Chapter 22 #2
Ryker gasped. His hand on her hip tightened, as his eyes went wide, gold flooding them. And for the first time, she could feel him through the bond. This was nothing like before. His wolf was awake and there at the edges of her consciousness impatiently waiting for her.
She smiled. It’s different when you’re awake, isn’t it?
He yipped, shaking his snout and jumping up from his front feet.
There were no words to be exchanged, but she knew exactly what he meant.
He felt what she felt. Warm. Sure. Full of a wanting so intense it stole her breath.
Ryker’s heart beat steady and strong through the bond, not to mention his relief, and the terror that this was all a dream and he'd wake up alone.
Real, she pushed through the connection. This is real. I'm here.
His forehead dropped to her stomach and a sound came out of him that she'd never heard before, rough and broken and grateful.
He wrapped his arms around her waist and he held on like she was the only thing keeping him upright.
She cradled his head against her, her scarred palm against the back of his neck, and let the bond settle between them in steady pulses that matched the rhythm of his breathing.
"Mine," she said, the word coming out fierce and certain. She meant it with every cell in her body. "I chose you, Ryker. Forever. Please don't make me regret it."
He pulled back to look at her. His eyes were wet and gold-rimmed and the expression on his face was so open, so stripped of every defense he'd ever built, that her throat constricted.
"Yours," he said. "I'm yours. And I'll spend the rest of my life proving it."
She kissed him. The first press of her mouth against his gentle, almost careful, like they were both testing whether this new version of them could hold.
His hand came up to cup her jaw, his thumb tracing her cheekbone, and she could feel his restraint through the bond, the way he was letting her set the pace even though his whole body was vibrating with the effort.
She didn't want careful. Not after months of careful distance and one devastating night of desperate surrender. This was so different. She wanted the man who'd sat on her floor and told her the truth.
She deepened the kiss, savoring him until she felt the moment his restraint broke.
His hand slid from her jaw into her hair and he pulled her closer, his mouth opening against hers, and the connection sang between them, amplifying every touch until his need layered over her own.
His desire hit her through the bond like a second heartbeat, and the doubled intensity made her gasp against his mouth.
"I can feel you too," he breathed. "Through the bond. I can feel everything that you're feeling."
"Good." She pulled back enough to strip her sweater over her head and studied his face as the fabric cleared.
She wore bra underneath. She'd been in her room for the night when he'd shown up, and hadn't bothered with it when she’d gone after him.
His gaze dropped to her bare breasts, his jaw clenching as the surge of his arousal wrapped around her like a hot wind.
"Take this off." She tugged at his shirt and he pulled it over his head in one motion, leaving them skin to skin, his muscled chest against her breasts, the heat of him scorching.
Desperate to touch everything, she ran her hands over the ridges of his stomach, the scar across his ribs, the trail of darker hair below his navel.
She straddled his lap and felt him hard beneath her, thick and straining against his jeans, It was enough to drive her mad as she ground down against him and watched his head fall back and his eyes close.
The bond carried the spike of his pleasure into her, sharp and electric, the feedback loop making her roll her hips again just to feel it twice as much.
"You're going to kill me." His voice came out guttural, his hands gripping her hips, fingers digging in hard enough to bruise. "You know that, right?"
"I think you'll survive." She rocked against him again and his breath punched out of him.
Even without the bond she could see how close to the edge he already was.
The knowledge that she could break him open with just the press of her body made her feel powerful in a way that had nothing to do with magic or fate or anything besides the two of them together again. Finally.
His mouth found her breast, drawing her nipple between his lips and sucked. In return, she grabbed the back of his head and held him there while her hips kept moving back and forth along the length of his erection.
Goddess he was good at this.
His tongue circled the hard peak, his teeth scraped, and the bond turned every sensation into an echo that bounced between them until she couldn't tell whose pleasure she was feeling. He switched to the other breast and she whimpered, a sound she'd never heard herself make.
"I want to taste you." He pulled back to look at her, gold still bleeding through his irises. "Let me. Please."
The please undid her. Ryker didn't beg. He was blunt and commanding and used his words like weapons.
But hearing him say please with his mouth wet from her skin and his eyes gone gold with wanting made her eager to comply as she climbed off his lap and lie back on the bed so fast he laughed, low and rough and surprised.
He followed her down, kissing a path from her throat to her stomach, while his fingers hooked into the waistband of her leggings.
He peeled them off at a pace that made her want to grab his hair and force him to go faster, as he pressed his mouth to each inch of skin he revealed.
The inside of her knee. The soft skin of her inner thigh.
When he settled between her legs and shoved her panties aside with one finger instead of pulling them off, she nearly went mad.
Then his hot breath hit her center and it was all over, turning her into a writhing mass of want and need.
"Look at you." He pressed a kiss to the crease of her thigh, close enough that she could still feel the heat of his mouth but not exactly where she needed it. "Soaking through your panties for me. Can you feel how much I want to taste this?"
She could. His hunger had hit her like a wild summer storm, all dark and consuming, as she grabbed a fistful of his hair and tried pulling him where she wanted him.
He groaned against her and the vibration made her back arch.
His tongue dragged through her folds in one long stroke.
The extra pleasure through the bond amplified it until her fingers twisted in the sheets and a sound came out of her mouth that was so indecent she was almost embarrassed.
He settled into a rhythm with his tongue while pressing two fingers inside her, but it was when he curled them against that special spot that made her vision blur, and a loud moan filled the room.
"Right there," she managed. "Don't you dare stop."
He didn't stop. He worked her with his mouth and his hands until her thighs were shaking around his head and the pleasure building at the base of her spine had nowhere left to go.
She came with a cry that she'd be embarrassed about later, her body clenching around his fingers as her orgasm crashed through both of them making him groan against her like feeling her come was its own kind of release.
He nipped at her inner thigh, then stripped her underwear off and tossed it.
She was still trembling when he crawled up her body.
She pulled him down and kissed him, tasting herself on his mouth, then reached between them to unfasten his jeans.
He kicked them off with his briefs, and when she wrapped her hand around his cock he hissed through his teeth.
“Fuck,” he groaned.
“Exactly.”
He was thick and hard and hot in her palm, each stroke registering twice.
She ran her thumb over the head, his hips jerked, and a rough sound tore from his throat.
She could feel the base of him, thicker than the rest, the rumored wolf anatomy that she'd confirmed their first time together.
She tightened her fingers around the swell of it and he cursed, grabbing her wrist.
"You keep doing that and this is going to be over before I get inside you."
"Then get inside me." She laughed.
He settled between her thighs and she felt the blunt press of him at her entrance, hot and thick.
She sensed his restraint fraying, and the wolf in him snarling to take, to claim, to bury himself inside her and not stop until she was marked and knotted and his.
The images projected from his thoughts began to drive her wild, making it impossible for her to be still.
The fact that he managed to hold himself back, that he waited with his jaw clenched and his arms trembling until she tilted her hips and took him in, made her chest ache.
He pushed inside in one slow thrust and they both stopped breathing.
The bond carried it between them, his feeling of tight wet heat and her feeling of being stretched and filled, and the doubled intensity wiped out everything else.
He was even thicker than she remembered, enough that the fit made her gasp, and the pressure at the base where the knot would swell later sent a pulse of anticipation through her that their connection echoed back to him.
"Fuck." The word came out wrecked. "This is almost too much. Feeling what you feel. Every time I—" He pulled back and drove deep and they both groaned. "It’s fucking incredible."
"Then stop holding back and take what you truly need." The instant the words were out of her mouth, his eyes went molten gold and his control snapped.