized how scared she’d been that maybe they couldn’t be together in the long-run. That maybe this trippy whatever it was had been a one-time thing.
And that it had scared her so much…well, that scared her, too.
Holy crap, I’m a hot mess.
“What is our future together?” she quietly asked.
He took her hands in his and dropped to one knee. “I’m sorry I don’t have a ring to give you yet, but will you marry me?” The wolfish smile reappeared. “Not that I need a piece of paper to spend the rest of my life with you, but I want all of you.”
She realized she was nodding, making his smile widen.
“Is that a yes?” he asked.
“Yes.” She couldn’t have said no if she’d wanted to.
And she most definitely did not want to say no to him.
“Am I dreaming?” she asked, simultaneously afraid it was and wishing that was all this was.
“No,” he said, smoothly standing, pressing her hands against his chest, the feel of his heart beating through his shirt seeming to echo her own pulse. “Not a dream. A fantasy come true, on my part.” He kissed her and the world came to life around her once more.
She felt more vibrant, more alive than ever before.
“I don’t know if I can fake my way through dinner pretending this didn’t happen,” she said.
“We’ll figure it out. We’ll do our best. After dinner, I’ll come back to your cottage and spend the night with you.”
“Okay.” Another fear allayed.
Spending the night alone in a strange bed after having just had this happen…that wasn’t something she wanted to do.
“I don’t want to spend the night alone, either,” he whispered. “I can’t. I won’t.”
He enveloped her in his arms again as peace settled over her. Like her world had finally snapped into place with him, and she hadn’t even recognized it was off-kilter to start with.
She decided to test the mental thing again. “Wow.”
“Wow, exactly,” he said with a playful chuckle.
* * * *
There was still close to an hour until dinner. Joaquin wasn’t exactly sure how he’d manage to keep his hands off Malyah during dinner, or how he would manage to hide the fact that Malyah was now his mate from a room full of wolves.
The answer presented itself as they drew closer to the guest cottages. In Asia’s backyard next door to Peyton’s lay her considerable garden. She loved fresh herbs, and had several large rosemary bushes growing around the periphery. He snapped off a few branches from a couple of the bushes and brought them back to Malyah.
“What is that?” she asked.
“Rosemary. I can’t hide my scent,” he said. “Not from them. This might help disguise the fact that you’re mine. It’ll prove enough of a distraction that, with everything else going on, maybe they’ll miss the connection. When I’m introduced to you at dinner, give me a hug. That will hopefully explain our scents on each other, as long as no one thinks too hard on the matter.”
She fingered one of the branches. “What do I say if anyone asks about the rosemary?”
He came up with a blank. “Hopefully, they won’t ask. Say you changed body wash or something. It’s a common herb. Come on.”
They slipped unseen through the cottage’s back door. Inside, they stripped their clothes and climbed into the shower together. Unfortunately, when they got into the shower, Joaquin knew he couldn’t contain himself.
Fortunately, she didn’t want him to. She reached down and wrapped her fingers around his already stiff cock. When he met her gaze, she smiled up at him.
“My, what a big cock you have,” she said.
“All the better to fuck you with, my dear.” Yes, it was one of the cheesiest pickup lines known to wolf shifters.
He didn’t care. Coming from her lips, it sounded like beautiful poetry.
He crushed his lips onto hers, his cock throbbing even more over the plaintive whines escaping her.
She wanted him as much as he wanted her.
He feathered his lips across her jaw, down her throat, over to her shoulder to the already healed mating mark he’d left there. When he flicked his tongue over it, she gasped in pleasure.
Wrapping his arms around her, he kept licking and kissing the mark, keeping her upright in his arms as her hand fell still on his cock. She moaned, gasped, shivered.
She wanted him.
When he started to turn her under the spray, she stopped him. “Don’t get my hair wet,” she scolded. “I won’t have time to fix it before dinner. I should have grabbed a shower cap before we got in here.”
“I don’t care what your hair looks like,” he said. “You’re beautiful.”
“Yeah, well, I do, and I spent a couple of hours and over a hundred bucks at the stylist yesterday afternoon.”
“You’ve got a scarf tied around it now.”
&n
bsp; “Only because I didn’t have time to take it off before someone dragged me into the woods and boinked my brains right out of my head. Thank god I had it on to keep leaves and stuff out of my hair.”
His cock twitched. His spirited mate had a steely spine.
He loved it, and her.
He turned so he stood under the spray and kissed her, melting her again. She finally had to let go of his cock when he dipped his knees, caught the backs of her thighs with his hands, and lifted her, impaling her on his cock.
She moaned, her head tipping back and her arms holding on to him as he held on to her and started fucking her. Nibbling at the hollow of her throat, he barely held back his howl of satisfaction to have his cock buried inside her again.
“That’s it, my beautiful mate. No man has ever fucked you as well as I will.”
Her first orgasm shattered her, Joaquin swallowing her loud moans with his mouth as he continued fucking her.
“Imagine all the times I’m going to fuck you, just like this. Maybe every morning I’ll start our day reminding you what perfection is.”
He let out a pleased growl when her fingernails dug into his flesh as another orgasm rippled through her, her pussy throbbing around his cock.
Only after he’d fucked a third climax out of her did he finally give in and allow his own orgasm to explode, their kiss muffing his own loud, satisfied groan as he filled her. He stood there like that with her for several long, silent minutes, kissing her, her back pressed against the shower wall, her fingers now stroking his shoulders.
He touched his forehead to hers. “I love you, Malyah. Forever, my sweet, beautiful mate.”
Her hands tangled in his hair. “I love you, too. I don’t understand this. It scares me. But I love you.”
* * * *
Joaquin let her finish her shower first and managed to not wrap his arms around her and fuck her while he stared at her gorgeous, plump ass as she bent over to dry her legs.
“So what do I do with these?” she asked, holding up the rosemary branches.
A Bleacke Wind (Bleacke Shifters Book 3) Page 10
