I rock against him, finding the rhythm, slowly rolling circles with my hips that push him deep before pulling back. His cock fills me perfectly each time I sink back down, the stretch electrifying every nerve ending I possess.
Then, his mouth closes over my nipple while his hand grips my other breast, kneading hard, and I lose the rhythm entirely.
I can’t track what he’s doing. Sucking. Squeezing. Teeth grazing. He soothes me with his tongue. His hands and mouth cycle so seamlessly between my breasts that the sensations blur into one unbroken current of heat. My hips take over: moving faster, my movements becoming frantic.
My claws rake down his back — not deep enough to wound but enough to draw thin lines across his skin. He doesn’t flinch. His grip on my hips tightens hard enough to bruise, and I growl my approval against his mouth.
I smell myself on his skin and him on mine. Our scents braid into something new that my wolf recognizes asours: a territory mapped in sweat and breath and the nectar of our mutual desire.
Come on my cock, Rhiannon.His thought transmits deliberately this time, spoken directly into my mind with an authority that has no business existing in a human, and yet. . .
The pleasure loop peaks. My wolf ignites like a forest fire. Ethan’s heart beats within my chest. The dual sensation of beingfilled and feeling what filling me does to him coalesces into a single point of white-hot pressure.
The orgasm tears through me, and the sound that comes out of my mouth is half his name and half something no human throat could produce, at a frequency that rattles the windows and vibrates through the stone walls. My wolf howls beneath the surface — a sound of pure, ferocious claim.
“Ethan. . .” My inner walls grip him and his whole body shudders.
The staggering, near-painful pleasure of being held inside me while I come is written across every line of his face.
“That’s right, my love.” His whole body stiffens with the effort of not following with his own release.
We don’t stop. The orgasm rolls through me, and the pace becomes relentless. Both of us chase the final edge together, his hips driving upward, my body meeting each thrust.
“You’re why I stay, Rhiannon. I’d pick this world a thousand times just for one more night with you.” His lips brush my neck between words, each confession matching the rhythm of our bodies.
My wolf narrows to a single focus to fulfill an ancient and absolute mission.Claim him.
My fangs descend fully. My eyes blaze solid amber, the room awash in gold. Subconsciously, I bury my face against his neck in the exact place where the mate-mark would go, the junction of throat and shoulder where the pulse beats loudest, where the bond would seal permanently into flesh.
I don’t understand what is happening. Female Lycans don’t mark. That’s not how it works. A male marks his mate. Always. Every bonding story, every elder’s teaching, every instinct bred into our kind follows that law. Yet this overwhelming need I have rewrites everything I thought I knew about biology.
My teeth press against his skin. I can feel his pulse on my tongue. I taste salt, cinnamon, and the coppery, bright thread of blood underneath his skin coated in sweat. Every cell in my body screams.
Mark him. Seal the bond forever.
My wolf is not asking. She’s demanding, pleading.
Claim him, she howls inside me. Do it! He’s ours. OURS.
But I hold back.
Not out of fear or uncertainty. Out of love.
Marking him now, without his understanding of what a fated mate bond means, while his place in Clarion hangs by a thread, when he hasn’t been given the freedom to choose or refuse, would be possession disguised as love. I will not trap him. Even in something this beautiful.
The restraint comes at a price. A sound escapes me, part sob and part agony, wrenched from so deep within my chest that it feels like it’s scraping my bones on the way out. My teeth nick his skin as I pull back, leaving the smallest cut with a bead of blood bright as a ruby.
The sight floods me with a fierce, possessive rapture brighter than anything my wolf has ever known.
He is not marked, but he is still mine.
We climax together in that suspended, blissful moment. He releases inside me, hot and deep, and through the link I live what it’s like for him, the freefall, the surrender, the absolute obliteration of everything around us except where our bodies are joined. His moan against my shoulder resonates through my bones.
His arms wrap around me immediately, pulling me into his chest as he collapses on to the bed. Our breathing slows from ragged to deep to something approaching steady. The mind-link settles from a roar to a quiet hum, a warm current running between us like an underground river.
His fingertips trace slow circles on my shoulder blade: light, unhurried. His lips brush my forehead, soft and reverent.
I press my ear against his chest and listen to his heartbeat slow from a gallop to a steady, even pace. His other hand brushes my hair back from my face, tucking it gently behind my ear, and the quiet tenderness of it nestles deep inside me in the form of a warmth I don’t know how to hold.
