Page 50 of Alpha’s Wife

Behind him, I see Ryder’s jaw working, and Aiden puts his hand on Ryder’s shoulder. It’s a brotherly gesture, and it makes me so happy to see how far these men have come in only a few weeks. It didn’t take long for them to see how similar they all are. I see Callum put a hand on Ronan’s shoulder, brief, a brother’s hand, the kind he waited thirty years for. Maren is crying openly now, and long past pretending. And I watch Ronan as he takes it all in—his brothers here, the settlement on the island, a happy and secure pack standing all around him, and I watch as he leans into it, into me, and lets the past fall away.

“I know that now,” he says. “Because of you. I will spend a lifetime living up to being the man you deserve.”

He leans down and presses his mouth to mine, and the whole square erupts. Someone lights the bonfire, and the band kicks off to the sound of cheers.

The party runs long after dark, and we dance all night, the rogues, island wolves, and witches all tangled up together on the new green under the twinkling lights. I see that Savannah got her way with the sparklers and leads the children through the stalls with them waving in the air. Thoroughly worn out from dancing, I take a break, and someone hands me a cup of something warm and spiced, and I stand with Ava and Serena as Ronan finds me and wraps his arms around me. Never have I felt like I belong anywhere the way I belong right here, right now.

Ryder finds us near the fire. He’s smiling, but there’s something simmering underneath it, and I know that Ronan feels it too, because his arm around me tightens.

“Please don’t give me bad news tonight,” Ronan says.

“No. Not tonight.” Ryder’s quiet for a moment, the firelight moving on his face. “But there’s a message that came in. I should have switched my phone off. It’s probably nothing, some message about calling in our debt now that we’re settled. We don’t have any debts.”

He hands Ronan the phone and tilts it so I can skim the message too. I see Ronan’s finger hover over the delete button, but he hesitates. I don’t really understand the message, but my eyes snag on a line about the brothers repaying her debt. And I look at Ryder, who nods, and I know it means their mother. But what kind of debt could she possibly have had?

Ronan hands the phone back to Ryder and shrugs. “Sounds like someone wanting a payday. Whatever it is, we’ll handle them. Definitely tomorrow’s problem, Ryder. Enjoy the party. Whoever this is can’t touch us, or our mom’s memory.”

The party goes on around us, and I’m pleased to see that Ryder does seem to enjoy himself, but eventually we slip away up the dark path to the cabin at the top of the headland that’s ours now, and the second the door shuts behind us, the noise of the party and all the people drops away to almost nothing. Just the distant sound of the sea.

The cabin is starting to feel like home, and although it’s not finished yet, I know he worked day and night to make sure it was livable before the ceremony. He takes me by the hand toward the master suite, and we look out of the enormous picture window overlooking the harbor, and I can’t help but smile at the scene below: thousands of lights, the bonfire, and a settlement in the middle of a full-blown celebration.

Then I turn, and he’s looking at me, his wolf right there in his eyes, dark and hungry, and it sends heat curling through my belly.

“You’re staring,” I manage.

“I’ve wanted to do a lot more than stare all night,” he says, walking slowly so that I back up toward the bed until the backs of my knees hit the mattress. His hand comes up to the bare curve of my shoulder, tracing the place where an alpha marks his mate. “Do you have any idea what it did to me, watching you walk up that headland in this dress? Knowing you were finally mine?”

“I was always yours.” My voice isn’t steady. “You just needed to catch up.”

His mouth twitches. Then it’s on mine, and there’s nothing slow about it anymore.

He kisses me like he’s making up for every moment we denied our connection; it’s deep and claiming, and his hands find the ties of my dress, and within seconds it’s pooling at my feet. Then he steps back and looks at me as I stand there in the low light of the moon and all the tiny lights, and the way he looks at me, like I’m the most beautiful woman he’s ever seen, undoes me more than any touch could.

“Say it again,” he murmurs, his mouth dropping to my throat. “What you said in the ceremony.”

“That I choose you?” I whisper.

He kisses me, and then he lifts me, laying me back on the bed, following me down, settling his weight between my thighs. I pull his shirt off until he laughs and has to straighten up to shrug it off so I can run my hands over the warm, hard planes of his body, the scars I bandaged recently, and the ones he’s carried for much longer.

His mouth moves down my throat, over my collarbone, and takes my nipple as I arch up off the bed with a gasp. He takes his time, sucking and grazing them with his teeth until I’m writhing under him with my fingers fisted in his hair, before he moves lower, kissing a path down my stomach.

“Ronan…” I say, but I don’t even know what I’m asking for.

“I know, baby.” His breath is hot against the inside of my thigh now. “I’ve got you.”

Then his mouth is on me, his tongue sliding through my folds, and I cry out, my hips bucking up and almost coming off the bed. He pins me down with a forearm across my belly and licks me slow and deep, like there’s nowhere else on this whole island he’d rather be, and when he closes his lips around my clit and sucks, I nearly come apart right there.

He slides one thick finger inside me, then two, curling them, and the stretch makes me moan his name into the dark as the pressure begins to build. “That’s it,” he growls against me, his wolf running through his voice now, rough and low. “Let me hear you.”

I do. I can’t help it. He works me with his mouth and his fingers until I’m shaking, until I’m wound so tight I can’t breathe, and then I shatter, crying out, thighs clamping around his head as I come hard, feeling my juices gush over his fingers.

He doesn’t care, and he doesn’t stop, even when I beg against the sensitivity of it all. Then he’s suddenly gone, kissing his way back up my body, and I can feel how hard he is now against my hip, and I reach down and wrap my hand around his cock, enjoying the way he hisses through his teeth.

“Selene,” he chokes out, and it sounds like a warning and a plea rolled into one.

“I want you inside me.” I pull him up to me. “Now.”

He laughs at the desperation in my tone and settles between my thighs, lining himself up, and for one second, he goes completely still, forehead dropping to mine, both of us breathing hard.