Chapter Six
Alexis
Cole pushes me back on the couch, careful but single-minded, arms braced on either side of me so there’s nowhere for my attention to go except the impossible wideness of his chest, the ache in my lower belly, and the clockwork certainty in his gaze.
I let his mouth claim mine, warm and hungry, his tongue leading mine in a silky dance.
He breaks away just enough to speak, his voice hoarse with need: “Last chance, Alexis. Tell me no and I’ll stop.”
I mean, I could say no. I should say no, if I had a single working brain cell left, but my entire body has gone to mutiny and I manage only a whimper, and Cole reads it exactly right.
I’m barely still on this plane of existence, floating somewhere blurry and animal and much less anxious than my usual baseline.
He either likes that answer or has decided I’m not getting another chance, because suddenly his hands are everywhere—all at once and still impossibly careful.
My shirt was not designed for this kind of situation, but I cared less than nothing as he peeled it away, all but growling at the sight of skin.
His mouth mapped a trail down my throat, my collarbone, the soft of my shoulder.
A little nip, then a soothing lick, leaving a heat that burned long after his lips left the spot.
He makes a noise, low and appreciative, and hoists me up, rearranging me like I’m weightless, and I feel the sharpest thrill at being handled by someone who could, if he wanted, open me up like a bag of potato chips.
My jeans are next on his to-do list, and it’s an operation that involves a growl of frustration, both hands, and the loudest zipper sound effect known to man. I’m suddenly, spectacularly naked except for my black lace bra.
He kneels, making a tableau out of himself: giant hands braced on either side of my knees, looking at me with something like reverence and hunger in equal parts. “Tell me what you want,” he says, and my first thought is, God, what don’t I want?
But it comes out as, “I want you.”
He rewards that with his mouth on my inner thigh.
He trails kisses up, working his way torturously slow, then flicks his tongue along the edge of my underwear and I almost levitate off the couch.
That earns a low, rumbling laugh and it’s the most wicked, self-satisfied sound I’ve ever heard.
Then he’s peeling the lace down, and murmurs with sincerity that nearly undoes me.
“You’re amazing,” he rumbles, and his palm skims a reverent path up my bare thigh, igniting every dormant nerve ending from my toes to my skull.
I clutch at the side of the couch, suddenly aware that I’m trembling, and Cole notices, of course, because nothing sneaks past those wolf senses.
He ducks his head and kisses my knee, ridiculously tender, and then does it again, higher up this time, and again until he’s mapped a constellation from kneecap to upper thigh.
His breath is hot, his tongue hotter, and when he finally closes his mouth over me I let out a whimper of pure need.
My hips jerk up, shameless. Cole groans the sound of it into my skin, and the vibration drags a moan out of me so loud that I’d have been embarrassed if I had the bandwidth to care.
He’s relentless—alternating between slow, savoring licks and messy, needy ones that all but push me past any rational human threshold.
He uses his hands to steady my thighs, spreading me wider, and I’m so far gone that I want to thank him for keeping me from floating off into the stratosphere.
Every muscle in me is tight, every thought a stutter, and when he looks up, his pupils are blown black.
He grins, cocky. In one graceful motion he slides off the couch and stands, towering, and pulls his own shirt off. Then his jeans.
The moment his pants drop, I learn two things: my assumptions about shifters being more-than-average in certain departments are correct, and I am in real, actual trouble.
Good trouble.
I want to memorize every detail, but my brain won’t cooperate; it’s all sensation, all overload, all stimulus turned up so high the only thing left to do is ride the wave. Cole’s hands find my waist, his grip so tight it makes my blood thrum.
He hesitates just long enough to lock eyes with me. There’s a question there, even now, but I’m past words. So I just reach down and guide him to me, shameless, greedy. He sinks into me with a noise that’s eight parts feral, one part relief. I’m too tight at first, painfully aware.
He pushes in, slow enough to burn, and I go tight around him, my whole body shuddering in resistance and then giving in with a pulse.
I’m shocked by the stretch, wild by how perfectly he fills me, how every cell in me is both clutching and melting at once.
He stops, breathing ragged, and his forehead drops to mine, a sweaty, desperate collision that says hold on, hold on, hold on.
“Breathe,” he rasps, and when I gasp, the sound is half-pain, half-starvation.
He waits—it takes a second, two, forever—my body remembering how to open, to trust, to want.
He grazes his thumb over my cheek, so soft it’s absurd, then licks a tear away that I didn’t even know was there.
I want to apologize, laugh it off, but he kisses my lips, swallowing any joke I’d make and every sound that escapes me.
His hips rock and suddenly I’m moving with him: involuntary, out of sync and then perfectly matched. I’m losing my mind. Nothing in my life has ever felt this urgent, this necessary.
He keeps his forehead pressed to mine, every breath a furnace against my mouth. “You okay?” he says, and it’s so at odds with the way he’s wrecking me that I want to claw at his back and never let him go.
I can’t talk, so I nod, and when he picks up the pace the world narrows down to where we’re joined, the friction, the heat, and the fact that this man is straight-up worshiping every inch of me.
I expect him to go to the edge and stop there, but instead—he leans down and kisses me, slow, like he wants to memorize what my mouth feels like right before I come undone.
I’m shivering and it’s more than sensation, it’s some kind of tectonic shift in who I am.
Cole’s hands are everywhere, mapping me, guiding me, and the rumble in his chest is a warning and a prayer all at once.
I peel my nails down his back (partial apology, partial challenge) and he lets out a ragged sound that’s not even fully human.
He shifts, just a fraction, and something inside me lights up like an arc reactor—the angle, the pressure, the way he says my name (fuck, nobody’s ever said it like that, like he could use it to roll back the stars).
I clench around him once, twice, and then it’s not just a build, but a blinding, tidal rush.
I come so hard my vision whites out and my body locks, and Cole has to keep me anchored to the planet with his arms.
He holds, rides it out with me, keeps thrusting through the aftershocks, and then it’s his turn.
He bites down—not enough to break skin, just enough that it’s a promise and a brand and a warning—and the sound he makes is closer to a howl than anything human.
He shoves deep, holds there, and I feel him shatter, hips stuttering, arms shaking.
For a second, the only thing holding us together is sweat and instinct and the feral gravity he brings to everything.
He buries his face in my shoulder, and I just float, weightless, staring at the ceiling and trying to remember how to operate my limbs.
There’s a part of me that wants to panic, that wants to overthink exactly what I just did, but the rest of me is still unspooling, gloriously numb, and I decide, for once, to let myself just have this.