"If we got him more…maybe he could make his own appearance," Ridge states.
I nod as I stroke him. "Yes."
"I don't know if we'll succeed."
He's hedging. I know he can see in my face how desperately I want this to be true.
My desperation affects my touch, and I squeeze him a bit harder than I intend, eliciting a short, surprised gasp from his lips. His knot is already swelling at the base, the skin stretching, heating under my touch as I stroke his shaft with one hand and bring the other to tease his knot with light touches that skim over the surface.
"But I know you'll try. And you've never failed at a mission before…" I sink my mouth down on his tip.
He's thick and warm on my tongue, and I'm filled with both a heady sense of power that I can do this to him and this immense, indescribable feeling of gratitude for him. For the fact that he's sought out a happy medium for both of us, one that might just help do the impossible.
He's trying to give me what I want in the best way he can.
This.
This is what I never knew I was missing when I was younger.
The sort of love that rejoices in giving as much as getting.
He groans, and his hips cant beneath me, angling upward, seeking out as much of my mouth as I'll let him get. Staying shallow, I let him tap the roof of my mouth a few times before pulling back. I trace my tongue up and down the underside of his cock as I stare up his body, over those well-formed abs, his heaving chest, toward that strained face. I can see in his eyes that he's seconds away from grabbing me and fucking me into mindless oblivion.
Pulling back, I say, "I know you'll save my brother. And that will save my heart."
With a roar that's loud enough to be heard by the entire encampment, Ridge surges up and clasps my shoulders. He rolls us until I'm lying on the bed and he's poised on top of me, cock in hand. And when he slides into me, I get chills.
Because I can feel more than just our bodies merging.
Our souls fuse together.
38
BRYLEE
It took surprisinglylittle to convince my mates to let me tag along.
“You said the lab was abandoned,” I’d pointed out, trying to keep my tone nonchalant despite the cinching sensation deep in my belly. “And there haven’t been any Noths spotted in that area for days, since it’s so close to the border.”
Ridge had growled something inarticulate, Colter had folded his huge arms over his chest and glared, and Luka had forked his fingers through his brown hair, disrupting the usually meticulous strands.
But Kylian? He’d simply grinned and flicked his dagger expertly between his fingers.
“She’s safer with us than on her own,” he’d pointed out.
And that, more than anything else, seemed to have changed my mates’ minds.
Though the overprotective assholes insisted on bringing a contingent of soldiers with us—mostly betas but a few packless alphas.
“To protect the prince,” Ridge had snarled.
I was getting my way, so I didn’t argue.
They also convinced an alpha medic to attend as well. She’s an older woman, probably in her mid-fifties, with thinning gray hair braided away from her face and surprisingly elfin, almost delicate features. Her grassy-green eyes are always hidden away behind a pair of thick glasses.
“She’s one of the best medics in the field. Before that, she was a virologist,” Luka had told me when I inquired about her purpose.
I understood that a medic was always handy to have when we’re in the field, but I’d assumed we would only be gone for a day or two at most and that we wouldn’t run into any trouble. Wouldn’t it make more sense for the best medic to remain at camp?
