“I’m sorry,” I tell her again. Her eyelids flutter. Her eyes open. Two blue, unfocused orbs try to find me. They go wide when I press against her opening and push my way inside, where I now know for sure no one else has ever been.
I’m being torn in half as I watch her body arch, as her mouth opens for a silent, pained cry to come bursting out.
I feel her tight tunnel wrapped around me. So damn tight. Made for me—I can’t shake the feeling as I sink deeper, my entire body demanding I take her hard, rough. Her hands find my arms and her nails sink into my skin, but I’m too far gone to feel it.
Once I’m as deep as I can go, I hold still, breathing hard, fighting the almost overpowering urge to let go and do what nature demands. So even though my wolf’s howl echoes in the back of my mind like some half-forgotten dream, I ease back, then move forward again, rocking her a little when I reach the deepest part of her.
And then she does it. She moans. Not in pain, but something deep and needy. She might as well toss a lit match on a puddle of jet fuel.
It hits all at once, that surge, something that goes beyond my human reasoning and can’t be suppressed by a collar or by anything else. The hands holding her hips tighten, pressing into her soft flesh so I can hold her still.
And then I drive myself hard, deep, so hard she gasps and stares at me with those wide eyes. I can’t tell her I’m sorry this time. I can’t say a thing. All I do is growl, then sink deep again. And again. Hard enough and fast enough to make her body bounce, to make our skin slap together and make the gurney slide over the floor until I have no choice but to pull her off and place her on her back on the cold concrete floor.
She moans again when I stretch out on top of her, weakly pulling her knees back, trying to wrap her legs around me. Like her body wants this, too.
What was already so tight gets tighter. Wetter. Hotter. I feel the wolf, know he’s as close to the surface as he can get now, know he wants me to lower my head. To find that place betweenher neck and her shoulder, that place where it’s soft and tender. Her nails rake my skin, and she moans again, breath tickling my ear while I do my best to drive her through the concrete.
“Dec… Declan!” It’s a gasp, surprise and pleasure all at once. “I’m… oh…”
And then she’s coming all around me, drenching me with her hot juices while her tiny muscles start to flutter around me. Trying to milk me. I close my eyes, press my mouth to her shoulder.
And I let it go. The release washes over me all at once. A burst of white-hot light explodes behind my eyelids, and for a second, I feel like my soul is being ripped from my body along with everything rushing out of my balls.
But it’s still not enough. Not until I sink my teeth into her and that light explodes again like fireworks, setting my brain on fire while rearranging everything in the world around this. Her. Us.
I might be on a cold floor in a cell with an audience watching on camera.
But I am exactly where I need to be. Inside my mate, my everything, bonding us together forever. I have everything I’ll ever need. My reason for breathing. For living.
10
IRIS
Something is happening inside me.
Not the infusion. That’s different; that’s agony.
This is... the opposite. Something clicking in like a key turning in a lock I didn’t know was there. It starts where teeth are buried in the side of my neck and spreads outward, warm and slow, like honey being poured through my veins.
Declan. It’s Declan.
He’s inside me. Surrounding me. His chest against mine, his arm locked around my waist, his breath ragged and hot against the place where his mouth meets my skin. There’s pressure, and a sting, and then something that isn’t pain at all. Something nice.
My mind is clearing. With him pressed against me and whatever is happening at my neck spreading through me, the fog is lifting.
The pain is fading, too. The infusion pain, the deep bone-ache that usually takes days to let go. It’s loosening its grip. Not gone, but softer, like someone turned the volume down on it and keeps turning.
I don’t understand any of this. I don’t understand why his body against mine makes the pain stop, or why the place where he’s biting me feels like the center of the universe, or why Ican suddenly feel things that aren’t mine. Not emotions exactly. More like echoes of what he’s feeling.
A fierce, desperate protectiveness. Guilt. Something raw and tender underneath all of it that he’s trying very hard to keep locked away.
His jaw finally relaxes. His teeth release my shoulder, and he presses his forehead against the spot instead, breathing hard while his whole body trembles around mine. The arm around my waist tightens. He pulls me closer until there’s no space between us at all.
My eyes are heavy. My muscles are liquid. The warmth from where he bit me has spread everywhere, and it feels like being wrapped in something safe, and I know that doesn’t make sense considering where we are and what just happened, but I can’t fight it.
He pulls out of me carefully, gently, and a brief flash of regret stands out like an exclamation point before fading the way everything else is. He then repositions us so I’m curled against his chest.
He’s sitting up now, his back against the wall, with me in his lap. Both arms around me. His chin rests on top of my head. And there’s a sound—low, steady, vibrating through his chest into mine. Not a growl. Something softer. A rumble, almost like a cat purring, if the cat weighed two hundred pounds and had just bitten your neck.
