Page 47

When he rose over me, I pushed him onto his back.

“Lie back.”

He went willingly, his eyes gone full gold, watching me as I straddled him and sank down onto him inch by precious inch, slowly adjusting to the delicious stretch. We both moaned. I stayed still for a long moment, feeling him inside me, the pleasurable fullness, the heat and the way his large hands spanned my waist.

Then I began to move.

I slid down slowly, and then faster, and he responded with thrusts, raising his hips to meet mine. He glided his calloused hands up my ribs, cupping my breasts, circling with his thumbs until I gasped. The fire crackled beyond the doorway. Our breathing filled the small room, ragged and tangled together.

Pressure built inside me again, low and deep and demanding, but this time with something else. A humming stirred in my chest, the same strange pull I’d felt toward him in the loft, but stronger now. Much more powerful. Like a string drawn so taut it was vibrating.

Conan sat up beneath me, wrapping his arms around me. He held us chest to chest so our hearts beat together with him still buried deep inside me.

“Do you feel that?” he murmured. “Building between us.”

“Yes,” I rasped out.

His canines lengthened, exciting me. He bent and brushed them along my neck, and I shivered with anticipation.

“Ruby,” he whispered low against my throat. Assuring.

“Yes,” I hissed, my voice ragged. “Do it.”

A throaty growl emerged from deep inside his chest. He repositioned us so I was on my back beneath him, and then he drove back in, fast and feral and hard. So hard I could barely take it.

Then sharpness in the meaty part near my shoulder. I cried out at the sting. A simmering sensation followed.

Bright heat coursed through me, beaming out, like sunlight through water. It flooded along my spine and into my chest and through my arms to my fingertips. Everywhere, all at once.

That wispy thread in my chest pulled tight and held, and I felt him. A warm, steady presence connected to the center of me, as if a door had opened with him standing on the other side.

The heat reformed with my desire, rising, rising, the pressure so intense. When it splintered me, I came apart with a shudder, sobbing his name.

While the aftershocks still shook me, I turned my head and found his neck. His pulse fluttered beneath my lips. As if on instinct, I opened my mouth and bit down. Not enough to break the skin, but enough to leave a mark.

He was mine.

He shuddered and came with a roar that shook all the way to my bones. Rasping out my name, he lowered himself to me and held on as if he’d never let go.

We stayed like that in each other’s arms for a long time afterward, hearts beating against each other as our heady breaths filled the air. Wrapped around each other in the tangled furs while the fire burned low. His mouth moved softly over the mark on my shoulder, kissing it, soothing it. I traced the bite on his throat with my fingertip. My mark on him. His on me.

Bonded together.

“We have one more checkpoint for verification,” he murmured against my hair.

I lifted my head to glance at him. “We do?” I managed through the languid daze.

“State your name.” He smiled, slow and tender. “The one you want. Your choice.”

I thought about all the ones I’d been called over the years. Raven, sealed under wax. Mays, Ruby. Field rank, second class. Operative. Traitor to the Crimson Order. The girl in red.

Then I found the one I wanted.

“Ruby,” I said. “Ruby Lockridge, of the Lockridge pack.” Part of the pack. I’d chosen my family. I was his and he was mine.

He closed his eyes. When he opened them again, they were wet and gold and full of wonder.

“Verification complete,” he whispered.