Chapter 40 – Carina
Forty
CARINA
Ryder wakes me once in the night by tugging me atop him. Sex is quick, intense, and ends with me on my back and him nuzzling my neck again before we both drift off for a few more hours of sleep.
When the sun breaks over the trees, I wake with his head on my chest, body partially on top of mine. He’s not heavy enough to be uncomfortable, and he’s warm enough that the autumn morning chill hardly registers.
To say the experience of having sex with Ryder is lacking would be a boldfaced lie Hecate would see through.
The place on my neck where he bit me no longer stings, and other than four puncture marks from his teeth, the skin is smooth and healed.
As I brush my fingertips over it, a shiver encases me.
I arch into him, wanting him to touch me there.
My reactions seem…visceral. But nothing I can stop, either—nor want to.
I’ve never felt so needy for another person.
Not in the way I want Ryder. Every day, all day.
For him to never stop touching me. For my day to begin with me on top and end with him above me.
He gave a part of himself to me last night, encouraging a craving for all of him.
It’s a gentle tugging in my sternum, almost magickal if I didn’t know shifters don’t have those kinds of powers. Whether this is normal or not will be a question for later, right after the one regarding the bite on my neck that he continues to pet.
Even now, he nuzzles the spot in his sleep.
I tilt my head, wanting him to, because as he does, a softness drags my limbs down.
Peace, as if all is right in the world. When he caresses the bite, my body is wrecked by another kind of orgasm—one only he can pull forth.
One that leaves me limp and only available for him.
It means something—I know it. He’ll tell me later, and if not, I’ll drag the truth from Leah. It’s something primal. Something that takes sex with a shifter to new heights.
As Ryder begins waking, his lips curl into a smile, kissing where he bit.
He rolls me onto my back and comes on top of me, hands pressed into the ground beside my head.
Despite being half asleep, with his eyes barely open, his tongue drags from my neck to my chest, waking and attuning all my senses to him.
My skin is wired with sensations beneath his fingertips.
His earthy scent fills my nostrils. His low growls match my own breaths, as if he’s breathing for me now.
Sex permeates the air, my tongue lapping the taste until he can replace it with his mouth.
All I see is him, every part of him, inside and out—soul and surface.
He nips down my breasts, pausing to lavish each nipple, and then over my stomach, my hip, and finally pauses over my pussy.
“How is it possible to want you again?” In a matter of hours, he’s taken me twice and it’s not enough.
It’ll never be enough.
Ryder presses the flat of his tongue to my clit in response, and he doesn’t let up until I’m screaming his name. And when my core is tight, he slips his tongue—which can partially shift—inside me. I’ll need some time to fully reflect on that fact.
When he forces two orgasms back to back, he climbs up my body and thrusts his cock, also an inhuman length, inside me. He holds my hands above my head and hikes my leg around his hip to alter the angle.
“Why’s this feel…not enough?”
“Because it’s the first of many and your body knows it. Knows me. Knows…” A strange expression crosses his face. It’s one of many odd looks in the past few hours. There’s something he’s not telling me, and I vow to figure it out.
Ryder thrusts deep enough to make lightning flash through my vision.
His teeth trace his marks from earlier without embedding.
My pussy stretches for what he called his “knot.” It’s almost painful but also leads to ongoing pleasure as my body craves nothing more than to curl up and remain submissive for him.
His knot makes him unbelievably large, but I’d die happy if he never pulled out.
There’s a bit of pain combined with a lot of pleasure—and it’s so worth it.
“I love the look of you like this.” His hands clamp my hips to slow my rocking as he presses me into the ground. “You won’t be going anywhere for a while, so enjoy it.”
“Is it always like this?”
When Ryder meets my eyes, there’s something totally unexpected in his expression—something that makes my stomach twist painfully at the sight of his skin losing a bit of that outdoors tan.
Guilt.
“No.” He swallows. “Carina—” A snap of his own teeth followed by a growl cuts him off. His body goes deathly still, his face flushing, and his nostrils flare with his deep inhale.
Instantly and spurred by the change of demeanour, his knot deflates and he slides from me, his body on full alert now.
“What is it?”
I’m met with silence—and then a wolf who prowls in front of me, his tail swatting at my thighs. His furry head jerks in the direction of the camp, but he’s insane if he believes I’ll leave him. The power inside me—my water magick and the black magick—tingles beneath my palms.
With every passing second, my water dries up, only leaving space for Darkness. For the promise of death to any who’d harm me or Ryder.
In a line, three figures draped in black emerge from the trees.
Ryder snaps his teeth, which is pointless. We both know who these people are. Right on schedule, in the early dredges of day eight, Twilight Grove has arrived.
“Well,” a low, almost seductive voice drifts my way, “Carina Hargrove. You’re a difficult woman to get a hold of these days. Nearly as difficult as the day your mother ran from us. Such a shame how that ended.”
My heart slams to a stop at hearing her speak about the woman who died saving me. Fighting about the past won’t help my future, though. I love what my birth mother did for me, but right now, I refuse to die while attempting to avenge her.
Putting aside being naked in front of three strangers, I step around Ryder to make a barrier between him and them. Teeth graze my hand before an annoyed snap of his jaw begs me to get behind him again.
“Run,” I whisper. “Ryder, go.”
The middle witch—the one who spoke—steps forward. Shadows and the cloak’s hood hide her face, but I’d bet all my magick this is Sloane, Twilight Grove’s Head Priestess and the one behind the deaths of Harlow’s parents.
She studies me and then Ryder, putting two and two together with a slow curl of her lips. “Look at history repeating itself.”
Whatever she’s going on about, it’s merely a distraction, which is why I knock my hip into Ryder, demanding he run, while greeting her. “Sloane, I presume?”
She dips her head, her arms spreading to the side. Her sleeves drip toward the ground like a waterfall of despair that matches her long black hair. “Blessed Be.”
The greeting of the Goddess is unfitting for those who turn away from Her, but pointing this out isn’t the hill I’d like to die on.
“I’m here, so you’ll leave the pack alone.” Not a question, but a confirmation and a demand.
“Of course.” The S ends on a slither, like she’s pondering something.
“But I’m sensing the old shifter no longer requires us since you’ve taken the magick for yourself.
Darkness recognizes Darkness,” she explains at my intake of breath.
“I see it in you. There isn’t much, but it’s a start.
We were never a coven to interact well with others, so you have my word: I’ll leave the pack alone. ”
“Never worked well with others…except vampires,” I counter, the words out before stopping them.
Harlow was once held by her fake parents until Cedric—a vampire working with Sloane and Alec’s long-time friend—was sent to come for her. Some vampires have allied themselves with Sloane in exchange for the protection of her black magick.
Sloane clasps her hands together, seeming oddly pleased. “At least Morgan isn’t keeping you in the dark about everything. As I’ve said, you have my word. The pack will be left alone.”
Ryder whines, pressing his snout into my hand, but I cross my arms to prevent him from touching me.
“And your coven.” The others who came with her have been unmoving, but I don’t trust them.
“Twilight Grove will not harm the pack nor Highridge Coven. Nor will you or any of your coven hire outsiders to harm either the pack or my coven.”
Sloane’s smile expands like an animal ready to strike—much like the one by my feet. “You will make a great High Priestess one day. You have my word that neither your coven nor the pack will come to harm by my hand, by anyone else in Twilight Grove, or by anyone we coerce or hire.”
Did I miss anything else? I certainly hope not.
“Then I’ll come with you.”
I step away from Ryder, halting when a streak of dark fur flies forward.