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The simmering embers of the fire cast a soft glow about the room, as I lay beside Thalia, her small frame pressed tight against me.
“Do you ever plan to sleep in a bed again?” she asks, with a smile in her voice.
I draw her hair aside to kiss her nape. “A warm fire and you lying beside me? No reason to.”
Everyone took off, back to Freya’s camp, leaving the cabin quiet and still again. Asher’s sound asleep in Thalia’s old bedroom, last I checked, and Yuma lies snoozing by the door, where a crack along the bottom lets in just enough air to keep him from getting too warm with the fire.
“Still, it’d be nice to have something softer than a hard plank beneath me, and I’m not talking about your body.” She twists in my grasp, nuzzling her face in my chest. “I do love your stiff surfaces, though.”
Smiling at that, I grip her thigh, and the moment her hips grind the right spot, my whole body stirs to life. “Unless you intend to finish this, I suggest you stop now.” Face buried in her neck, I breathe in the sweet scent watering my mouth, and tongue a wet line from her throat to her jaw.
She has a no sex rule in the house with Asher, so finishing means grabbing the bearskin and heading out to the woods. The cool, early spring air doesn’t bother me, at all, but the likelihood of her leaving the warmth of the fire is slim.
“Let me get my shoes. I hate walking over the fallen sticks barefoot.”
Or not so slim.
The second she turns away, though, I yank her against me, seizing those soft, pouty lips. “In a minute,” I say against her mouth and roll her on top of me.
Hands planted against my chest, she balances herself, straddling my body, and breaks the kiss to sit up. Rounded, pert breasts peek through the thin fabric of her nightgown, taunting me. Always fucking taunting me.
Running my hands over her curves is all I can do to calm the intense need to drag her to the floor and take her right here by the fire. Waiting is the greatest torture, but it also makes for one hell of a finale, when all is said and done.
Lost in a sea of calm blue, I stare up at the woman, my woman, her beauty beyond anything I could’ve fantasized. The sight of her makes my whole damn chest hurt, like I can’t breathe, or something. Happens every time I look at her, and that sweet scent, like flowers after a heavy rain, the natural aroma of her skin, has me drooling like a starved dog. Possession burns in the pit of my gut, and I can rightly say I’d kill and destroy anything that ever tried to hurt her, or Asher, again.
“What are you thinking?” The soft tracing of her fingers over the ridges of my chest has my mind distracted from the question.
Eyes closed, I focus on the smooth glide of her maddening touch. When she falls forward letting her nipples brush over my chest, only a fine thread of resistance keeps me from taking those hard peaks into my mouth and sucking them until her soft caresses become the unforgiving scrape of nails digging into my skin.
“You’re ignoring me,” she whispers, and the moment her teeth find my earlobe, my palms find the firm cheeks of her ass. “Tell me.”
“I’m thinking your rule is about to be annihilated.”
“You have no self-control?” The playful tone of her voice has me smiling, as she grinds her sex against my stomach in the cunning way she knows makes me edgy and impatient. Teasing and provoking the animal inside of me that claws the underside of my skin. The same merciless brute that seems to crave only her. Only ever Thalia.
The wet glide of her flesh across my abdomen tenses muscles that beg to sink into her warmth. To get lost in her sorcery for a couple of hours. Squeezing her hips, I steer her lower, and the second her heat smothers the head of my dick through my pants, everything inside of me turns chaotic. Blood pumping double time. Appetite ramped up to starving. Restraint zeroing out to one tattered fiber of absolute willpower. Fucking hell, the way this woman commands my body.
“I’m controlling it the best I can.” The strain in my voice doesn’t hold a candle to the tension burning inside of me, while she stakes her claim with that wet, sticky arousal that has my tongue puckering for a taste.
Thalia still has a number of triggers that set off flashbacks to what she suffered, but time and trust have proven to be a great healer. I’ve learned how to touch her, what boundaries can be pushed, and the words that keep her demons in a chokehold.
She may never be as carefree as before. Might never dip her toes into those darker desires, the way she once did, but so long as she remains mine, I don’t care about all that.
Warm lips find my throat, and my muscles seize up, damn near cramping, as she drags her tongue over my skin. “Do you ever think about your friends?”
Frowning, I keep my focus on the movement of her hips, instead of the question. “Why do you ask?”
The grinding stops, and with the absence of her teasing gyrations, I open my eyes to find her staring down at me, the serious expression written across her face reigning in my urges. Stamping out the fire she’s stoked in me. “What if we go east? We can look for that community. With your Alpha brothers.”
Over the years, I’ve thought about them. What they’re doing. If they’re alive. Thriving. But I’ve since come to appreciate the life I’ve made with Thalia, and our little cabin in the woods. Here, her and Asher is everything I need. “You love this place.”
“I do.” She brushes her fingers down my face, her touch a confusing switch between my cravings and calm. “And I would stay here forever with you. But there’s a part of me that longs for adventure. There was a time I feared this world, but with you? And Asher? I want to see it all. I want to live it all.”
The idea of roaming the open land with her sends a different rush of excitement pumping through my veins. A shot of adrenaline that stirs from its long wintery slumber. And yet, at the same time, it has my stomach twisting with the perils we’d face along the way. The possibility of something happening to her. Anxiety that I never put much stock into before Thalia.
Alone, I was willing to go anywhere, no matter the danger. Now that I’ve tasted real fear, the agony of losing her, I’m not willing to risk it.
