Chapter 24
Chapter twenty-four
Luna
He presses his forehead to my back as I raise mine from the table, both of us gasping.
Our reflection stares back from the window.
I drink in the image. I love watching us this way.
My skin flushed and damp, my hair plastered against my neck in sweaty tangles, shoulders trembling with residual tremors.
I look absolutely wrecked, as wrecked as I feel. And the sight thrills me.
He pulls out, and his large hands trace the curve of my spine, his fingers gentle before he helps me stand, lifting me onto the table and sliding me back.
It’s been a week since the doctor cleared me, and my wolf has spent every night inside me. We’re back to how we were before. It seems I measure everything in my life these days in terms of before I lost our baby and after. I still feel the loss acutely, but his touch drowns everything out.
“It’s so unsanitary what we do on this table.” His lip curls up on one side as I twist my aching shoulders. “Can you untie my wrists? I’m getting stiff.”
He reaches behind me and snaps the zip ties. I rub at the pink lines carved into my skin, but he’s already tugging me closer to the table’s edge. My arms shoot back, and I brace myself on my hands so I don’t tumble backward.
“What the—” The words dissolve on my tongue as his thick finger glides along my slit, scooping up our combined orgasms and pushing them back inside, and a whimper escapes my lips. “What are you doing?”
“You don’t seem to want to leak on the table. I’m just helping you out.”
“It would help me out better if you wiped it down with Lysol before you left.” My eyes drift to his cock. It’s softened but is still partially rigid. “How can you still be hard?”
He smirks, and his fingers flutter over my clit now. “Your pussy must be magical.”
I shudder, fighting the distraction. “I’m serious. How is it physically possible for you to stay hard as long as you do? Do you take Viagra?”
His nostrils flare under the mask like a bull’s. “I do not take fucking Viagra.”
I laugh at the offended growl that rumbles through him. “Well, it has to be something artificial because no man can stay hard for that long without it becoming medically dangerous.”
He leans in, his voice teasing as his fingers restart their gentle assault on my clit. “Aww, are you worried about my cock, little doe?”
“I’m worried about my cock.” I curl my fingers around his shaft. He grunts and bucks his hips, pushing his erection deeper into my grip. “See how good it is when you let me keep my hands untied.” I grin with a satisfied smile.
“Don’t push it, Luna. And it’s only a brief reprieve. I’m tying you to the headboard when we get upstairs.”
He grunts out the last few words because one of my hands has found his balls, cupping and rolling them in my palm.
“Mmhmm.” I brush the thumb of my other hand over his leaking tip. Then his words register, and my hand stills. “Wait. What did you just say?”
“Huh?” He blinks as if I’m speaking a foreign language.
“Did you say we’re going upstairs to have more sex?”
“Yes.”
His dark eyes gleam as he tucks my hair behind my ear, a gentle touch that makes me shiver.
“No. I’m done for tonight. I have no more orgasms in me.”
“Is that a challenge?”
He sweeps my hands away with ease and pushes his cock inside me in one smooth stroke. He’s not fully erect again, but he’s thick enough to stretch me, to fill me in a way that forces a gasp from my throat. With his length and girth, even half-hard, this man could wreck me.
My body clenches around him involuntarily. Traitor.
“See?” His hips roll, grinding deeper. “Your body disagrees.”
I wrap my legs around him. “This doesn’t prove anything.”
“Doesn’t it?” He withdraws halfway, then drives back in. His cock hardens with each thrust, growing inside me.
I bite my lip, trying to stifle the moan building in my chest. It escapes anyway. My eyes trace over his face, wishing I could see under the mask. Wishing he would show me all of himself.
His shirt is still buttoned. It always is. He’s never removed it. Not once. The cotton might as well be armor for how it protects his secrets as fiercely as his mask.
I’m always fully naked, but he recently started removing his pants. The tattoos that peek out at his collar and beneath the hem of his shirt are hints of stories I can’t read. When I take him in my mouth, he lifts the fabric just enough to watch, but never enough for me to see what’s underneath.
His finger traces my clit, each circle timed to match his deep strokes. Slow waves of pleasure roll through me, building and cresting like the tide against the shore.
“Lay back, beautiful.”
I sink against the table without hesitation, my arms settling at my sides.
He fucks me like this a lot now, my hands free but forbidden to wander.
The table’s surface is hard against my spine as he moves inside me, each thrust sending tremors through my frame.
His fingers trace patterns on my skin while his eyes devour my reactions.
I drink in the sight of him above me, his jaw tight with control, lips parted, and eyes burning behind the mask.
“Wolf.”
His hands freeze against my skin, and his entire body goes rigid.
Shit. Did I say that out loud?
I keep that name locked in my head, a secret between me and my heart. My wolf. Mine in ways that transcend names and faces. And as much as I want to see beneath the mask, I’ve grown to love it.
“What did you just call me?”
His voice sounds different. Rougher, yes, but there’s a tremor underneath. Layers of emotion I’ve never heard before. Surprise? Vulnerability? I can’t tell with that damned mask hiding his face.
My heart slams against my ribs. The word sits there now, between us, impossible to take back.
“I called you wolf. That’s what you told me to call you that first night.”
“I thought you don’t like the animal I am.” His voice carries a new edge, raw and almost wounded.
“I never said that.”
“You don’t like it when I rut you like one.”
The crude words send heat spiraling low in my abdomen. Because God help me, I more than like it. I love it. I love the way he takes me—wild and desperate and completely consuming. But that’s not all I want.
“I never said that either. I just—” My voice falters beneath his intensity. “I don’t want you to always rut me from behind. I want to see you. Touch you. Feel you on top of me again.”
He remains still. Frozen. Not even the rise and fall of breathing. Then he moves, lowering himself until the mask hovers inches from my face, and solid warmth presses against me from chest to hips.
For the first time.
Every point where our bodies meet ignites. His chest crushes my breasts, his stomach is flush against mine, warm and solid, and his weight settles over me like he’s claiming all the space he’s always kept between us.
My nerve endings fire in rapid succession, electricity arcing across every inch of contact. The dam I’ve built around my heart cracks. This is what I’ve been begging for through countless nights. What I’ve pleaded for in whispered desperation when he maintained that barrier, that distance.
Emotion slams into me with the force of a riptide, dragging me under.
My throat seizes around a sob that won’t stay down.
Vision swimming, eyes burning, I struggle to comprehend the enormity of what he’s giving me.
This intimacy he’s guarded as fiercely as his identity. This closeness he’s denied us both.
My thighs grip his hips, ankles locking at the small of his back, pulling him deeper. Tears break free and slide down my temples, disappearing into my hair. Not from hurt. From the devastating perfection of finally having what my soul has been screaming for.
“Don’t try to remove my mask.” His breath is hot against my lips—so close, so fucking close—each word edged with warning. “Don’t betray my trust, Luna.”
My lungs stutter, catching on the inhale. “Never.”
Whatever demons hide behind that mask, whatever scars or secrets he’s protecting, I won’t violate that boundary. Not when he’s offering me everything else.
My hand moves without conscious thought, sliding between our pressed bodies until my palm finds his chest. Heat bleeds through his cotton shirt, and underneath my fingertips, his heart hammers out a violent rhythm.
The hunger to see his whole face consumes me, burning under my skin like a fever I can’t break.
An ache that’s settled into my bones. But this—his weight, his heat, his trust—this is more than I dared hope for.
Through the mask’s eye slits, his stare finds mine and holds.
The hardness there softens, cracks, and a fragile uncertainty flickers in the dark depths, maybe fear of what I’ll do with the vulnerability he’s handing me like a loaded weapon.
Then his voice roughens, dropping into a low rumble that vibrates through both our bodies.
“Fucking touch me.”
The permission unleashes something wild in me.
The sound that rips from my throat tangles triumph with relief and hunger so sharp it cuts.
My fingers claw into his shirt, grabbing fistfuls of fabric.
He hauls me upright as he stands, his arms banding around me like steel, like he thinks I might disappear if he loosens his grip even a fraction.
This embrace rewrites everything I thought I knew about touch. My body molds against his from chest to hip, and all of a sudden, I understand why I’ve felt hollow all this time. The emotions threaten to tear me apart from the inside—too much joy, too much rightness, too much everything at once.
The tears won’t stop, tracking hot paths down my face. My breath stutters as every hard ridge and plane of his body presses against the soft curves of mine.