Thane
I've forgotten how to fucking breathe.
Ivy's impossible words have stalled out my brain. The zombie movie keeps droning on through the tinny speaker hooked to the window as she grins at me.
I press my forehead to hers and reach up to caress her cheek, tucking her dyed brown hair behind her ear.
She catches my hand and presses my palm flat against the scar on her shoulder. The raised tissue is smooth and warm beneath my fingers, slightly silky to the touch, and she shivers at the contact, her ocean eyes never leaving mine.
My chest tightens. "You're sure," I manage.
"Thane." She pulls back just enough to look at me, and her grin turns wicked. "If you ask me one more time, I'm going to bite you first."
I believe her.
She's a feral little thing wrapped in a green dress, straddling my lap with the strap already slipped off her shoulder, baring the exact place she wants my teeth.
I lose the last thread of restraint.
My hands find her ass through the thin green dress and pull her down harder against me. The seam of my suit pants is the only thing between us now, that and whatever scrap of fabric she's wearing underneath, and I can feel the heat of her through all of it.
She's already soaked.
The pack alpha I'm supposed to be evaporates. For a moment, I'm just an alpha with my mate in my lap, scent-matched and slick and asking me—begging me, practically—to mark her.
"Fuck," I grit out. "Get this off."
I tug at the strap of her dress with the hand still on her shoulder.
She arches back and reaches behind herself, sticking her tongue out a little as she wrestles with the zipper.
I help her with it, fighting to keep my hands steady so I don't tear the fucking thing off.
The green fabric loosens and she shimmies, pushing it down her arms, baring herself from the waist up in the blue glow of the projector light.
She's perfect, her skin lit silver-blue, the burn scar on her left shoulder shimmering in the light like polished pearl. My hands span her ribs and my mouth goes dry. Her heartbeat's hammering as hard as mine.
"Thane," she whispers, biting her lip.
Like she's daring me.
I bend and take her breast into my mouth.
She gasps, her hands flying to my hair, fingers tangling in the longer strands and gripping hard. The little hitch in her breath sends a bolt straight to my cock. I work her with my tongue, slow and thorough, and her hips grind down against me in stuttering, increasingly frantic circles.
"More," she pants. "Thane, I need—"
I wrap one arm around her waist, the other working at my belt, the buckle, the button, the zipper. There's no time for this shit. I need inside her like I need to breathe.
She reaches between us and finishes making short work of my belt. Her hand wraps around my freed cock and I nearly come right then.
"Ivy." Her name comes out of my mouth as a warning growl.
"Sorry." She isn't. Her grin is pure mischief as she strokes me with one hand and hooks a finger in the side of her underwear with the other, dragging it aside.
There's no room to take it all the way off, not in this position, and not in the front seat of my car.
We're both half-dressed and frantic, and it's almost comical.
I line myself up. "Ready?" I ask, panting.
"Yes. Yes. Now—"
I lower her onto me.
She makes a sound between a moan and a sob, biting her lip hard enough to flush it redder, her nails digging into my shoulders.
I go slow, acutely aware of the difference in size between her body and mine, easing her down inch by inch, careful not to stretch her too fast. Her head drops to my shoulder, breathing hot and ragged against my throat.
"Breathe," I murmur into her hair, one hand splayed across her lower back, the other cupping the curve of her ass. "Just breathe. We've got all night."
"You're huge," she whimpers, and there's a laugh buried in it. "Thaaaane…"
"I know. I've got you. Take your time."
Her moans break off into a cackle. "Take your time? Oh my gods, Thane, you're so fucking—accidentally funny—ah!"
She sinks the rest of the way down all at once, her pussy bumping against the swelling knot at the base of my cock.
She squirms and whimpers, so hot and tight, gripping me like a fist, and I have to grit my teeth and dig my fingers into the steering wheel behind her to keep from losing it immediately.
For a moment we just stay there, joined, panting against each other. Her body fluttering around mine. My heart trying to punch through my ribs.
"Fuck," I hiss as she rolls her hips.
"Move," she demands, lifting herself up and dropping back down, and the slow burn of friction shorts out every coherent thought in my skull. "Thane, move."
I grip her hips and move, or do my fucking best in the front seat of the car where there's hardly any room for an alpha my size.
I'm positioned in the seat in a way that keeps bumping my knees against the console.
I twist to adjust my right leg so it's bent at a better angle, lock in a rhythm, and stay there.
The car rocks gently and Ivy lets out another hysterical giggle, her eyes rolling back into her head. "Some… someone's going to see this and fucking knock on the windows," she pants, grinning wildly. "That would be… ah… a million times scarier than the movie."
"That's good, because we're not watching it," I pant back at her, a grin of my own tugging at my lips as my mouth finds hers again.
A movie chainsaw revs and a chorus of horns blares from the other cars. I'm so far gone I barely register it. There's only Ivy. Her weight on me. Her heat around me. Her broken little sounds against my throat.
Her nails rake down my chest and stomach, leaving stinging lines, and I hiss through my teeth when she claws clear down to that new layer of thickness I can't seem to shed no matter how many extra reps I add.
My abs clench on instinct and my face burns hotter than the rest of me. Which is saying something, because the rest of me is on fucking fire.
"Stop flexing," she breathes, grinding harder against me. Her hands slide wider, gripping my sides where my obliques have thickened.
Claws, again.
I wince but my knot doesn't get the memo. It's already swelling against her, my hips snapping up involuntarily. Apparently I like pain as much as she likes my body.
Tonight's full of fucking surprises.
"Again," she gasps. "Do that again."
I grip her hips and drive up into her, harder this time, and the car shudders on its suspension. The speaker swings on the window hook and clatters against the glass.
I instinctively grab it to steady it and she nips at my arm, growling, demanding wordlessly for me to keep both my hands on her, speaker be damned.
Fuck if I'm gonna argue with that.
I thrust up again and she meets me halfway, her thighs flexing around my hips, the slick heat of her clenching tight enough to blur my vision at the edges. This is messy and desperate and nothing like the composed, planned-out evening I had in my head.
It's fucking amazing.
"Thane—" Her voice cracks. "I can feel your knot—fuck—getting bigger—"
Each time she drops down, the stretch of the knot pressing against her entrance drags a broken whimper from her lips.
"Tell me if it's too much," I rasp, my hands tightening on her hips.
"Don't you dare stop."
She slams down and my knot catches. Her inner walls flutter and clamp, and white-hot flames surge up my spine hard enough to make my teeth ache.
My knot swells against her, insistent, relentless, and she rocks down into it with a whimpering moan. Her hands brace harder against my stomach, her palms slick with sweat now, fingers trembling.
"Take it," I growl, and my voice doesn't sound like mine anymore. The captain and pack alpha are long gone. There's just an alpha with his teeth bared and his mate impaled on his cock. "Take all of it, Ivy."
She sobs out a breath and pushes down one final time.
The knot locks inside her with a hard, wet pop and I come so hard my vision whites out.
Her back arches, her nails scoring red lines across my skin, and the roar building in my chest tears free, rattling the car windows. She clenches and milks my knot so hard I feel it in my godsdamned bones, my cock buried to the hilt, locked so tightly nothing in the world could separate us.
My dazed eyes slide to her shoulder. To the bare, shimmering skin where she burned away the mark of the man who hurt her.
And now she wants me to mark her.
My hand slides from her hip to the back of her neck. I feel her pulse jackhammering beneath my fingertips. Her head tilts, exposing the column of her throat, the slope of her shoulder, offering herself trustingly.
"Do it," she whispers against my jaw. "Thane. Please."
The pack alpha in me breaks the surface.
I surge forward, one arm banding around her waist to hold her still against the knot, and my mouth finds the scar on her shoulder. The warm skin is silky against my lips. She trembles in my arms, a full-body shiver that vibrates through us both where we're connected.
I open my mouth. Press my teeth against the pearlescent skin.
And bite.
The taste of copper floods my tongue and Ivy screams. Not in pain, or not just pain, because her pussy clamps down on my knot again in another shattering orgasm that rips through her.
Her entire body bows into mine, her fingers fisting my open shirt, her thighs clamping around mine as much as they can.
The bond snaps into place.
I've heard about this before, in terms that make a bond sound like it'll be a warm, poetic, flowery glow blossoming in your chest. Real birds and the bees shit.
I don't expect it to be like a fucking nuke going off in my ribcage.
It slams through my chest, my ribs, my spine, detonating behind my sternum and branching outward like lightning through every vein in my body.
I feel her.
Not just her flesh. I feel her inside my skull, inside my blood, woven into the marrow of me. Every fucking cell screaming IVY IVY IVY.
I press deeper into the bite, my jaw locking, sealing the mark with a low, possessive growl that hums against her skin and makes her whimper. My tongue drags across the wound, tasting iron and honeysuckle, soothing the sting even as my teeth hold.
Her fingers card through my hair, gripping, tugging. Her heartbeat is my heartbeat. I feel it pounding through the new thread strung between us, grafting my soul to hers.
When I finally loosen my jaw and pull back, the mark is already blooming angry and red across her shoulder, overlapping the old scar. The healing cuts from my teeth impressions, clear and deep, stamped into the skin and merging the mark she left on herself with the mark of an alpha.
Her alpha.
My forehead drops against her shoulder, next to the fresh mark, and we stay like that for a few minutes, panting and locked. My knot pulses inside her, still locked, still pumping, and each residual throb makes us both quake.
Her fingers loosen in my shaggy hair, stroking now instead of pulling, soft and lazy.
And I feel her.
Not just her body against mine. Not even just her heartbeat syncing with mine through the bond.
No.
I feel her contentment.
It's a low, steady note whispering through the thread between us, buzzing in my very soul, and I realize with a jolt that for the first time in my life, I'm completely at peace.
"I love you," I murmur. "I love you so fucking much, Ivy."
She tips my chin up with one finger and I lift my head to look at her.
Her eyes are brighter than I've ever seen them.
The blue-green irises practically glow in the blue light from the screen even through the tinted windows.
Tears track down her cheeks—not sad tears, her pure bliss is clear through the new bond—and her swollen lips are parted, her breath still hitching with the echoes of everything that just happened.
She cranes her neck and twists to look down at the healing mark on her shoulder. She touches it with her fingertips and winces, but before I can start panicking again, she grins so wide her wet lashes squeeze out a few more tears that make her mascara run more.
Then those ocean eyes lift back to mine, and the grin turns feral and fucking overjoyed. It's so purely Ivy, my heart swells against my ribs, and I'm sure it's going to actually crack them this time.
"I love you, too, Thane."
My heart fucking stops this time.
She kisses me again, breathlessly, and I crush my lips to hers once more, digging my fingers into her hair as she whispers against my mouth, still grinning.
"Best. Date. Ever."