Chapter Twenty-Three #2
A glance behind showed only trees and shadows and moonlight dappling the ground. Bewitched fireflies that she knew he had sent to light her way so she wouldn’t trip and fall while pelting through the woods.
And he was concerned about his wolf. His wolf who had already protected her, just as he was protecting her now.
Even through the soft snarl that made her toes curl.
She pushed harder, her calf muscles straining. She wouldn’t be able to keep up this pace much longer. Perhaps she should find somewhere to hide. A cave, or a nice, leafy bush.
“Don’t even think about it,” he warned softly, his voice coming from somewhere beside her even though she still could not see him.
He had seen her glance to the side. He could smell her sweat, hear her panting breaths.
Hear the crunching of acorns when she darted away again with a taunting smirk that she knew he could sense somehow.
She did not get very far.
A burst of speed, one step, two, and a strong arm wrapped around her stomach, lifting her off the ground. The momentum had her gasping a laugh, her back slamming into his unforgiving chest. “Caught you,” he rumbled in her ear.
“About time,” she said.
He pushed her forward toward the oak. “Hands on the tree,” he demanded, lips tickling her ear. “Now.”
When she let her hands hover in front of her, slowly, so slowly, just to taunt him, he gripped her wrists and pressed her palms to the trunk.
“Careful.” His warning was deep and severe, shivering up her spine like a slow-dragged claw.
And then his mouth was on the side of her neck, a soft bite, a long suckle of her skin between his teeth, and she arched, fingers digging into the bark for support.
Sensations flooded her: a frisson, a bloom of heat low in her belly.
She felt every inch of his body against hers, his thighs holding her still, his chest against her shoulders, his hardness against the top of her bottom.
That long, torturous pause where he just held them there in that moment. Waiting. Anticipating.
And then his mouth was back on her, nipping at the spot where her shoulder met her neck, and his hands were under her skirt, parting her folds in one slick, soft drag of his fingers.
She gasped, pushing against the thrust of his movements, the deliberate pressure against her bud, the ragged breathing in her ear that enveloped her, cocooned her, pulling her closer and closer to the edge.
She pushed against his erection. She turned her head to kiss him, lick him, bite him, anything.
“Ah, ah,” he scolded, every inch the Alpha, the stern museum curator. The combination was lethal. She melted. She sparked. His free hand tangled in her hair and tightened, angling her head back just enough to expose her neck again. She was trapped, overpowered, overwhelmed.
And she loved it.
He curled his fingers deep inside her, stroking, plunging, thumb circling her pearl in an unbreaking rhythm.
She found her release so hard that she saw stars.
When he eased back, she was still riding the waves of pleasure, the tiny aftershocks that trembled down to her toes, up her spine. Floating.
But he was still holding back. She felt it in the briefest hesitation, the twitch of his muscles. The soft growl he wrestled back.
And that would not do. Not here. Not now.
“Are you still trying to prove something to yourself?” She recalled how carefully he had made her ask for his touch in the library, how he had made her beg in the woods and then disappeared.
He didn’t make her plead and writhe with desperation to prove he was stronger than she was.
He did it to prove that she was stronger.
That she was in control. “Is that why my hands are up? Why you still won’t let me touch you? ”
He released his grip on her hair carefully, easing the strands loose. Gently. Almost politely. She was losing him again, the real him. The complicated him.
“Aidan.”
He rested his brow on the back of her head, breaths sawing roughly in and out of him.
“So you don’t want to keep me, then?” she asked, trying to sound nonchalant and failing. Failing utterly. “You only want to catch me?”
“I want to keep you.” His voice was rough, pulled past Highland crags and cold mountains. “I always want to keep you.”
“Prove it,” she said.
And then she ran again. A dare. A gamble.
A plea.
When Aidan caught her again, it was different.
Catching her was easy. She might be quick and agile and fearless, but he had a wolf.
He could hear her heartbeat, the tiny, delicious gasps she tried to stifle, the way the leaves shifted under her feet.
Her hair tangling on a branch. He could smell her soap, the sweet berry scent that always seemed to cling to her.
The sun, the long grass, the smoke from an oven.
All of it combined to make her smell irresistible. Like only Sorcha could.
She was fierce and clever and utterly delicious.
His.
His wolf knew it. The earl knew it, and the curator.
He knew it.
He didn’t let her run far this time. He enjoyed the pull to follow her, to push his body after hers, to find that thread in the darkness that was Sorcha.
An auburn gold sheen, similar to tracking magic, but different.
Unique. It wasn’t separate from him. He knew her magic, felt it, tasted it, scented it on the wind.
He didn’t need his eyes or his nose or his ears.
He chased her because there was joy in it, for both of them.
And hunger. The kind he had been pretending not to feel, had been burying under protocol and politeness and long, lonely nights pacing the museum halls where there was so much binding magic that he did not fear his wolf running.
The kind of hunger that recognized her, just as his wolf did.
He ran faster, simultaneously cataloguing the silver burble of a creek nearby, the startle of a stag crashing through the bushes. An owl. A wasp’s nest somewhere up high among the branches.
And Sorcha.
Always Sorcha.
His blood burned and there was a howl trapped in his throat when he snatched her mid-leap over a fallen branch.
He twisted to bear the brunt of the fall as he pulled them down to the ground.
He barely noticed the impact, too busy flipping her onto her back and caging her with his body.
She gasped as his palms slammed into the dirt on either side of her head.
His thighs pressed against her hips. She was caught.
She smiled.
It very nearly undid him.
This woman.
Fuck.
This woman.
Her cheeks were pink, her lips parted. Her hair was a wild cascade of auburn curls, studded not with diamonds but with twigs and grass and an oak leaf.
Perfect.
“You caught me,” she said, and he could hear all the threads of wanting and need in her voice. The widening of her pupils.
He leaned down to kiss her softly, couldn’t help himself, even though that wasn’t the game. The kiss turned deeper, a brush of lips to the stroking of tongues. “Still want this?” he asked.
She nodded.
“Prove it,” he said, using her own words. “Open your legs for me, Sorcha.”
Her knees parted with gratifying speed.
“Oh, sweetheart,” he murmured. “You can do better than that.”
She shifted, thighs falling open. He slid one leg between hers, teasing, applying just enough pressure to her quim to feel the warmth of her, to hear the moan building in her throat.
She responded by wrapping her legs around his hips and pressing harder against him until he thrust once, with a soft snarl.
He yanked off his plaid, his balls so tight his spine felt like it was on fire. He dragged the head of his cock between her warm, wet folds, and they were like silk. “Another taste. Just one more taste.”
She closed her fingers around him, pinning him in place. “If you don’t let me touch you, Aidan Carnahan, I swear to the moon…”
He huffed a laugh, amazed that she could find a way to wind such threads of simple joy into the fiery hunger, the feral need to consume her and be consumed by her. The way his wolf needed the moon and the forest and her. Just her. “So impatient.”
“I’ve been exceedingly patient, actually. So take me, Aidan. Or I’ll take you.”
“Promise?”
“Yes,” she said, breaking into a moan when he slid deep into her warmth, slowly, inch by torturous inch. “Aidan.”
“Finally,” he said against her damp throat. “Fucking finally.”
He continued to thrust, long and hard and deep, drinking in her tiny whimpers, her soft moans. He could have feasted on them, as he wanted to feast on her. She was so tight and hot and welcoming and he couldn’t get enough. Would never get enough.
But he was damned if he came before he made her come again.
“One more for me,” he said, rolling her over so that she straddled him. A small part of him was relieved that she could more easily run away in his position.
She lowered herself onto his cock, fingers tightening in his chest hair.
He bucked his hips once and she moaned, riding him harder, faster.
He reached up to circle her bud, slick with sweat and arousal, a taut berry he wanted to suck into his mouth.
He told her as much, rubbing her until she arched back with a keening moan that made him thrust up into her.
He kept a relentless pace, deep and slow, gripping her hips as her intimate muscles squeezed him.
He thrust until there was only the silky, fluttering heat of her, her ragged breaths in his ear when she half collapsed over him, and her taunts that he couldn’t possibly find more pleasure than she had.
He came so hard he tasted moonlight and fire and Sorcha.
His wolf howled inside his chest.
His eyes went molten but he didn’t hide them, knew they did not frighten her. Indeed, it only made her wrap her thighs tighter around him, her little nails scratching down his chest. He hoped she left a mark.
It was perfect. She was perfect.
“I am not.” She grinned, and he realized he had spoken out loud. “But I’ll remind you that you said that the next time I want to pet a kelpie.”
He growled softly in her ear and she shivered, nipples pebbling harder against his chest. “We agreed you wouldn’t do that again.” Watching her risk herself had made him queasy. His wolf would have turned on him for just standing there if it could have.
“I agreed to no such thing,” she scoffed. “As if I ever would.”
“I suppose I shall just have to keep you busy.”
“I suppose you shall.”
He chuckled, brushing off the leaves that stuck to her damp neck.
She ought to have been in a bed with silk sheets and candlelight and a feather pillow.
She should have warm water to wash with, not a handkerchief she pulled from her pocket.
She rested her forehead against his and pushed, just a little, to get his attention.
“Don’t you dare,” she murmured.
He stroked her hair because he couldn’t help himself. “Dare what?”
“You’re about to say something ridiculous about taking me in the woods instead of a bed.”
He blinked. “Are you sure you’re not a soothsayer?”
She rolled her eyes and then kissed his nose. A wall of ice melted behind his ribcage. “You’re not as complicated as you think you are.”
He nudged her hand away when she climbed off him and tried to clean herself. “That’s for me to do.”
Her cheeks went pink. His wild girl? Shy? Now?
“Let me,” he added quietly. “It’s my privilege.”
He kissed her before she could say anything else, a searing claiming of her lips, her body, her everything. And then he tidied her up and insisted on carrying her back to Nettlestone Hall, where vampires and kittens and ghosts roamed freely, as safe as monsters could be.
Because of her.