Chapter 21 - Caelan
Patrick kisses me like I’m the only thing keeping him tethered to this world.
He frames my face with his hands, holding me steady while he moves his mouth against mine with a hunger that steals the breath from my lungs.
I grab his shoulders and haul him closer, because I need to feel him against me.
I need proof that he’s real and here, and mine for however long fate decides to let me keep him.
When we finally break apart, we’re both gasping, and he rests his forehead against mine.
“Are you sure?” he asks with a voice rough from the strain it’s taking him to hold back. “Because once we do this, I’m not going to be able to let you go.”
“I don’t want you to let me go.”
Something changes in his amber eyes. A decision has been made; a line has been crossed. He takes my hand and leads me toward the bedroom, and I follow without protest, my heart hammering against my ribs with every step.
Patrick turns to face me, and for a moment, we just stand there with everything we haven’t said filling the space between us. We’ve done this before, twice now, but tonight feels different. Tonight, I came to him with my walls down and my fears laid bare, and that changes everything.
He reaches for the hem of my shirt—his shirt, the one I stole from his drawer—and I lift my arms to help him pull it over my head. Goosebumps prickle across my skin as he tosses the fabric aside, and I watch his face as he takes me in.
“I’ll never get tired of looking at you,” he whispers, and the sincerity in his voice makes my chest ache. “Every time feels like the first time.”
He’s seen me naked before. He’s touched every inch of me, learned the landscape of my body when we fucked in his hotel room and again at the cabin.
But the way he looks at me now holds something deeper than simple desire.
There’s reverence there, and wonder, and a possessiveness that should frighten me, but doesn’t.
“Patrick.” I reach for him, needing to touch, needing to feel his skin against mine. “Stop looking at me like that and do something about it.”
A slow smile spreads across his face. “So sassy.”
“You like it.”
“I do.” He closes what little distance is between us and cups my breasts in his palms before running his thumbs over my nipples until they pebble. “I like everything about you, Caelan. Even the parts that drive me crazy.”
I fumble with the buttons of his shirt while he continues his exploration of my body, and my fingers tremble with a combination of need and nerves that has nothing to do with inexperience.
This man is going to walk into enemy territory; he might not come back.
The thought makes me desperate in ways I don’t fully understand.
I’m suddenly so hungry to memorize every detail of him while I still have the chance.
His shirt falls open, and I push it off his shoulders before pressing my palms flat against his chest. The muscles beneath his skin twitch at my touch, and I trace the scars that map his history across his torso.
The longest one runs from his shoulder to his ribs; Bastian gave him that when he was fifteen.
Another curves around his hip and disappears beneath the waistband of his pants.
I don’t know the story behind that one yet, but I want to learn.
I want to learn everything about him.
“You’re thinking too much,” Patrick observes as he backs me toward the bed.
“Sorry.” I sit down on the edge of the mattress and look up at him. “I can’t help it.”
“Then let me help you stop.”
He kneels in front of me and hooks his fingers in the waistband of my underwear before he drags the fabric down my legs with agonizing slowness. I lift my hips to help him, and when I’m completely naked, he presses a kiss to the inside of my knee that makes me shiver.
“Lie back,” he commands.
I obey and settle against the pillows while he strips off the rest of his clothes.
The sight of him naked makes my mouth water; he’s covered in muscles and radiates power, and his cock is already thick and straining toward his stomach.
I reach for him, but he catches my wrist and places it back against the mattress.
“Not yet.” He crawls over me and pins both my wrists above my head with one hand. “Tonight, I’m going to take my time with you. I’m going to make you feel so good you forget your own name.”
“Promises, promises.”
He silences me with a kiss that’s deep and thorough and consuming.
I arch into him, desperate for more contact, but he keeps me pinned with his weight while he explores my mouth with his tongue.
The position leaves me helpless and unable to touch or grab or guide, and the submissiveness of it somehow makes everything more intense.
When he finally releases my wrists, I keep them where he put them.
Something about his dominance tonight calls to my wolf, makes me want to submit in ways I never have before.
He rewards my obedience by running his lips down my throat before pausing to suck a mark into the sensitive skin below my ear.
“Mine,” he growls against my flesh.
“Yours,” I agree, and the word feels like a vow.
He continues his journey south, lavishing attention on my breasts until I’m squirming beneath him with whimpers falling from my lips.
He takes his time with each one, sucking and licking and teasing until my nipples are aching peaks and I’m grinding against nothing, desperate for friction where I need it most. Every flick of his tongue sends jolts of pleasure straight to my core, and I can feel myself getting wetter with each passing second.
“Patrick, please.”
“Please what?” He drags his tongue along the underside of my breast. “Tell me what you need.”
“Touch me. I need you to touch me.”
“I am touching you.”
I growl in frustration, and he laughs against my skin. The bastard is enjoying this, drawing out my desperation until I’m ready to beg. Two can play that game. I wrap my legs around his waist and roll my hips, grinding my wet center against his hard length.
The laugh dies in his throat, and a groan that vibrates through his whole body replaces it. “Fuck, Caelan.”
“That’s the idea.”
He retaliates by sliding down my body and nudging my thighs apart.
I barely have time to register what he’s doing before he drags his tongue through my folds, and then I’m not thinking anything at all.
He licks me with long, slow strokes that make my toes curl, and my back arch off the mattress, alternating between broad sweeps of his tongue and targeted flicks against my clit that have me seeing stars.
“Oh, God.” I grab fistfuls of the sheets as pleasure builds in my core. “Oh God, Patrick, that’s—”
He hums against me, and the vibration sends sparks shooting up my spine. I cry out and rock my hips, chasing more, and he gives it to me. He seals his lips around my clit and sucks while he slides two fingers inside me and curls them against that spot that makes my body shake.
“You taste so fucking good,” he groans against my flesh. “I could eat this pussy for hours.”
The filthy words make me clench around his fingers, and he rewards me by pumping them faster, harder.
He matches the rhythm of his hand to the movements of his mouth, working me with a skill that borders on unfair.
Every nerve ending in my body feels like it’s on fire, and the pleasure builds and builds until I’m teetering on the edge of something enormous.
“That’s it.” He curls his fingers and flattens his tongue against my clit. “Let go for me, Caelan. I want to taste you when you come.”
The orgasm crashes through me without warning, tearing a scream from my throat as my inner walls spasm around his fingers.
Wave after wave of pleasure rolls through my body, and he works me through every second of it, licking and sucking and stroking until I’m panting on the mattress with aftershocks still rippling through me.
Before I can catch my breath, he adds a third finger and starts building me up again. I whimper at the stretch, at the overwhelming sensation of being so full while still so sensitive from my first release.
“Patrick, I can’t—”
“You can.” He presses a kiss to my inner thigh. “You’re going to come for me again, and then I’m going to bury myself inside you and make you come a third time.”
He makes good on his promise; he works me with his fingers while his mouth returns to my clit, and within seconds, the second orgasm hits even harder than the first. This one rips through me with a force that makes me scream his name loud enough for the entire packhouse to hear.
I don’t care. Let them hear. Let everyone know exactly who I belong to.
When the tremors finally subside, Patrick makes his way back up my body and positions himself at my entrance. The blunt head of his cock presses against my slick folds, and I whimper at the promise of more even as my oversensitive flesh protests.
“Look at me,” he commands.
I force my eyes open and find him staring down at me with an expression that makes my heart stutter. Want and tenderness and something fiercer underneath, something that looks almost like a word I’m still too afraid to even think of.
“I’m looking,” I whisper.
He pushes inside me with one long, slow stroke, and I gasp at the stretch. No matter how many times we do this, I don’t think I’ll ever get used to how full he makes me feel or how perfectly he fits inside me like he was made for exactly this purpose.
Patrick holds himself still once he’s fully seated, giving me time to adjust even though I can see the strain in his face from the effort of not moving. I wrap my legs around his waist and pull him deeper, silently urging him to stop holding back.
He doesn’t need to be told twice.
He starts to move in long, deep strokes that drag against every sensitive spot inside me, and my wolf rises to meet his.
I feel them twining together beneath our skin, recognizing each other in a way that goes beyond the physical.
The mate bond sings between us, amplifying every sensation until I can’t tell where I end and he begins.
Patrick groans my name like a prayer while snapping his hips against mine with increasing force. “You feel incredible. So tight. So wet. Made for me. You were made for me.”
I dig my nails into his back and urge him to go faster and harder.
He complies, driving into me with an abandon that makes the headboard slam against the wall.
The sounds of our coupling fill the room—skin slapping against skin, breathless moans and whispered curses, and the creak of the mattress beneath our writhing bodies.
The pleasure builds again, different this time.
Deeper and more consuming. I feel it in my bones, in my blood, in every cell of my body, crying out for completion.
Patrick hooks his arm under my knee and changes his angle to grind against my clit with every thrust, and I keen beneath him with my release building at the base of my spine.
“Come with me,” he growls against my ear. “I want to feel you come on my cock while my knot fills you up.”
His knot begins to swell, stretching me impossibly wide, and the added pressure sends me hurtling over the edge. I scream his name as the orgasm crashes through me with my inner walls clamping down on his length so hard it makes him shout.
Patrick thrusts once more, and then he’s coming too. His release floods into me in hot spurts as his knot locks us together. Through the haze, I feel his teeth graze the juncture where my neck meets my shoulder, and then, he bites down.
The pleasure and the sting of his teeth mingle together into something transcendent. My wolf howls in triumph, recognizing the mark for what it is. A promise. A bond. A declaration that cannot be unmade.
Patrick collapses on top of me, and I wrap my arms around him while we both gasp for breath. His knot keeps us joined with his cock still twitching inside me, and I’ve never felt more complete than I do in this moment.
“I didn’t hurt you?” he asks against my throat.
“No.” I run my fingers through his sweat-dampened hair. “You didn’t hurt me.”
He lifts his head to look at me, and what I see in his eyes makes me hold my breath.
Tenderness and possession and a vulnerability he rarely lets anyone see.
I reach up and run my index finger along the line of his jaw, marveling at the fact that this fierce wolf, who has been through so much, chose me.
Or maybe I chose him. Maybe we chose each other.
“The mark…” he begins. “I should have asked first. I got carried away.”
“I’m glad you did it.”
He furrows his brow and asks, “You are?”
“I don’t know what happens after all this. I don’t know if this is love yet, or if it ever will be. There’s still so much we haven’t figured out, so much that could go wrong between us. But I know that I don’t regret this. I don’t regret you.”
Patrick lowers his forehead to mine. “I’ll spend every day proving you made the right choice.”
He kisses me softly, sweetly, a contrast to the ferocity of our lovemaking. I sink into the feeling and let it fill all the hollow places inside me, all the spaces where fear and doubt have taken up residence.
We lie tangled together as his knot slowly softens while the mission looms in my mind. In just a couple of days, he’ll walk into enemy territory. After that, everything could change. There’s still the chance he could choose his brother at the end of all this.
But right now, in this moment, he’s mine. And I’m his.
Surviving the rescue mission just became the most important thing in the world.