25. Freedom in Total Surrender
TWENTY-FIVE
FREEDOM IN TOTAL SURRENDER
Freedom in Total Surrender
I watched the pale column of Giselle’s throat bob as she swallowed, my heart thundering so hard I was sure it would tear out of my chest. I knew I was probably making a huge deal out of nothing, but still, I had to know if she knew the weight of what she said.
I had messed up a little at the jamboree and had used the word “mate” when describing her to the hard-of-hearing elder. I hadn’t really been thinking about it, and perhaps it was a bit of a Freudian slip, but I hadn’t used it since.
But now, hearing it tumble from Giselle’s lips right after we’d confessed our love to each other, fully letting our walls down, it hit me in a way I hadn’t expected.
“I said, I love you too, my mate.”
I drew in a ragged breath and tried to ignore my inner wolf’s howls of adulation. Mate? Mate! MATE!
He adored Giselle as much as I did. After all, we were the same entity, just split along lines of man and animal.
He wanted nothing more than to care for her, to feed her, to tend her aches and comfort her when she was troubled, to provide a den that made her feel safe, and fill her belly with pups.
I wasn’t really on board with that last one, but the rest of it I could absolutely get behind.
Because I really, truly, loved Giselle with every fiber of my being. She was a saint for putting up with so much more than she ever should have had to, but thanks to her, we’d found something beautiful.
Thanks to her, I was watching my family heal in real time, something that I’d been holding them back from without even knowing.
Because of her, dozens upon dozens of children were going to continue their schooling with positive outlooks and strategies to help them figure out what their learning style was.
She was a force of nature, an unrelenting purveyor of good, and I was lucky to be in her presence, let alone have her love me.
“I’m sorry if I used the word wrong,” Giselle said, and I was horrified that her scent was souring. Shit! I’d gotten a bit too far in my head again. I had grown better at that lately, but the surprise had knocked me back into old habits.
“No, no, nothing to apologize for.” I had to kiss her again, so I did. I could tell she was confused, but the slightly sour smell of uncertainty left her. “That word threw me a bit, that’s all. I never thought I could possibly have that again.”
“A mate?”
I nodded. My cock pulsed in protest, disappointed at being neglected, but I had more important things to worry about. “I know it’s ridiculous, but I was so focused on being able to admit that I am head-over-heels, irrevocably in love with you, that I hadn’t really thought about...”
“Is that something you want?” Giselle asked.
I wanted to lie and brush it off. The thing was, Giselle was always painfully honest with me, and she deserved the same respect. Even if it made me cringe a bit.
“Yes, I do. But that doesn’t mean you have to do anything. I’m fine with being in love, being a couple, or any other relationship milestones that happen.” I was botching it, I was botching it so bad, but to my surprise, Giselle smiled at me.
“You’d want me as your mate?” She said it as if that was somehow baffling. “You’d wanna bite my neck? Have me wear your teeth marks so every shifter who sees me knows that I belong to you, and you belong to me?”
That was the last thing I’d expected to hear her say, and it went right to my heart and my straining length, making both jolt.
“I… you…” I fumbled.
“If it’s what you want, then I want it too. I told you I’m in this forever, and I mean it. So, if you’re ready to share that part of your culture with me, please, do it. I don’t care if I don’t have a mating gland, and I don’t care if it leaves a scar. In fact, I want it to.
“Please, believe me when I say that I want to share every part of our lives. Your culture, my culture, our worries, our pains, and all the victories we have to come. We’re in this together, as long as you will have me.”
My wolf was rising higher and higher, his mind running parallel to mine.
He wanted nothing more than to do exactly as she asked, and I could feel my teeth expanding as they did every time she riled us up.
But it was such a serious thing, such a sacred thing, that I had to be absolutely sure she understood what she was asking.
“Please, Giselle, you have to be sure. You can’t ask me to do this if you’re not one-hundred-percent resolute about it.”
It was only my deep, intense love for Giselle that was holding me back.
Because my entire mind, body, and soul wanted nothing more than to be mated to the woman who made each day better and brighter.
But I had to do right by her. I owed her so much, and if I mated with her irresponsibly, then I would deserve the worst of hells.
Giselle yanked me back down to her a second time, a surprising amount of strength left in her after how physical we’d already been, and she kissed me with a fervor that made my knees weak.
Tongue beseeching, scent spiking, heart going a million miles a minute.
This time it was she who kissed me breathless, leaving me panting when we parted.
“You listen here, Benjamin Poynter. I love you. I love you more than I ever thought it was possible to love a single person. And I want to be your mate. So, if you’re ready for it, you put your damn teeth in my neck and make me come so hard I lose my voice.
” The seriousness in her expression faded slightly, and she sent me a look that would have made the devil himself blush.
“And if you’re not ready, that’s okay, we can just do the second part. ”
“God, what you fucking do for me,” I managed to get out before giving in and doing what we both so clearly wanted.
I reached between us, gripping my straining erection. I wanted inside of her.
No, I needed to be inside of her more than I needed to breathe.
So I slid in, bit by bit, drinking in her gasps with a kiss as I did.
She was impossibly wet for me as she always was, her smell filling the whole room like a drug.
I relished being intoxicated by her. I wanted her seared into every aspect of me until it was difficult to tell where one of us started and the other ended.
Mate.
I kissed my way down her neck as I made the slow, deliberate slide into her. Like always, the wilder side of me wanted to thrust into her unabashedly, but I knew my love. She needed time to adjust before she begged for more.
And I always gave her more.
I waited until I was fully seated within her, one arm curled around the small of her back to press her to me, and the other buried in her hair. We were connected at all points, our heartbeats syncopating into our own percussive movement.
God, I loved her. My whole body throbbed with it. So, I poured all that passion into finding that spot where her neck met her shoulder, where all large predator shifters had mating glands.
She didn’t have one, but that didn’t matter. No, all that mattered was us and the family we were forging together.
“Are you ready?” I asked, pulling my hips back an inch, feeling her walls relax around me as I stopped about halfway out of her.
She nodded as she placed her hands against the back of my neck, pressing me into that intoxicating crook of her neck. “I am. Make me yours.”
“As you wish.”
My hips surged forward in one powerful thrust as I sank my teeth into her neck. They broke flesh quickly, sharply, and the slight tang of blood spilled across my tongue.
Mate! Mate!
“God, fuck , Ben!” Giselle screamed as she’d promised and that destroyed the last of my restraint.
My hips began to piston in and out of her, jolting her up the bed enough that she had to wrap her legs around my waist to keep us aligned.
Completely lost in the sensation of it all, I loosened my jaw only to kiss and lave at the wound I had just made.
It wasn’t just the act of the bite that made one a mate. My saliva, full of my scent and my healing ability, would seal it up far more rapidly than a human would normally heal. And then a bit of me would be sealed in her forever, shifting her scent ever so slightly to be an echo of me.
We truly were one.
Well, almost.
I leaned down, shifting my hard, rapid thrusts to more shallow grinding so my neck was within reach of Giselle’s mouth.
I was ready to instruct her, to beg her really to complete her bond, but she needed no direction.
The next moment, her lips were right over my mating gland, then her blunt teeth were sinking into it.
Fuck, fuck!
It hurt like a bitch, her canines applying broad pressure rather than the sharp and almost surgical precision of shifter fangs, but my body was into that, because I felt the first telltale sign of my own climax rapidly approaching.
I couldn’t come so soon, not before Giselle’s teeth were fully inside of me.
I was desperate to see the red of my blood on her lips.
It was a primal, inescapable need that could not be ignored.
“More,” I grunted, lost in the rush between us. “Give me more, baby. You can do it.”
Giselle whined and bit hard. She was almost there, I could tell. She just needed a little encouragement.
Somehow, despite my addled state, I knew exactly what to do. I went from grinding to rocking into her with a hard and fast movement of my hips, sliding a hand between us to find her clit.
“Come on, Giselle,” I rumbled as I stroked her in loose circles that slowly grew more and more concentric. “Make me yours, baby. Make me yours just like you’re mine. I want you. My love. My mate. ”
I could feel her getting closer, her walls starting to flutter around me, but she needed more to get over that hump and fly into her ecstasy. My movements grew more desperate and I quickly realized I was running out of time.
My blood was liquid fire in my veins, and I was about to explode, not too unlike a volcano. While I knew we could try again after a bit of recovery, that wasn’t what I wanted. It wasn’t what my wolf wanted.
So, I shifted my weight a bit to support myself on my knees and moved the hand that had been supporting my weight so I could press my thumb into her fresh mating bite.
“ BMPHHH! ” Giselle cried, mouth full as she bit down even harder, finally breaking my skin and stimulating that little piece of biology within me.
“That’s my girl,” I gasped before she climaxed, and her saliva penetrated my new wound.
I’d mated before, and no doubt the scar tissue was what had given Giselle so much trouble, but I’d forgotten the cataclysm it summoned in me.
Suddenly, I was struck with a type of pleasure that couldn’t be described.
It was all-consuming, all-encompassing, a trial by fire that burned away everything I was and left me reborn as an alpha and mate.
“Giselle,” I managed to cry as I spilled into her. She clamped down on me, milking me for all I was worth.
I cried her name over and over and over again, and when her teeth released my neck, she was largely the same. Just as I had thought, the sight of my red blood staining her, uniting us, hit me almost like a second climax.
There was no way to measure that infinite well of pleasure that we were both locked in, but when it passed, we essentially melted together into the mattress. I was definitely going to have to do laundry once we came out of our post-sex coma, but, God, it was worth it.
“That was… that was…” Giselle panted, her chest heaving.
“ Perfect ,” I finished, rolling onto my side and pulling her to me. We looked at each other, my gaze going to her bite.
“We really did it,” she murmured, her fingers ghosting over the wound. My whole body shuddered in response. I caught her hand, the touch bordering on overstimulation, and kissed her palm.
“We did,” I murmured.
We shared a long look before we leaned into an even longer kiss. So much was said without saying anything, until a yawn from Giselle forced our mouths apart.
“Sorry,” she murmured, blushing slightly, her eyes already half-lidded and heavy with sleep. I took it as a point of pride that I could knock her out with incredible sex. I felt like that was a thing most guys bragged about but never actually did.
“You have nothing to apologize for,” I said, pressing soft, tender pecks to her forehead, then each of her cheeks. “Go ahead and rest, baby. And when you wake up, it’ll be the first day of our forever.”
She smiled wanly as her breathing slowed and her eyes slid closed. “Mmm, that sounds wonderful.”
It really did, didn’t it?