He let out a shaky laugh. “No arguments from me. Fuck. That shouldn’t be so hot.”
I smiled into his kiss, because — yeah, that was a little piece of magic I was particularly proud of.
He used two fingers to stretch me, his calluses sliding deliciously against my overheated, delicate flesh. Every stroke made me arch and groan.
“Now, or I’m going to flip you over, tie you down with magic ropes, and ride your knot myself,” I growled against his mouth.
He pulled his hand away, and I moaned, but I didn’t have more than a second to mourn the loss of his fingers before he’d put himself in position and filled me in one hard thrust. My eyes widened, and I stared up at him in shock: framed by the branches above us, his face was flushed, and his dark hair clung to his damp temples. He looked like he belonged there, as wild as the forest around us.
Matthew pulled his hips back and slammed into me again, my body shifting up the blanket with the force of it, and then again, and again, opening me up for him and spreading me apart.
It was perfect, and overwhelming, so deep and hard and hot, and he was over me, pinning me down…my heart rabbited, my breaths came fast and raspy, and my chest constricted.
“Stop, Matthew, stop!” My hands flew to his chest, fending him off, shoving at him, but it didn’t matter, he was too heavy and too big —
He pulled out of me, so quickly that I cried out.
“What happened? Did I hurt you?” I bit my lip and squeezed my eyes shut, tears leaking from the corners of them. This wasn’t supposed to happen. I wanted this. “Arik? Sweetheart, I won’t. Do you need me to — I won’t touch you.”
I finally caught a full breath, pulling it in as far as I could and letting it out slowly.
Then I could crack my eyes open and look at him.
He wasn’t angry. There was nothing in his face but fear and worry, and his hand was hovering over my leg like he wanted to comfort me but was afraid to hurt me.
“I needed to know you’d stop,” I whispered, my voice breaking.
And then I cringed, because that made it sound like a test. It hadn’t been, at least consciously. But still — it had been, sort of. And that made me such an asshole. I’d said I wanted it. I did want it. And I still made him stop. If he got up and grabbed what was left of his clothes and left me here, I wouldn’t blame him for it.
Or he’d launch into some overly careful, too-sensitive attempt to smother me with pity. If he did that, I’d hate him. No one pitied me without my getting pissed about it, not even me.
I braced myself for either — or even some fucked-up mix of both.
Instead, he just sat there on his heels, looking at me thoughtfully. “What’s going to be better for you, here?” he asked. “Do you want to keep going? Or do you want to get dressed and — I don’t know, sit for a while? Go find some breakfast, maybe? Because it’s your call.”
Something in my chest snapped a little, like ice breaking in the spring. My call. My decision. If he’d point-blank refused to have sex after this, that would’ve been as wrong as if he’d insisted on fucking until we got off. Either way, he would’ve been saying I was too broken to make up my own mind without him doing it for me.
He didn’t think I was broken. And he still wanted me.
I cleared my painfully dry throat. “Would we be eating breakfast together, in this scenario?”
“Yeah,” he said softly. “Absolutely. Bacon and eggs.”
I glanced down. He was still fully erect, and he was just…ignoring it — to talk to me about the breakfast menu.
Breakfast could wait.
How would an alpha pack leader feel about letting me take charge a little bit, though? Because I didn’t think I could let him fuck me on my back again. I didn’t want to ruin it. More than that, I didn’t want it ruined for me.
Only one way to find out. “Lie down on your back, okay?”
Matthew climbed over my outstretched leg and lay down beside me without a word, folding his arms with his hands tucked under his head. He looked completely relaxed, like he was sunbathing or taking a nap — except for the glow of his eyes and his rampant erection. I wanted to trace the hard curves of his biceps with my tongue.
Well, why not? I straddled him, staying up on my knees so I wasn’t actually sitting on his cock, and bent down, trailing my tongue from his right elbow to his shoulder. He vibrated under me; it took a second to realize it was a growl, coming from so deep in his chest I couldn’t even hear it. His neck was next. I nuzzled under his chin, and he lifted it, letting me suck a mark of my own into the side of his throat.
It was silent except for our breathing and the chirp of a bird a few trees over. A breeze whispered through, ruffling my hair and chilling my bare ass. Time to warm it up.
I sat up, bracing my hands on his chest, and carefully lowered myself down, teasing the head of his cock with my wet opening.
He didn’t thrust. He didn’t move. His whole body shook with the effort he was expending to hold perfectly still.
I rewarded him by sinking onto him, letting gravity pull me all the way down until his cock was sheathed inside me.
With a ragged little moan, I started to ride him, rocking back and forth and lifting my hips in miniscule increments, driving him deeper and deeper until I felt like he was pressing the air out of my lungs.
At last sensation took over. I wasn’t a shaman with an alpha, I wasn’t at the mercy of someone twice my size; I was just Arik, and he was just Matthew, and his thick cock stuffed inside me was the best thing my body had ever felt. My hands slipped on his sweaty shoulders and I collapsed to my elbows, letting him take my weight because I knew he could, bouncing my hips on his cock as fast as I could manage.
“You can — feel free — mmm — to help out — any time now,” I choked out between pushing myself down and sliding back up again.
“You sure?” he said, his voice taut with strain.
“Yes! I’m not doing all the work — oh, fuck,” and he pulled his arms out from behind his head, caught me by the hips, and slammed me back onto his cock with a force I’d been desperately trying for. “Fuck, Matthew…”
He groaned as I said his name. Matthew braced his feet and pounded into me as he pinned my hips in place.
That was it for me; I moaned, sank my teeth into his pec, and clenched around him as I came in a rush all over his abdomen and mine.
I was stuck to him from my damp cheek to my sweaty chest to my come-drenched stomach and groin, and I bounced up and down on his torso as he kept fucking me, harder and harder, until I felt his knot begin to swell.
“Are you sure?” he rasped, thrusting even harder. “Fuck. Are you sure you want me to —”
I squeezed my ass around him as hard as I could, making him moan. “I’m sure,” I whispered into his skin.
Matthew’s fingers flexed so hard around my hips that it hurt, but it didn’t matter. He wasn’t trying to hurt me. I dug my teeth in again and held on, savoring the rough brush of his chest hair against my cheek and the points of pain on my hips as a distraction from the pressure of his knot stretching my hole past the point where anyone ought to be stretched.
Gods, it hurt. It was the best pain I’d ever felt, the most agonizing pleasure, putting so much pressure on that sweet spot inside me that my cock twitched, a few more drops of come slipping out. All the muscles of my abdomen contracted and released, growing used to the knot in me. Matthew came hard, in hot gushes deep inside.
I bit my lip and rode it out, feeling almost more like a vessel than a participant.
And I loved it. I’d had my orgasm — my spectacular orgasm. All I had to do now was lie limp and pliant on Matthew’s big, solid body and take it. Take him, everything he had to give, every alpha drop of it.
He went still at last, shuddering a little, and slowly loosened his death-grip on me to slide his hands up my sweaty back. One came to rest splayed at the base of my spine, his pinky teasing the crack of my ass, and the
other cradled the nape of my neck. His sigh felt like my sigh, the last of the tension bleeding out of me. My hips were canted at an awkward angle, my pelvis stretched by the knot buried in me, but it felt safe. Like the thick length of his cock was the linchpin holding me together and keeping me here where nothing could hurt me.
My mind drifted, and that always meant trouble; my mouth started to move without my conscious consent. “Maybe next time you can be on top,” I mumbled, shifting my head a little so I didn’t get his chest hair in my mouth. And then I shifted my head a little more, just enjoying the texture.
His soft laugh vibrated through me. “Or maybe next time you can tie me up after all,” he countered. He sounded about as mellow as it was possible for a powerful predator to sound, the verbal equivalent of a cheetah sunning itself on a rock.
My eyes popped open. “You’re fucking kidding me. You’re — an alpha.”
And alphas didn’t do things like that. Kinky alphas were always on top, in every way. I didn’t think Matthew would want me to fuck him any more than I’d want to fuck him, but for an alpha, being vulnerable or submissive in any way was a no-go.
Matthew shrugged. “Why not? I’d still be an alpha if you tied me up.”
“But — yeah, but aren’t alphas supposed to, I don’t know, prove their virility or something?” Or supposed to want to do that, more like, but I wasn’t really sure how to put it.
“You’re a shaman,” he said, like that was an answer. And then he went on with, “And you’re the fucking hottest guy I’ve ever seen. You’re powerful. You’re beautiful. You’re ruthless when you need to be.”
He was getting at something, but I didn’t quite follow. “And I’m blushing, but what’s your point?”
Matthew shifted his hips, getting a little more comfortable on the ground, and the pull of his knot made me bite my lip and dig my fingers into his shoulders. Gods, but that was huge. I’d never had a knot in me that I really, really wanted, and other feelings had always dwarfed that sensation at the time. Now that I was focusing on it — well, I’d like to focus on it again. Maybe tomorrow, but also that night. Or in the afternoon, I wasn’t picky.
“My point is that I don’t need to have my arms free, or hold you down and mount you.” The hand on my neck tightened, his fingers pressing lightly against my jugular. “You want me. You spread your legs for me,” he said softly. “I’m inside you. You.” He rolled his hips, making me moan, and gave me a gentle shake. “I think that makes me the alpha-est alpha ever.”
I stared over his arm and shoulder at the greenery, not really seeing it, as that processed through my brain.
Once it did, that little snapping in my chest from before turned into a full-on crack. I’d had alphas use me to prove how powerful they were before — by conquering me, or trying to. Taming me. Owning me.
Matthew felt powerful because I’d found him worthy of having me as a gift that I gave, not as something that he took. Or rather, he’d taken me, and I’d loved it, but he’d taken what I freely offered.
And that was everything.
I snuggled down into his chest and squeezed his knot again, smiling when he gasped in surprise and gripped me closer. “Once your knot goes down, I want that bacon and eggs.”
“Yeah,” he breathed against my hair. “Anything you want.”
We stayed like that for a long time, long enough that my legs started to fall asleep. The trees watched over us, and the soft breeze caressed us. I was safe.
Chapter 18
Well, This Is Awkward
Of course, getting bacon and eggs wasn’t as easy as it sounded in theory. Matthew’s knot went down at last, and I wriggled around a little until his cock slipped out of me.
And then we were left with the quiet, sticky aftermath, separating our melded bodies and going back to being two entities who needed to find our clothes and had aches in odd places and couldn’t quite meet each other’s eyes. My shirt was still intact, albeit dusted with dirt and tree detritus, and my jeans were fine. Nate’s magical socks didn’t have a speck of dirt on them, and even as distracted as I was I took a moment to be impressed. I needed another shower so badly, but at least my socks were pristine.
But Matthew’s shirt was in little scraps all over the ground, only the seams still mostly holding together with a few sad threads in between. It looked like it’d gone ten rounds with whatever alien Captain Kirk had been fighting that week.
So when we stepped out onto the path again, my hair a hopeless rat’s nest and my lips swollen, the marks of Matthew’s mouth still throbbing and visible on my neck, and Matthew shirtless — there were Ian and Nate, just coming around a bend in the path a few feet away.
Of course.
Nate was carrying a mug clutched in a death-grip in one hand, and the cup tilted, spilling coffee all over his knuckles as his mouth dropped open into an exaggerated O. Ian looked like someone had smacked him across the face.
Apparently whoever had been outside Matthew’s door the night of my escape had kept his mouth shut about me and Matthew’s little goodbye.
“We’re going to the pack house to get some breakfast,” Matthew said, not smoothly at all. “Um. What about you?”
He wasn’t distancing himself from me, but he wasn’t exactly putting an arm around me and pulling me close, either. It shouldn’t have hurt, but it really, really did.
“This isn’t what it looks like,” Ian said, sounding like he was pleading with the gods to make it so. “This isn’t what it looks like. Right?” His gaze shifted to me, and his eyes were alight with anger. “He’s under a love spell, you — you — I trusted you!”
“I already fucking told you, there’s no spell anymore!” I said, fury and frustration welling up, right as Matthew said, “The spell’s gone, Ian. I’m not under any kind of compulsion.”
“You took it off this morning?” Nate put in. “Really? You didn’t need any special preparation or anything?”
And okay, so his professional interest was moderately less infuriating than Ian’s assumptions, but seriously? I’d told him there wasn’t a spell. I’d told all of them there wasn’t a spell. And after I’d saved Nate’s life, I’d have thought I’d earned a little bit of trust.
“The spell was already gone,” I said through gritted teeth. “Gone. Kaput. Over. Days ago. Like I already told you.”
Nate’s mouth dropped open again, and he glanced back and forth between me and Matthew, his eyes widening. “Oh — oh shit. Really?” He let out a burst of laughter that shook him enough for coffee to spill down his arm again. “Fuck, ow. But really, you were telling the truth?”
What the fuck was so funny? “Yes, I was telling the truth. Gods. I’m not actually a liar unless I have a good reason for it.”
Nate was chuckling again, shaking his head, his eyes bright. “Okay. I believe you. That just explains so m— I mean, I believe you. Yeah.” He cleared his throat. “So, breakfast?” he said hopefully. “And more coffee? Since I spilled half my cup.”
“It’s your third cup,” Ian grumbled. “You’re going to be buzzing like a hummingbird.”
“I’m barely awake. And you should talk. You drank half the pot before you bothered to wake me up…”
I tuned out their bickering and snuck a glance at Matthew. His lips were turned down, his whole expression gloomy. Because Ian and Nate had caught us together? I edged away from him, preferring to create some distance myself before he did it for me.
And then went rigid with shock as Matthew leaned in, grabbed me around the shoulders after all, and tucked me under his arm, with my head pressed into his bare shoulder. “Come on,” he muttered. “They’ll fight for a while if we sneak off and leave them to it.”
Well. All right then. We turned slowly, not drawing their attention, and sidled down the path, picking up the pace once Nate’s protests about only having used his share of the milk started to fade away behind us. Matthew didn’t let go. It was odd, matching my stride to his, but I had long le
gs for my height and fell into the rhythm of it.
It was odd, but it felt good.
“What happens after breakfast?” I hadn’t meant to sound quite that needy. Fuck. These little twinges of uncertainty in my belly and the happy, helpless smile that kept trying to spread over my face could both fuck right off.
“Showers. Or maybe just one shower. And then — I don’t know about you, but I could sleep for a week. So maybe we can squeeze in four hours or so before someone comes to fucking harass me.”
“Were you up all night?”
I glanced up at him and caught his nod. “I’ll tell you all about it while you eat.”
We strolled the rest of the way in silence, which wasn’t quite as awkward as before but was still a little on the heavy side. His arm was heavy, too, resting on me. I wanted to lean into it, so much so that when we reached the pack house and he let go of me as we went up the front steps, it was kind of a relief.
My shoulders felt weird without his arm, though, like the phantom of his touch was still weighing me down.
No one was in the main front room of the pack house. In fact the whole house was oddly silent.
“Everyone who isn’t patrolling the boundaries is in bed, probably,” Matthew said before I could ask. “No one’s trying to kill us right now. As far as I know. I’ll be right back.” And he jogged off up the stairs without looking back at me.
I wandered into the kitchen warily, in case someone else was around after all, although I didn’t hear or scent anyone. The kitchen was plain, functional, and outdated, with a scratched-up table and chairs and a groaning old fridge. My stomach made a similar rumbling sound as I sat down at the table.
Ugh. I winced and shifted my weight. Sitting in wooden chairs probably wasn’t my best move today, although I knew the soreness would heal within a few hours. I could heal it myself, but — well, I was still a little drained from the night before. And that was a really excellent reason I could use to cover the fact that I simply didn’t want to. What if Matthew changed his mind? I needed to hang on to this feeling as long as I could. Savor it. I traced a long gouge in the table with my fingertips, wondering what it would be like to stay in a place long enough to have a piece of furniture with history like this. For all I knew, Matthew had made this scratch with his fork — or his claws — as a grouchy boy having an argument with his brother.
Captive Mate (Mismatched Mates Book 2) Page 18
