My mouth opened against the slope of his shoulder where the muscle ran into his throat. My teeth found the place before I understood I was looking for it.
Dominic’s whole body locked.
“Catalina.”
I was shaking. The instinct took me so fast there was no space to argue with it.
Claim. Answer. Return what he had given me.
The word slipped out before I could stop it. “Mine.”
Then I bit him.
Hard. Not careful or civilized.
His hand came to the back of my neck, firm. Every part of me went still. He didn’t pull me away. He held me there.
“Yes,” he said, roughly.
The word broke in me.
His control cracked, and the bond surged. Heat broke under my skin, brighter than anything that had come before it. His body answered mine, and the answer rose in me so fast I lost the edge of myself inside it.
I held the bite a second longer. I held until the bite changed. Then I released him, but my mouth stayed against his skin, open and hot over the mark I had made.
A claim.
His hips stuttered.
The next wave took me under. It stole the breath from my body andleft nothing but the bond ringing between us.
He followed a breath later. His rhythm broke. He drove into me one final time and stilled, buried as deep as he could go. His whole body shook against mine, and the bond rang a long, dark note through both of us.
Then something changed.
A swelling at the base of him, thick and hot, grew inside me. Sealing us together. Holding him there. The pressure should’ve hurt, but it didn’t. My body knew the shape of him now, knew what to do with it, and opened around him like it had been waiting for this part too.
The new fullness pulled another orgasm out of me on a rolling, helpless wave that wasn’t separate from his.
His mouth was at my temple. His hand was in my hair. I could feel him pulsing inside me. I could feel him pulsing in my chest.
When I could breathe again, I said, in a voice that didn’t sound entirely like mine, “Dominic.”
“Yes?”
“What’s that?”
His face had the audacity to be composed while he was locked inside me.
“My knot,” he said. “It is part of the mate bond.”
His knot.
“How long does it last?”
“I am unsure.”
I stared at him.
