Chapter 36
Garrett
I’m in the cabin when she comes. The guest quarters at the edge of the compound that have become something more than guest quarters over the past week, because my clothes are on the chair, Mia’s rubber ball is on the nightstand, the cot that should have broken is still holding through sheer determination.
It’s evening. The compound is settling into dusk.
I’ve showered. I’m sitting on the cot with my back against the wall, turning the ball in my fingers the way I do when I’m thinking.
I’m thinking about Briar on the ridge this morning, the way she looked when she came back, something different in her walk, something resolved.
She didn’t come to the barn. Didn’t come to the kitchen. I felt her moving through the compound all day with a purposefulness that my wolf tracked without understanding.
He understands now.
Because she’s at the door.
I hear her before I see her. Not her footsteps, her breathing. Faster than normal. Not exertion. Decision. She’s made up her mind about something and is walking toward it before she can unmake it.
She opens the door without knocking.
I look up. She’s standing in the doorway with the last of the daylight behind her, and the expression on her face stops the ball mid-turn in my fingers.
“Hey,” she says.
“Hey,” I say back. Then wait… because something has changed.
I’ve seen Briar angry. I’ve seen her cold, controlled, clinical — the woman with the knife in the cabin.
I’ve seen her wrecked with pleasure and rigid with fury and soft with sleep.
I’ve never seen her look like this. Open.
Decided. The gray eyes holding mine with an intensity that tells me something has shifted… and it’s aimed at me.
“Put the ball down,” she says.
I put the ball down.
She closes the door and slides the bolt. The sound of the lock is loud in the small room.
She walks to me and stops at the edge of the cot.
I’m sitting. She’s standing. The height difference puts her eyes above mine for the first time.
I’m always looking down at her, the alpha’s physical advantage, and right now she’s the one looking down.
The reversal does something to my pulse that I feel in my palms.
“Don’t talk,” she says. “I’m going to do something, and I need you to let me do it.”
“Briar—”
“What did I say about talking?”
I shut up.
She takes the hem of her shirt and pulls it over her head. No hesitation. No performance. Just the practical motion of a woman removing an obstacle. She’s standing in front of me in the dusk light, and my mouth goes dry.
I’ve seen her body. I’ve had her body under mine, over mine, against mine in every configuration two wolves can manage.
But I’ve never seen her like this — standing still, letting me look, choosing to be seen.
The scars from a history I have yet to learn about.
The lean muscle of her arms and shoulders.
Her breasts, fuller now than the clearing, the pregnancy changing her body in ways I notice every time and never comment on.
The slight swell of her belly that I monitor constantly.
She’s beautiful. She’s always been beautiful, in the sharp, dangerous way that a blade is beautiful.
The pregnancy has added something I don’t have a word for.
Not softness. Briar will never be soft. Depth, maybe.
The additional dimension of a body doing two things at once: being a weapon and being a home.
“Shirt off,” she says.
I pull my shirt off. She puts her hands on my chest and pushes. I go back against the wall. She climbs onto the cot, onto me, her knees on either side of my hips, and the weight of her in my lap sends blood south so fast my head swims.
“Briar—”
“Still talking.”
She kisses me, her hands on either side of my face, holding me still, her mouth on mine.
The kiss is slow. Deliberate. She’s in charge, and she’s making sure I know it.
Her tongue finds mine, and the taste of her floods my mouth.
My hands go to her waist, and she catches my wrists and pins them against the wall behind my head.
“Hands stay,” she says against my mouth.
“You’re joking.”
“Do I look like I’m joking?”
She doesn’t look like she’s joking. She looks like a woman who’s been letting me lead for every encounter we’ve had and has decided that’s over.
Her fingers tighten on my wrists. The grip is strong.
She’s smaller than me, but she’s a fighter, and her hands know how to hold.
The fact that I’m pinned, that the alpha is pinned beneath a woman half his weight, should trigger every dominance instinct I have.
It doesn’t. My wolf doesn’t fight it. My wolf rolls over and shows his belly, and the submission is so total, so unexpected, that my breath catches audibly.
“There it is,” she murmurs. “That’s what I wanted.” She releases my wrists. “Keep them there.”
I keep them there. My hands against the wall, my fingers spread, every muscle in my arms straining to reach for her while I hold them still because she told me to.
She undoes my jeans. Works them down my hips while I lift to help her. Then she’s stripping her own off. It’s awkward in the confined space, but I don’t care because she’s settling back into my lap and the wet heat of her pussy against my cock makes my vision blur.
“Look at me,” she says.
I look. Her face is close. Gray eyes. Dark hair falling forward, brushing my shoulders. The mate mark on her neck. My mark, the scar from the clearing, the raised tissue where my wolf’s teeth punctured skin and changed everything.
I’ve kissed that scar. Traced it with my tongue. Pressed my mouth to it while she slept. But I’ve never looked at it the way I’m looking at it now, with her in my lap and her eyes on mine. The gravity of what she’s about to do is sitting in the air around us.
She reaches between us and takes me in her hand. Her grip is firm and sure, and my hips jerk involuntarily.
“Patience,” she says.
“I have no patience left. You used it all.”
“Then find more.”
She positions me against her entrance. The blunt pressure, the slick heat. She holds my eyes.
“I’m choosing this,” she says. “Not my wolf. Not the bond. Not the heat. Me.”
“I know.”
“This is mine to give. You don’t take it.”
“I know.”
She sinks down.
The sound I make is not the sound of an alpha.
It’s the sound of a man being undone, low, broken, torn from somewhere deep in my chest. She takes me in slowly, inch by inch, her eyes on mine the whole time.
The intimacy of watching her face while she opens around me is more naked than anything we’ve done.
I can see what I do to her. The way her lips part. The flutter of her eyelids. The tiny furrow between her brows when the stretch hits its deepest point. I see all of it because she’s letting me see it, and the letting is the gift.
She bottoms out. My full length inside her. Her thighs gripping my hips. Her hands on my shoulders. Both of us breathing hard.
“Hands,” she says, exhaling the word. “You can use them now.”
I bring them down from the wall and set them on her hips. The permission in the word undoes something. My fingers dig into her skin, and she inhales sharply, and the sound shoots through me.
She moves.
Not fast. Rolling, her hips finding a rhythm that’s different from anything before.
Not the brutal collision of the clearing, not the frantic urgency of the heat.
A deep, grinding roll that takes me to the root on every downstroke and drags the head of my cock against something inside her that makes her gasp each time.
She’s using me. Taking what she needs. Her hands braced on my shoulders, her head tipped back, her body working mine with a precision that tells me she knows exactly what she wants and she’s going to take it.
Fuck.
I want to say her name, but I feel like I’d have to ask permission first. She’s fierce and determined, and I don’t want to ruin it.
My hands slide up her sides and find her breasts.
She presses into my palms, and the roll of her hips gets faster, harder.
I’m watching her — her face, her throat, the way her stomach flexes with each stroke.
The swell where our child is growing, moving between us.
My hand finds it and rests there. Palm flat.
Her eyes find mine. The gray goes darker. She doesn’t push my hand away.
She rides me harder. Her nails digging into my shoulders, the rhythm breaking, getting ragged. She’s close. I can feel it in the way her body tightens around me, the grip of her getting fiercer, and through the bond her pleasure is bleeding into me and mine into her, and the doubled sensation is—
“Garrett.” My name. Not flat. Not controlled. My name, the way it sounds when she’s breaking apart. “I need—”
“I know what you need.”
I grip her hips and take over the rhythm. Driving up into her from below, hard, deep, meeting her roll with thrust. She cries out — sharp, surprised — and her nails break skin on my shoulders. The sting mixes with the pleasure, and everything is building.
“Don’t hold back,” she pants. “The knot… I want—”
“All of it?”
“Yes! Give me everything.”
I let go. The restraint I’ve been holding — the alpha’s control, the discipline of keeping that part of me leashed — I let it go.
The swelling starts, and she feels it, and her rhythm stutters.
She grinds down, taking the growing thickness deeper.
The sound she makes is greedy and raw, and it breaks whatever was left of my composure.
The knot expands. Locking us. Her body stretching around the base of me, the pressure enormous. She gasps, and her hands fly to my face and hold it, her eyes burning into mine.
“Don’t look away,” she says. “Stay with me.”