Chapter 72 – Carina
Seventy-Two
CARINA
“Kamahki.”
That definition is still lost on me, but to me, it means ‘home.’
A wet path trails from my neck, over my shoulder, and down my arm until nudging the blanket out of the way.
My back arches both into and away from the tickling sensation, my body confused whether this is pleasure or pain.
When the sensation ends, I decide it was pleasure.
If only I could chase it back into my dreams.
“Kamahki.”
Mm, I’ve missed him calling me that.
Sleep is my favourite time of the day. I left Ryder, but he always returns in my dreams. His touch, his voice, the name without meaning that means everything to me.
Teeth scrape lightly over my shoulder and down my chest, fiddling with the collar of my dress.
“Carina.”
Blinking awake into the dull glow from somewhere, brown and grey fill my vision—an endless expanse I follow to the figure crouched beside me.
Last night rushes back in a chaotic blur.
The ceremony I was about to initiate but never made it that far, and then every realization of being done with that life—of being tired of pretending I’m something I’m not, that I haven’t been crying myself to sleep every night, regretting leaving Ryder behind.
Ryder, whom I’ve come to genuinely care for over our time together.
I ran from the coven and towards the pack, then the caves.
Holly. Holly helped me, and then I was in Ryder’s section, and everything got hazy.
Broken sleep over the week accompanied by running myself ragged playing High Priestess-in-training, accompanied by the comfort of his bed, exhaustion hit hard.
Silver eyes glow in the dark cave, a small homemade candle I’d watched the pack make the other week lit in the corner. Beside the bag of my clothing that got left behind in his cabin—I’d noticed it last night. Hands and knees come down over my body, pinning me in place.
Little does he realize, I’m not going anywhere.
“Ryder.” My hands skate up the side of his face until melding with his hair, and he releases a low noise of contentment. “Ryder, I…” Don’t know where to even begin. An apology first, and then an explanation, but my lips are cracked and drying, my throat parched.
What if he doesn’t forgive me? Would I forgive me?
He turns his head to nuzzle my palm. “I once told you only mates share a nest. If you’re here, that means you’ve made your bed, kamahki. Literally. Are you ready for this? Because if you’re not, you have about five seconds before the option is gone forever.”
I could give him a verbal answer, but I give him the sign that’ll mean more to him. A shifter’s response, by tilting my head and baring my neck and his bite. “Being here doesn’t make me yours. This does.”
“Fuck.” His head drops until lips nip at it. “I’ve missed you a lot.”
“Prove it.”
For a moment, he’s completely still. Ice beneath my palms, despite the high temperature his body regularly runs at. And then the ice cracks and the wolf returns.
In an abrupt move, he flips me over and places my hands up on the edge of the nest’s indent. “Keep those here.”
He then hooks an arm around my waist to lift me onto my knees, which arches my back and lifts my ass up. He releases a low rumble that feels like inner peace as he kicks my knees apart, fists my hair, and yanks my head back.
“You. Left. Me.” Every word is punched out by alongside a twist on my scalp. “That, little mate, was your one and only shot. Next time you consider abandoning me, it’ll be to the Otherworld, and I’ll be minutes behind you.”
He reaches between my legs and strokes two fingers over my clit until I grow slick. His words did most of the work, so it doesn’t take much until I’m arching into him, trying to lift my hips. The grip on my scalp burns worse, but I don’t care. Anything to get him inside me.
Instead, he flattens his hand and taps my core. “You’ll be lucky if you come at all tonight. Consider this night one of a long winter of punishment.”
“You wouldn’t.”
Dark and decadent, he growls, “Try me.”
“You won’t leave your mate needy for months. Ryder…I need you.”
His next growl is one of frustration, but then he submits to my own wishes and slides two fingers inside me, pulling out once until his skin is coated, before fucking me deeply and curling them.
“Fuck you. Of course, I can’t leave you wanting. That’d defeat the goal, wouldn’t it?”
As he pushes in harder, deeper, a pressure builds. Painful, almost, but a tightening too that has my arms shaking to retain my position. “Goal?”
“To keep you full all the fuckin’ time.” His free hand reaches to rest on my lower stomach. “By the end of winter, I’m gonna breed your ass so fucking hard, you’ll be carrying the next Alpha. Then leaving won’t be a possibility.”
Given the birth control spell my body has, my hormones aren’t much good to him at the moment.
Which is good, because having a baby is literally the last thing the coven or pack needs, given my future with Twilight Grove.
Yet, despite that—and the fact I’m so far away from wanting a baby, it’s not even funny—it doesn’t sound… bad.
One day. I’d witnessed Ryder with Claire and the other kids, and admittingly, I’ve always had a fondness for them, preferring to hang out with the coven’s children rather than people my own age.
One day, but not until everything gets settled between him, me, the war, and our species.
Until then, spending the winter trying—letting him attempt to—sounds fun.
“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”
“Yes,” I hiss, half speaking the truth.
After another thrust of his fingers, he pulls them from me and reangles himself behind me. Hot skin comes in contact before his cock slides in deeply, pulling out once before slamming home.
His grip on my hair falters, both of us simultaneously freezing to adjust. He then regains his hold and arches me to the point of discomfort, making his cock feel so much fuller inside me.
“Let me hear you, Carina. Let the pack hear you, so they accept you’re here to stay. You realize you broke all our hearts, right?”
“Yes.”
“So prove to them why you’re not running again. Become my mate for them all to hear.”
Why the hell is this such a turn-on? Never really got the idea behind any kind of exhibitionism until now.
He thrusts deeply, my grip on the stone falters with my weakening arms. Between his hold and the waning of my muscles, my body is torn in two different directions.
Until he releases my hair, grabs my hips, and with minimal dislodgement, manages to flip us over until I’m on my back. Silver eyes stare down and fingers that shift into claws imbed into my skin. It’ll leave cuts, but after tonight, it’s what I want.
My neck, my hips, my thighs. Between his teeth and his claws, I want his claim anywhere he’ll lay it.
He grasps my thighs and pushes my knees down, spreading me wider before coming down on top of me. Hands beside my shoulders, he lowers his arms and his thrusts slow. Slow but reaching deeply inside me, enticing a wave of heat.
“This is what your life will be like. I’ll be inside you every single day.
I’ll claim you any way possible—inside and out.
You’ll never know another male. I’ll protect you with everything I am and everything I have.
You’re the sun my day rises and sets on.
My moon in the dark. My direction north so I can always find my way home to you. ”
Neither of our kinds follow human concepts of wedding ceremonies.
For shifters, the bite on my neck is it, and the oaths spoken during a witch’s union are sealed with magick before their souls are bound.
His proclamation are vows I take inside me—feel to the depths of my soul.
His claim is already in my skin. By all accounts, we’re wed.
Answering him, I dig my heels into the ground and arch up. “I wouldn’t want it any other way.”
His thrusts continue at a languid pace, and the weight of his body makes me feel everything he promised: safe.
I’m where I’m meant to be, and nothing will change that.
Heat builds until the orgasm hits me. He kisses me through it, lifting my leg up and over his shoulder to draw it out for longer, until my panting breaths mingle with his smoother ones.
“That felt…” Intense. It was slow building, like our entire relationship.
He kisses me deeply, his tongue flicking against my lip as he nips his way down my cheek to nuzzle my neck again. “That,” he starts into my skin, “was one of many for tonight. That was the way I say, ‘I love you’, but now let me show you how I say, ‘I’m keeping you’.”
He rolls me back to my knees and thrusts inside. A hand on my neck pins me submissively down, my hair tossed over my face as my moans careen into the furs. The angle fills me so deeply, a sound I don’t recognize comes from my throat.
“Ryder.”
He growls, and I’d kill to see behind me—to see what he looks like in this instance as his thrusts increase, the knot in his cock slowly expanding, filling, stretching, reminding us exactly how I’m made for him. The burn is delicious, followed by a heat through my insides as he comes.
My body slumps from his hold, face into the furs. “I’m dead.”
He chuckles, dropping beside me and rolling until my body is tucked into his, his cock still embedded inside me, where he’ll be for the next while. Content, I’m more than pleased to sleep like this.
An apology rests on my tongue, but exhaustion quickly wins. We’re together. Anything that needs to be said can wait until the morning.