Chapter 37 – EMMA
EMMA
He doesn’t carry me to the bedroom.
Instead, Bodhi walks me backward until my shoulders hit the wall, caging me in with his arms, his mouth never leaving mine. The kiss is devastating, all hungry lips and tongue and barely leashed lust. When I gasp for air, he just moves to my neck, sucking and biting his way down to my collarbone.
“I’ve been thinking about this.” His beard is rough against my skin. “All the ways I want to take you. Fill you. Cover you in my scent. Make sure everyone knows you’re mine.”
I arch into him, digging my fingers into his shoulders. “Then stop talking and do it.”
He pulls back just enough to look at me, eyes flashing gold. The bear, right there beneath the surface, wants out. Wants me.
“Careful.” His thumb traces my lower lip. “I told you I wouldn’t be gentle.”
“Good.” I hold his gaze. “I don’t want gentle. I want you.”
Something shifts in his expression. A wall comes down. The last thread of his careful control snaps.
He kisses me again, harder this time, lifting me easily so I can wrap my legs around his waist.
I feel him hard against my core, only thin layers of fabric standing between us, and I roll my hips instinctively.
His growl vibrates through both our bodies.
“Not here.” He peels me off the wall and carries me toward the fireplace, where the flames cast dancing shadows across the worn rug. “I want to see you. All of you.”
He sets me down on the thick rug, soft wool beneath my back. For a moment, he just stares, kneeling over me, his chest heaving.
“Don’t move.” He orders.
The command sends heat straight to my core. I should bristle at being told what to do. Instead, I grip the edge of the rug above my head and watching him through heavy-lidded eyes.
He strips off his shirt in one fluid motion. Firelight dances across his skin, highlighting the ridges of muscle and the scars that tell stories I don’t know yet. Claw marks across his ribs. Battle scars that make him even more beautiful.
A cute little bite mark on his shoulder.
“You’re staring,” he says, a hint of dark humor in his tone. “Admiring your handiwork?”
I shrug, giving him a cheeky smile. “Maybe. Or maybe you’re just worth staring at.”
His jaw tightens. He reaches for the hem of my shirt and starts working the buttons with surprising patience. Each one opened brings his mouth to new skin. A kiss to my collarbone. My sternum. The curve of my breast where it swells above my bra.
By the time he parts the fabric, I’m trembling.
“Still okay?” he asks, because beneath the hunger, I hear genuine concern.
“If you stop now, I’ll kill you.”
His laugh is low, pleased. “That’s my girl.”
My bra follows, then my jeans. He takes his time with each piece, fingers brushing skin as he reveals it, making me feel worshipped rather than exposed. By the time I’m down to just underwear, I’m shaking with the effort of keeping still.
“So responsive.” Satisfaction colors his voice as he traces the wet spot on the fabric with his thumb. “All for me.”
He catches my hands when I reach for him, pinning both wrists above my head with just one of his.
“Not yet.” This casual display of strength shouldn’t turn me on as much as it does. “You gave me control. Now take what I give you.”
He holds my gaze, waiting. I could break away. He’s being careful not to actually restrain me. But I don’t want to. I want whatever comes next.
“Keep them there.” He orders, releasing my wrists.
I grip the rug to anchor myself and watch him slide down my body. His hands part my thighs, and then his mouth is on me through the thin fabric, heat and pressure that makes me cry out.
When I start to mewl and moan, burying my fingers in his hair, he smirks.
“Shh.” He hooks his fingers in my underwear and drags them down my legs, tossing them aside. Then he settles between my thighs like he belongs there. “Let me taste you.”
The first swipe of his tongue is electric. I buck against him, and he pins my hips down, holding me still while he devours me with focused intensity. There’s no teasing, no slow build-up, just relentless pressure exactly where I need it.
“Oh God.” My hands tug the strands.
He pauses just long enough to move them back above my head. “What did I say?”
“I can’t. It’s too much.”
“You can.” His eyes meet mine, golden in the firelight. “And you will.”
When he adds two fingers inside me, curling them just right while his tongue circles my clit, I shatter. My whole body bows off the rug, pleasure crashing through me in waves.
He works me through every aftershock, drawing out the orgasm until I’m gasping. Then he’s moving up my body, covering me with his heat, his weight.
“Beautiful.” When kisses me, I can taste myself on his lips. “But we’re not done.”
I hear his belt clink, feel him shifting to remove the last of his clothes. When he settles back between my thighs, the thick length of him presses against my entrance, and I tense slightly.
He notices immediately. “We can stop.”
“No.” I wrap my legs around his waist, pulling him closer. “I’m just… tender. But I want it.”
“Emma.” He frames my face with his hands, forcing me to meet his eyes. “You can say no.”
That’s exactly why I want it.
“I know.” I reach up and trace the line of his jaw, feeling the tension there. “But Bodhi, if you don’t fuck me right now, I’m going to have to finish the job for you because I’m right on the edge.”
His control fractures.
He enters me with one slow thrust, giving me time to adjust to the stretch. It burns, but the sting quickly fades into something else. Something that feels like being complete.
“Fuck.” He grits out, forehead dropping to mine. “You feel incredible.”
When I rock my hips experimentally, he groans. This is all so new to me, and I’m drunk on the power I have over this man. So, I do it again and watch with fascination as his restraint crumbles.
He pulls back and drives forward, setting a rhythm that has me crying out with each thrust. There’s nothing gentle about it.
He takes me hard and deep, exactly as promised, but there’s reverence too.
In the way he watches my face. The way his thumb turns my chin, forcing me to hold his gaze as I climb higher and higher.
The way he adjusts his angle until I’m tumbling over the edge again.
“Mine,” he growls with each thrust. “Say it.”
“Yours.” I dig my nails into his back, leaving marks of my own. “Mine.”
He drives deeper, harder, his pace becoming frenzied as he nears the edge.
I can feel him swelling inside me, getting harder, and I know what’s coming.
“Faster. Harder,” I demand.
When he hesitates, I bite his shoulder, and a sound that’s more animal than man escapes him as I sink my teeth into the curve where neck meets shoulder, right on top of the first bite.
Dizzying pleasure crashes into me as we come together, lost to the sensations.
When he finally pulls back to look at me, his expression is softer than I’ve ever seen it. He brushes the hair from my face with gentle fingers.
“I told you, if you bite me again and I might just bite you back,” he teases.
Betraying how much that appeals to me, I whimper, and he kisses the spot he’s chosen as his own, his lips soothing the sting of his teasing nip of his teeth. “Soon,” he says, making a promise to my neck that he’ll be back.
“I love you,” he murmurs against my neck. “Should have said it again before now, so you know it’s not just the sex talking.”
“I know.” I turn my head to find his mouth, a big grin plastered on my face. “I love you too.”
His smile against my lips is everything.
“I’m not done with you.” He warns, and I feel him already hardening inside me again. “Bear stamina.”
Surprised by his impressive recovery time, I gasp. “Already?” I’m only just getting my breath back.
“I’ve been waiting for you my whole life.” He rocks his hips, making me whimper. “You think one time is enough?”
It’s not a question. And from the promise in his eyes, sleep is a long way off.
I pull him down for another kiss.
“Show me what else you’ve got.”