Chapter 35
THIRTY FIVE
Gryff
Sinking inside Honey’s perfect pussy so slowly damn near kills me.
Edging her with my mouth, holding her back from what I know she needs was torture.
Now she’s all wound up, and my head is spinning with the rich scent of her.
It’s not butter and cotton candy anymore.
No, I’ve worked her up so much it’s pink peonies and cupcakes, syrupy pancakes with a hint of the milk and cookies my dam used to fix me as a kid.
Somehow the scent of her takes fifteen years off me just like that, and I’m buried deep, breathing her in, reeling with the pleasure of finally calling her mine.
The relief of accepting what I’ve been fighting for so long has made me lightheaded. Breezy. Ready to laugh at anything.
But I haven’t lost my head enough to make me forget what I owe her. I’m the luckiest bastard on the face of the earth just getting to be this close to perfection, so I’m going to make damn sure I please her well. I just have to make sure I don’t embarrass myself before I can.
I deliberately keep my pace slow, rocking my body against hers, hardly pulling out. She’s wrapped so tight around me with her ankles locked around my hips, I don’t have much room to move anyway. All I can do is look into her pretty blue eyes and thank the moon goddess for blessing me so richly.
I didn’t have a reason to try before Honey.
I know that now. I was wallowing in my misery, shutting out the world.
But the second she burst into my life everything changed.
She’s like an emergency beacon, bright and impossible to ignore, and for the first time in a long time I’ve got a hope of rescue.
I pump my cock into her wet, slippery hole slowly, tenderly. It’s trite, but it doesn’t feel like fucking. It feels like making love, one long roll of my hips at a time.
I feel her tighten around me, feel the exquisite grip and shudder of her body when I adjust my angle slightly.
It’s a balancing act. I need to bring her over the edge, but I need to hold on myself, so I walk that line, creeping both of us closer to the explosion I know is coming.
All my pent-up energy needs to go somewhere, though. So instead of channeling it into the snap of my hips, I lean in, kissing and nipping at her neck until even that is not enough. Until I need her mouth.
Her lips glide over mine then claim me in a hungry kiss. Soon her tongue is sliding over mine, taking and demanding until my kisses become rough and demanding too.
I break away, breathing heavily, hanging on by a thread. My balls are tight and heavy, ready to unload into her. The base of my cock is already swelling in preparation to knot her.
I won’t be able to hold back much longer.
I look down at her, searching her face. “This is the part where you tell me you don’t want my bite.”
Her brow creases. “Why would I do that?”
I knew this was a lost cause, but I had to try. I should have talked this through with her before, but I couldn’t last another minute without holding her. “My bite is my claim. It marks you as mine, but if you don’t want that, tell me now.”
Her legs tighten, pulling me closer as she flings her arms over my shoulders and digs her tiny little nails into my back. I’d laugh if I wasn’t so close to groaning with need. “Of course I want that! Gryff, I want you. I want you to claim me.”
No one can say I didn’t try.
Cupping her face and sliding my thumb across her lips, I guide her head to one side so I can have full access to the smooth bare skin of her neck.
She whimpers as my teeth graze her flesh. Instinctively I let out a low purr, a gentle rumble that vibrates through me and into her. Instantly she softens. Her tension melts away, and I push all the way inside her with a shout as I close my jaw around the place that makes her mine.
Holy shit, it’s too good.
There’s the slight tang of blood on my tongue. A low moan of pleasure from Honey. Then her scent bursts over me with a new wave of sweetness until I’m drowning in it, but somehow safe. It’s the same calm in the storm I feel when I look deep into her eyes and she bathes me in her warmth.
I ache with pleasure and need but don’t want this to end.
For another drawn-out beat of our hearts I hold back.
Lifting my head, I stare into those pretty blue eyes as the pull of her power draws from me. It feels like an orgasm in reverse, if such a thing is possible. Like a backward sneeze. The pressure builds until her eyes widen, and the black of her pupils almost swallows up the blue.
Then I let go of all control. I pull back to plunge inside her forcefully, thrusting, impaling, chasing down her orgasm until it crashes over us both.
Her mouth falls open. She stares at me in silent awe as her pussy crushes me in a tight convulsion. Then I’m buried to the hilt, holding her close, emptying my balls into her tight, sweet cunt.
Mine.
All mine.
In every way possible, she’s mine. Bitten, knotted, and bred—well as close as I’m going to let myself get for now. My wolf growls in satisfaction, and for once he and I are on the same damn page.
And then I have to roll over and collapse for a hot minute with her on my chest while I recover, because I might be a shifter, but even a shifter has limits.
***
Some time later I manage to extricate myself from Honey long enough to lift her into the tent, to lay her on the softer surface of her bedding and pet her hair. When the urgency of the claiming has passed I take my time, kissing every part of her body, familiarizing myself with her.
Every part is precious. Beautiful and oh, so sensitive. She arches up into my palm and moans against my lips and tongue. Sweetness blooms between her thighs over and over in greater and greater waves until I have to take her again. Even slower this time. Even more reverently.
When I knot her the second time it’s with her sitting in my lap, legs draped over mine, body wrapped around me. She’s relaxed and loose by the time I surrender to my own pleasure, wrung out from so many soft, rolling orgasms we both lost count.
“So fucking beautiful.”
I don’t realize I’ve spoken out loud until Honey giggles. “Feel free to keep saying that as many times as you like. I think you’re up to five now.”
“Well you are. I can’t believe I haven’t told you fifty times.”
She lifts her head from my shoulder and gives me a lopsided grin that nearly makes me start all over again, only I know she’ll get sore.
“What happened back there, Gryff?”
I laugh. “You want me to draw you a diagram, babygirl?”
“No, I mean back in town. At the festival. Something happened, didn’t it?”
That knocks the laughter out of me right away. But instead of clamming up, I make myself talk to her, even though it’s hard. She deserves to know. “I got a call. It was a call I’ve been avoiding, and I guess I’m still avoiding since I smashed my phone and don’t plan on getting another one.”
She’s quiet for a while. She lays her head back against my shoulder and plays with the hair dusting my chest in a highly distracting way.
Eventually she goes still and I scent the anxiety building, tightening everything between us when it just got so easy. “What is it, Honey? Did you want to ask me something?” I stretch back, taking her with me so that we’re lying with her in my arms.
“I do, but I’m worried you’ll be angry or—”
“That I’ll leave again?”
She nods.
I guess I’ve got some work to do to rebuild her trust. I slide my hand up her back to gently stroke the place where my teeth marks left an imprint on her skin.
She shivers.
“Feel that, Honey? That tells you I’m not going anywhere. But I know why you’d be nervous. Go on. Ask me.”
“What was the phone call?”
So I tell her. I tell her about the hearing.
About the inquiry into the experiments on the men I served with.
About Collins and the way we found him. I skim over some of the details because she’s too sweet to tarnish with something so ugly, but she listens without interrupting, without comment, until I’m done.
In the end it feels good to get it off my chest.
“And it was our army, our government doing that to our soldiers?” she asks in disbelief. “Did they bring them back to life somehow?”
“Your guess is as good as mine. They have to have been working with some kind of supernatural, but damned if I know what the hell happened.
Collins was like some type of Frankenstein's monster. All chopped up and stitched back together.” I have to stop and press my nose to the top of her head to breathe in her scent for a moment to stop the world going dark around me.
She nuzzles closer. “I’m sorry that you had to go through that. It must have been awful.”
“It was.” What else can I say? That’s the truth of it. “That’s why I don’t want to relive it again.” There’s a pause, and she’s so quiet I find myself adding, “And I don’t want anyone to see me…broken.”
She still doesn’t say anything, and eventually the silence feels loaded.
“What?” I grumble.
“Well, I was just wondering about what will happen with the case.”
“It will probably be dismissed.”
“Really?”
A guilty hole opens up in my belly, like someone pulled the plug out and drained all the peace that settled there. “I’m surprised the big dogs have let the inquiry go so far as it is. It’ll just get covered up. There’s no point giving evidence.”
“But, Gryff, if everyone thinks like that, of course it will fail.”
I sigh. She’s right. I’ve just been trying to make myself believe that’s not my problem because, if I’m honest with myself, I’m scared if I try to give evidence in this case, it’ll shatter what’s left of my sanity.
That was old me, though. The me who didn’t have this sweet goddess in my arms or petting my chest even while she holds herself back from voicing her disapproval.
“Fine,” I growl.
“What?”
“I’ll go. I’ll do it. But it won’t be pretty. I can’t promise I’ll be able to go through with it without tearing apart whatever asshole gave that order. You might end up with a mate who spends the rest of his life behind bars. Is that what you want?”
She kisses my cheek softly. “I think I have a mate who is trapped already and maybe this is what it takes to set you free.”
I want to tell her she’s already done that, but this is still hanging over me, isn’t it? “What if I can’t do it? What if I lose myself again?” I shudder remembering those first days after they shipped me back home strapped to my hospital stretcher with silver chains.
“You won’t. I believe in you. How many people could have held themselves back like you did so you could keep my powers from hurting you? You’re the strongest person I know, Gryff.”
I sigh. I wish I could believe her, but the truth is, I won’t know until I try, and if that’s what she wants, that’s what she fucking gets.
“For you.”
She shakes her head, lifting her small hand to stroke my face. “For you.”