18. Chapter 18 #2
Something opened. Not sexually. Something else. The part of her chest that had been tight for three years went warm in one breath around the fact of this man, this alpha, this wolf who had killed for her in a warehouse, standing at the foot of a bed at nine thirty at night with nothing prepared.
She stepped into him.
Put her palm on the back of his neck where his had been. The warmth from his own hand still remained.
“Don't prepare. Just be here.”
“Yeah.”
The bed was like any other.
Fire in the hearth still going. Cold draft through the window he hadn't gotten around to caulking. Cold touched the back of her thighs for a second before he had her under him.
The warmth of his weight consumed her. He held himself on his elbows so his full weight wasn't on her. His mouth was at her throat. His chest against the whole length of hers.
His scent was at her throat. Pine. Cold. The warm of him under both.
His mouth was warm at her collarbone. It stayed there. Then moved up under her ear where her pulse raced. Then to her jaw. He was in no hurry to be anywhere that wasn't her skin.
Maren's hands found his hair first. Then the back of his neck.
Then down the long run of his shoulders and across his back, feeling the muscle move under her fingers the way a body moved when the man inside it was listening to her.
She felt his breath catch once against her throat.
She'd done that. She traced the place again to feel him do it again.
Jace's mouth came back to her mouth. Tasting her the way a man tasted something he wanted to remember.
Then along her throat. Across her collarbone.
The side of her ribs that had been checked for bruises that morning, soft there.
Her hands went from his back to his chest to his shoulders and back to his hair, learning him the way he was learning her.
When his mouth reached her breast she had already gone warm all the way through.
The first brush of his tongue across her nipple sent heat pulling down through her belly she hadn't known a mouth on her breast could put there.
His other palm covered her other breast, patient, his thumb moving free in a way that wasn't going anywhere.
Her back came off the bed for him. Her fingers tightened in his hair.
She lost track of how long before his hand started moving down. Down the outside of her ribs. Across her belly. The inside of her thigh. She was already arching up to meet him before his fingers found her. Wet for him. Waiting. A sound came out of her throat, low, involuntary.
His thumb found her clit and worked it in a steady circle. Exactly the pressure she wanted. The pressure she needed. Her hips lifted off the bed to chase him. Her fingers in his hair tightened. Her other hand spread against the hot skin of his back.
Jace kept the circle steady. Watched her face while he did it.
Didn't change the pressure. Didn't change the pace.
She felt it building in her the way a wave built, rising and rising until there was nowhere else for it to go.
She came on his hand. Her whole body went tight and then open again.
She made a sound she had never heard herself make before this moment.
She didn't try to be quiet. He watched all of it.
He didn't stop. He eased his hand until she could breathe again, then put two fingers inside her and worked her back up with his palm at her clit and his mouth at her breast. Her body answered him the second time faster than the first. She wasn't a body that held back anymore. Not with him. Her alpha.
Mine.
The wolf inside his chest, coming through the bond like the sound had come out of his throat earlier.
She felt it in her own body. Not as his thought. As a feeling in her chest that matched the pull she had been feeling for two weeks, finally seen for what it was.
Yours, she thought back. Not planned. Not rehearsed.
It went through the bond. Landed on the other side. Something on his side registered the word and shook.
“Say it out loud.”
“Yours.”
“Yeah,” he said.
The sound rolled through his chest under her ear again.
He was careful with her. Slower than she thought a man with a wolf pushing up in him could be.
He watched her face. Watched her breath.
Waited for the places where her breath hitched and stayed with them a second longer than a man who wasn't listening would have.
Her hands went into his hair and held him at the place she wanted him.
He let her. Moved with her. The heat in her was building from the center of her outward, the way a fire caught from kindling up, and every adjustment of his body read her body first.
She hadn't been listened to like this, ever.
Her body, too.
Her body hadn't been listened to like this, ever.
She set her palm at the back of his neck and held him there. He let her. That was a thing.
He came into her careful. Watching her every expression. Mapping every response, every change. Every catch in her breath, every place her body went tight and every place it softened. He gave her time. She took him. Her hands tightened in his hair. She said his name once, quiet.
Her hips lifted to urge him deeper. He gave her more of him. Not faster yet. More. She bit her lip to keep from making the sound again. He watched her mouth and put his thumb at the corner of it until she let it go.
He moved with her, not over her. Every adjustment of his body read her body first. Her hips rose to meet him.
A breath broke in the middle of her. The heat that had been building low in her since the sweatshirt came off opened out through her whole body in a deep pull that went from the center of her to the tips of her fingers.
The peak of it came through her in a long slow wave that started low in her body and opened all the way up through her ribs and ended in her chest. She felt her back leave the mattress.
She felt her hands tighten in his hair. She heard herself.
His came a breath after hers because he had been waiting.
The shape of his breath changed against her throat, and then the shape of him changed, and then the letting-go.
His breath went out all at once on her throat.
No bite.
He'd told her without words that there wouldn't be. He'd told her in the way his mouth had stayed on her throat for only a second and came back to her mouth. The bite was for later. Tonight wasn't the bite.
Tonight was tonight.
After.
She was on his chest. Her hand was over his sternum where she had put it an hour and a half ago in the middle of his cabin floor. His hand was in her hair. Fire low. Cold still came through the window and didn't matter.
The bond between them sat quiet and low now. Like an engine running soft in a room next door.
“Jace.”
“Yeah.”
“Nothing.”
“Yeah.”
Her lips moved against his skin as she smiled into his chest. He couldn't see it. He felt it through the skin against his skin. His hand tightened in her hair one quarter inch and relaxed.
She slept the way she had slept the first night in this cabin two nights ago. Deep. All the way down. The weather in her body had finally left the body and gone somewhere else, and she went down with it.
Jace stayed awake.
His hand stayed in her hair.
The fire went to embers. The wolf under his ribs went quiet the way the wolf went quiet only when the whole pack was accounted for and the mate was on his chest breathing the breath of a woman who was going to be on his chest for the rest of his life.
He wasn't thinking about Brock.
He wasn't thinking about Thornwood.
He wasn't thinking about the letter in his desk drawer or the parley Theo was setting up or the man who was going to walk across the southern marker inside the next three days and discover that he had made an expensive mistake.
Jace was thinking about her hand over his sternum.
He closed his eyes and didn't sleep.
He stayed.