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He’s on the bed before I finish saying his name.

Eight

Chapter Eight: Rowan

She’s on fire.

That’s the first thing I notice when I get my hands on her. Her skin is so hot it almost hurts, slick with sweat, and the second my palm touches her back, she makes a sound I’ve never heard before. A broken, grateful little sob.

Then she climbs me.

There’s no other word for it. She grabs my shoulders and drags herself into my lap and wraps her whole body around me, arms and legs and all, and buries her face in my neck and breathes me in, deep and greedy.

“You smell so good,” she moans into my skin. “Oh God, Rowan, why do you smell so good?”

I don’t answer. I can’t. Her scent is everywhere. It’s soaked into every blanket in this nest, thick and sweet and burning, and it’s pouring off her in waves so heavy I can taste it on my tongue. And under it, her slick, so much of it, running down her thighs and soaking into my pants.

Every single thing in me that’s alpha just… wakes up. All at once.

I’ve been holding back since the yard. Since Mother Wren sent her home smelling like this, I’ve been bringing blankets and keeping the fire going and standing at the end of this bed with my hands in fists, because she didn’t ask me yet. Because it’s her heat and her body and her nest, and I wasn’t about to climb into it without being invited.

Well. She just invited me.

I flip her on her back in the middle of the nest, and she cries out in relief, spreading her thighs for me before I’ve even got my pants open.

“Please,” she begs. “Please, please, I need… I’m so empty, Rowan, it hurts…”

I rip my pants off. Actually rip them. The seam goes right down the middle. I’ll fix them tomorrow, or never, I really don’t give a fuck.

I wrap my fist around my cock and drag the head through her pussy, slow, from her hole all the way up to her clit and back down again.

Holy fuck.

She’s burning. Hotter than she’s ever been. Swollen and soft and soaked, her lips puffy and parted for me, and the second the head of my cock touches her, it’s dripping with her. I can feel her pulse beating right there against me. My grain drags over her swollen clit, and she jerks and cries out, so I do it again just to hear it.

My whole cock throbs in my hand. Sap beads at the tip and mixes with her slick, and I rub it into her clit with the head of my cock, slow little circles, until she’s sobbing and her hips are chasing me.

Then I notch the head against her entrance and just hold it there.

Her hole flutters against me. Sucks at me. Tries to pull me in all on its own. Her body knows exactly what it needs, even if she can’t say it anymore.

I push.

Slow. Her heat swallows the head of my cock, so tight and wet and burning that my whole body locks up and the air leaves my chest. Then inch by inch, she opens around me, every ridge of my grain dragging against her swollen walls, and I feel all of it. Every squeeze. Every flutter. Her heat climbing up my cock and into my belly and up my spine, until I can feel her in the back of my teeth. I sink in until there’s nothing left, until my knot is pressed hard and hot against her lips.

She screams. Her back arches up off the blankets, her nails dig into my arms, and her pussy grabs on my cock so hard I see sparks. And then all the tension just goes out of her body. Her head falls back into the pillows, her eyes roll shut, and she lets out this long, shaky moan of pure relief.

“Oh,” she whimpers. “Oh, thank God. Oh, that’s… that’s it, that’s what I needed…”

She’s wetter than she’s ever been. Hotter. And so swollen inside that I can feel every flutter of her around me. Her heat is in charge now, not her. I can feel it. Her body is pulling me deeper, squeezing and rippling, begging for my knot before I’ve even moved.

So I give her what her body wants.

There’s nothing slow about it. Nothing gentle. I fuck her hard and deep, the way she needs it, my hands pinning her wrists to the pillows above her head, and she takes every thrust with her legs wrapped around my waist, sobbing my name. It’s fast. Desperate. She comes almost right away, clenching and shaking, and doesn’t even stop. She just keeps coming, one wave rolling into the next, until I can’t tell where one ends and another one starts.

“Knot,” she gasps. “Rowan, knot me, please, I need it, I need it…”

I push my knot into her, and she comes again so hard she goes silent.