Chapter 16 #2
For a few seconds, it was just us, his mouth on mine, the weight of him over me, his forearms braced on either side of my head.
The sheer size of him should have triggered every alarm Andrew had wired into my nervous system.
A man that big, over me, pinning me down.
But my body wasn’t running the old program.
There was just his mouth on my neck, the deliberate drag of his teeth along my collarbone, and a sound coming out of me that I absolutely did not authorize.
His hand slid under my shirt, up my ribs, his palm spreading warmth across my bare skin.
Everywhere he touched, the heat stayed and spread, like he was leaving a trail of low-grade fever across my body.
He found the edge of my bra, his thumb tracing the underside of my breast, and I pressed into his hand, wanting more contact, wanting the feel of his skin against mine with an urgency that should have embarrassed me but didn’t.
“Off,” I said, yanking at his shirt. “This needs to be off.”
He sat back and pulled it over his head in one motion. I must have made a sound, because he paused.
“What?”
“I’m just … appreciating. Give me a second.”
His smile was smug. “Take your time.”
I pulled him back down by the waistband of his jeans and kissed the self-satisfaction off his face. Then my shirt was off, and my bra, and there was nothing between his skin and mine. He ran hotter than anyone I’d ever touched, and everywhere we touched burned in the best possible way.
My hands explored him: chest, shoulders, the hard ridges of his stomach.
And every place his mouth landed, from my throat to my collarbone to the curve of my breast, left heat that deepened and connected to the next place and the next until I’d lost track of where one sensation ended and another began.
He kissed down my stomach, and I was already reaching for the button on my jeans, already lifting my hips before his fingers got there.
He pulled them off along with my underwear in one smooth motion, and his eyes went full amber.
Vertical slits. The tiger right there at the surface, looking at me through Warrick’s face with an expression that was raw and starving and entirely, completely mine.
“Now,” I said. “Warrick, now—”
He stood up long enough to deal with his jeans, and I watched him, and I was not remotely objective about what I saw. He was—proportional, let’s say. To the rest of him. Which was a lot.
Then he was over me again, braced on one arm, his other hand between us, and his eyes found mine, and they were amber and gold and burning.
“Warrick,” I begged, needing to feel him inside of me. “Please.”
He pushed in. Slow. So slow I felt every part of it; the stretch, the fullness, the moment my body opened for him, and then closed around him like it had been waiting for exactly this.
He buried himself to the hilt inside me.
Then he went still. His forehead touched mine for one second, his eyes locked on my eyes, and he was shaking—a tremor running through his arms, his chest, the whole of him vibrating with the effort of holding back.
“Yes?” he asked.
“Yes! Move. Please, Warrick.”
He moved.
The rhythm was slow at first, long, deep strokes that I felt everywhere, that turned my thoughts to static.
His hand gripped my hip, his thumb pressing into the bone, and I wrapped my legs around him and shifted the angle.
The next stroke hit something inside me that whited out my peripheral vision.
“There,” I gasped. “Right there.”
“Fucking hell, Lucy. You feel so tight. So fucking wet.”
He drove into me harder, his control fracturing, and I loved every second of it, feeling every inch of him slam into me again and again, the rhythm building, his breathing ragged against my ear.
Then he pulled out.
No.
I made a sound of protest, but his hands were already on my hips, flipping me onto my stomach. The strength of it, how easily he moved me, like I was his to position, sent a spike of heat between my legs so sharp I couldn’t breathe for a second.
His hand pressed flat between my shoulder blades, pushing me down into the mattress.
His other hand gripped my hip and pulled me up onto my knees.
I felt him behind me, the heat of him, the thick length of him against me, slick and hard and hot.
I pushed back against him because I physically couldn’t not.
“Warrick, if you don’t—”
He drove back inside me in one stroke, and I screamed into the pillow.
The angle was obscene. Deeper than before, the fullness of him reaching parts of me I didn’t know could feel like this. I fisted the sheets, spread my knees wider, because I needed more, needed all of him, needed him so deep I’d feel it tomorrow, and the day after.
He gave me exactly what I wanted. His hand slid up my spine and into my hair and gripped, firm, controlling, pulling my head back just enough that my throat was exposed.
His hips slammed into mine, each thrust punching the air out of my lungs and a sound out of my mouth that I couldn’t have stopped if I’d tried.
The rhythm was relentless, devastating, and somewhere under the white noise of it, I could feel the purr, the tiger’s purr, vibrating through his chest and into my back, a deep subsonic frequency I felt in my bones more than I heard with my ears.
“Warrick … there … don’t stop, don’t you fucking stop—”
He didn’t stop. His hand left my hair, ran down my spine, and both hands gripped my hips.
He pulled me back onto him as he drove forward, and the collision of it sent sparks across my vision.
I could hear him, hear us, his breathing destroyed, sounds tearing out of him that were more animal than man, a low continuous growl that resonated down through my spine and into my core.
His hand slid around my hip and down between my legs.
His fingers found where I was swollen and aching and stroked me in time with his thrusts.
The dual sensation of him inside me, filling me, his fingers circling exactly where I needed, was so intense my arms gave out.
My face hit the pillow, and my back curved deeper, and the angle shifted again, and I heard myself begging, actually begging, and I did not care.
“Let go,” I gasped. “Stop holding back. Please, Warrick, I want all of it, I want the tiger, I need you—”
He snarled against my shoulder. His hand left me and gripped my hip, and his rhythm turned savage—deep, punishing, his chest pressed against my back, his skin burning against mine, his mouth at my ear, my neck, each breath a harsh burst against my skin.
I could feel him thickening inside me, feel how close he was, and the knowledge of it, that I was doing this to him, that I was the thing unraveling him, pushed me to the edge.
The orgasm gathered low and deep. Then something cracked open between us, and I was flooded.
Not with words or thoughts, but sensations.
Cold concrete under bare feet, a forest at night with no lights.
The smell of woodsmoke in a room that wasn’t his.
A door that wouldn’t open, no matter how many times he came back to it.
A voice saying “boy” in a tone that meant “son.” And underneath all of it, running through everything like a current, the bone-deep ache of looking for something you couldn’t name in every room you walked into, every face you studied, every street you moved through.
Until one afternoon, you walked into an animal shelter and scented the thing you’d been searching for.
Mate. There you are.
And I understood, in a way that bypassed language entirely, what I was to him.
Not a sign from some tiger deity. Not a cosmic accident.
The end of a search he’d been running since he was thirteen years old, standing in a forest that wasn’t his, on a world that wasn’t his, looking for something that would make it worth staying.
This was mine to give. Nobody was taking it.
Nobody was tricking me into it. I was asking for it with my eyes open and my voice steady, and the full knowledge of what he was pressed against every inch of my skin.
And I wanted it. I wanted more, needed more.
“Mark me,” I demanded.
His hips stuttered. “Lucy—”
“I know what I’m asking.” I dropped my head, bared the back of my neck. “Mark me.”
His mouth found the place where my neck met my shoulder. I felt his teeth, sharper than human, the tiger pushing through, pressing against my skin. A point of pressure. A question.
“Please.”
He bit down as he drove into me one final time, deep enough that I felt him everywhere, and the pain and pleasure fused into something that tore through me like a live wire.
I shattered. My whole body seized, clenching around him, his name ripping out of me.
I felt him come inside me, the heat of it, the roar that tore from his chest, and through the bond I felt what he felt.
His pleasure stacked on mine, layered, multiplied, feeding back and back until neither of us knew whose body was whose.
For a few seconds, there was no him and no me. Just us. Blinding and total and real.
Then it eased. Settled. Became a warm hum in my chest, steady and constant, like a second pulse I’d been born with and only just learned to hear.
He released his teeth from my skin. His forehead dropped against the back of my shoulder, his chest heaving against my spine.
His arm wrapped around my waist, and he pulled me against him, still inside me.
His thumb found the marks his teeth had left and pressed against them, gentle. So gentle, after everything.
Mine. I heard it. Not out loud. Deeper than that. His tiger, in the space between us, where the bond had opened.
And then, incoherent, joyful, so raw it made my eyes sting:
Finally. Ours. Ours. Ours.