Chapter 17 Landon
LANDON
Dean was like a drug.
He pulled me back toward his bed, and I felt my whole body relax, just giving over to the moment, to the feeling of being truly wanted, for the first time possibly ever.
I had thought Geoff wanted me, but he’d never looked at me the way Dean did—like I was the only thing that existed in the whole universe.
To call it heady was such an understatement.
He just backed me right up to his bed, one arm around my waist and the other on my cheek, guiding me backward.
“The shirts,” I whispered, like I actually wanted to stop and clean.
His low chuckle was more deep, terrifying predator than his usual vocal range, and I couldn’t hold back a shiver. “Forget the shirts. They can be washed.”
And he . . . he didn’t shove me back onto the bed, like I’d been half expecting. No, instead, he was so perfectly gentle. He leaned down and sort of half picked me up, one leg and my back cradled in his arms as he laid me across his bed, so that I hardly felt anything until his bed was beneath me.
True to his word, he left the Lucky Black Cat shirt on me as he slid my shoes and socks off, dumping them on the floor.
Straddling my legs, he looked down at me, his eyes intense and almost luminescent gold-green in the dim light of the bedroom. He lifted his hand to my zipper and met my eye. “You can tell me to stop any—”
“I don’t want you to stop.” I grabbed his hand and held it to my zipper, but more, to where my cock was as hard as a rock behind it. “I want you. So much.”
His pupils blew wide, and he fell onto all fours above me, taking in a deep breath as he pressed his face into my neck.
“Perfect,” he muttered against the sensitive skin of my clavicle, kissing his way across my neck as he once again reached for my fly, unzipping me and making quick work of my jeans.
They, and my underwear, joined everything else on the floor.
He ran his hands under the shirt, up and down my sides, kissing his way back to my lips, and covering me entirely with himself.
It was funny, that someone who had never failed to make me feel like I was in the presence of a predator also made me feel safer than I’d ever been in my life.
Suddenly, I needed him naked. I started pulling at his shirt, and he didn’t hesitate, just yanked it off over his head and threw it aside. Then his jeans, and . . . well, he wasn’t wearing any underwear to take off to begin with. I shivered at the sight of him, completely naked.
And there I was, still in a shirt. His shirt. Somehow, it was perfect. He was entirely bare before me, and while I wasn’t, the shirt that was my tiny defensive layer was just a part of him.
It was him, protecting me.
“Condom?” he asked as he leaned over and reached into the nightstand for a bottle of lube, and that was .
. . unusual. I didn’t think I’d ever been asked that before in my life.
It was just another protection from Dean.
With our lightning-fast healing, shifters didn’t generally need protection like that, and it wasn’t like I was in danger of getting pregnant, but every layer of his care was like being wrapped in a blanket and offered soup and cocoa.
“You don’t need to bother,” I said, grabbing him by the arm and pulling him close to me.
He let himself be tugged, leaning into me, almost laying atop me, our faces just an inch apart. “You sure?” he breathed against my lips, and suddenly, I could sense the tightly coiled predator once again.
Fuck me, but that was hot. He was ready to spring at me, but holding himself back to make sure I got what I needed out of him.
“I am so sure,” I promised. “Now get down here and fuck me.”
He sucked in a breath through slightly sharp teeth, and then nodded, his eyes never once leaving mine.
Then he left.
Okay, not really. He just sat up, and pitifully, I was bereft.
He just spread my legs and hitched my hips up onto his lap, so I was spread before him.
Somehow, his dark eyes got even darker. Instead of taking a bite out of me, though, he grabbed the lube and coated his fingers, then started to work me open, watching me like a hawk.
Predator again.
He wasn’t looking for lunch, though. He was looking for every reaction I had to his ministrations. Every gasp, every squirm, and every whimper as he worked his fingers inside me, searching out the things that made me crazy with lust and then redoubling his efforts.
Me? I was a blubbering wreck.
I kept reaching for him, then forgetting what the hell I was doing when he pushed forward and hit just the right spot, leaving me gasping for breath and trying to remember my own fucking name.
“D-Dean,” I finally managed to gasp out, grateful his name was only one damn syllable.
He grinned wide, like the panther he was, leaning down to kiss me so very softly. Then he asked, “Yes?”
Like he didn’t fucking know.
“Now,” I demanded, and while I wanted to grab him and pull him in, all I could seem to do was tangle my hands into the mix of shirts and bedsheets beneath me. I managed to say it again, sounding desperate and pathetic, even to my own ears. “Now!”
Fortunately for me, that was enough. He slid his fingers out of me, and pulled my ass up higher onto his thighs, leaning in to press his cock to my entrance, where he only hesitated a moment before pushing inside.
After that, there was only him, moving inside me, his body covering mine, his hands running up my skin under the shirt I was still wearing, his beautiful eyes watching me, mirrored from the fabric on my chest.
I was lost to the motion, rocking back and forth with Dean, letting out punched little noises as he pressed in, and no doubt whining as he pulled back out.
“You feel perfect,” he whispered, as he lifted himself up to cover me completely, and somehow instead of suffocating, his body atop mine felt perfect and safe and protected.
My instincts flared, and I realized this, with Dean, was home in the way nothing else had been, maybe ever in my life. This was comfort and happiness and everything I wanted, every single day of my life.
I couldn’t verbalize everything I was feeling, so I just wrapped my legs around him and pushed back with every press of his body into mine, riding the waves of pleasure until they crested, somehow managing to take both of us with them at the same time.
We both cried out in unison, and then slowly collapsed, panting, into the bed.
After a moment, he grinned again, the predator back with me. “I’m gonna have to keep you. You really are perfect.”
Around my heavy breathing, I managed to answer, “You’d have to be pretty determined to get rid of me, at this point, to make me do anything but stay.”
The words were vulnerable; too much, too fast, and we were only dating, but there they were, between us. And in the moment, I wasn’t even sorry I’d offered them up. Especially not when his smile softened and he tugged me close to him and answered, “Good.”