Chapter 20 #3
His poured into me and mine poured into him and the combined force arched my spine and tore a sound from my throat I’d never made, raw and animal and completely beyond control.
His body locked behind mine, teeth still buried in my shoulder, his fist finding my hair again and gripping hard and I came with his teeth in my flesh and his hand in my hair and his body buried inside mine and I was pinned and claimed and completely, devastatingly his.
Everything amplified, his pleasure feeding mine feeding his in a loop with no beginning and no end.
I could feel him pulsing inside me and feel what that pulsing felt like from his side, the release so intense it bordered on agony, the relief of a man who’d been clenching every muscle for years finally letting go.
I was crying. He was crying. I could feel his tears before I felt them hot against the back of my neck, sliding from his eyes and mixing with the blood from the bite and the dampness of his beard.
When it passed, when the waves retreated and the bond settled from a roar to a hum, his teeth released my shoulder.
His tongue found the wound immediately, lapping with slow, careful strokes that made me shudder.
The contrast between the savagery of the bite and the tenderness of his tongue cracked open a place in my chest I didn’t know how to close again.
His hand loosened in my hair. His fingers combed through the strands.
Gentle now, untangling the knots his fist had made, smoothing the hair from my face.
The wolf was receding. The man returning.
I could feel it through the bond. The wildness pulling back like a tide, leaving behind a man who was awed and shaking and desperately grateful.
He was still inside me. Still trembling. His beard was a mess — wet with me, streaked with blood from the bite, pressed against the nape of my neck where he’d buried his face. His body came in shuddering waves that I felt in my own chest as much as through his body.
“Talia,” he breathed. Wrecked and raw and shaking beneath me. “I can feel you.”
“I know.” I pressed my face into the furs. “I can feel you too.”
His heartbeat, wild and gradually slowing. His love, vast and warm, so close I could touch it. His fear that he’d been too rough. That the wolf had crossed a line.
I reached back and found his hand and laced my fingers through his and squeezed.
“You didn’t hurt me,” I told him before he could ask. “I liked it. All of it.”
The relief that flooded made my eyes sting.
I could feel exactly what those words did to him, the knot of shame unwinding, the terror dissolving, a fierce bright joy rushing in to fill the space.
He’d been so afraid. Even in the grip of the wolf, some part of him had been terrified that he was becoming his father.
He wasn’t. I could feel the difference now. Erik’s hunger had been consumption, a mouth that only knew how to swallow. Dietrich’s was devotion, a hunger that wanted to give as much as it took, that trembled with the privilege of being allowed to want.
“The hair,” he managed, his fingers still combing through it. “I didn’t mean to — the wolf just ...”
“I liked it,” I repeated firmly. “The hair. The wolf. Being flipped and held down. All of it.”
I felt the shock — genuine astonishment that the roughness was the thing she’d liked best. Something rearranged itself inside him. Old shame making room for something that had never had permission to exist before.
He eased out of me, carefully, slowly, and I felt the loss from both sides. The emptiness. The cold air replacing his heat. He made a small sound that matched mine.
He gathered me against him. Turned me so we were face to face, lying on our sides in the furs. His beard was a disaster — dark with moisture, streaked with blood. His eyes were amber fading back to their usual shade, the wolf settling deeper behind them.
I cupped his face in my hands. Felt the wet coarseness of his beard against my palms. I felt the exact moment when the last of his fear dissolved and what remained was just us, two people in the furs with a bond humming between them and a bite throbbing on my shoulder and the taste of each other on their mouths.
“I love you,” I told him.
“I know. I can feel it. I love you too,” he replied.
We lay there while our bodies settled. I could sense his awareness of me, my exhaustion, my satisfaction, the pleasant ache between my thighs, the sting of the bite, the deep contentment that had settled into my bones like warmth after years of cold.
He pulled the furs over us and pressed his mouth against the bite one more time, gentle, reverent.
“The mating,” I murmured after a long time. My fingers traced a scar on his chest, following it absently, learning the texture. “That’s different. That’s the wolf fully.”
“Yes,” he confirmed. His fingers found the bite on my shoulder and traced around it.
“The claiming is the bond. The mating is everything else. The full shift. The power transfer. The knot.” His breath caught.
“It has to be the full moon. I’d be in the form between, not full wolf, not fully human.
And your Forceweaving would flow into me. ”
“Strong enough to beat your father?”
“Maybe,” he admitted. “With your power and mine together, maybe.”
“But you won’t ask for it,” I concluded.
“The mating will be your choice,” he confirmed. “The same way the claiming was.”
I kissed him quiet. Pressed my mouth against his until he stopped talking and the bond settled between us like a living thing finding its resting place.
“When is the next full moon?” I asked against his lips.
I felt the answer before he gave it, fear and hope and hunger intertwined.
“Three days,” he whispered.
I laced my fingers through his. Felt the bite throbbing on my shoulder in the same rhythm.
“Three days,” I repeated. “Train me until then. And when the moon rises ...”
I didn’t finish. I didn’t have to because he felt the rest, the intention, the decision, the fierce wanting that had nothing to do with strategy and everything to do with him.
His arms tightened around me. I felt him fighting the hope. And then I felt the moment he stopped fighting and let it bloom, cautious and fragile and bright.
“Together,” he finished.
“Together,” I agreed.
The new door held. Erik’s claw marks scarred the wood. And between us, the bond hummed, warm and alive, carrying his heartbeat to me and mine to him.
Three days until the full moon.
Three days to become strong enough to kill a monster.
And in the space between now and then, I lay in the arms of a man who was also a wolf, with his teeth marks on my shoulder and his love in my blood, and I felt, for the first time since I’d been driven into this forest, not just safe.
Ready.