Chapter 17 Cassidy #2
I bounce once against the dark linens, and then he's gripping the hem of his shirt and pulling it over his head, and I forget to have thoughts about it.
The broad lines of his shoulders, the scar that cuts across his ribs, the controlled power in every line of him.
I'm staring and I don't bother pretending otherwise.
He reaches for my shirt, and I lift my arms and let him take it.
His gaze moves over me with an intensity that raises goosebumps across my skin, and then he lowers himself over me and his mouth finds mine again.
This kiss is slower but no less consuming, thorough and chases away all coherent thought.
His hands move over me with the same deliberate attention—tracing my waist, the curve of my sides, learning the shape of my hips and backside with rough-palmed focus that makes me arch into him.
His hands slide up my sides and cup my breasts, thumbs tracing my nipples until they are taught peaks.
Heat pools between my legs, and I roll my hips against Alden, feeling the impressive firmness and length of his erection.
I drag my fingers down his back, feeling the shift of muscle beneath skin.
He's responsive in a way I didn't expect, breath catching when I press into old tension, a low sound escaping when my nails graze lightly downward.
I reach between us and feel the hard length of him straining against his pants, and his hips roll forward instinctively at the contact, his exhale rough against my cheek.
Clothing comes off in pieces, without ceremony. His hands are efficient and mine are less so, distracted by the texture of him, the warmth, the way he reacts when I touch certain places. By the time we're down to nothing, I'm flushed all the way to my chest and breathing like I've been running.
Alden looks at me for one long second. The silver in his eyes is nearly total now, the wolf riding close to the surface, and the restraint in that look is the most deliberate thing about him.
“You are the most amazing creature I have ever laid eyes on,” Alden declares in a ragged voice.
Then he takes both my wrists in one hand and pins them above my head.
My pulse spikes hard. He holds them there easily, one-handed, the grip firm enough that I feel the boundary without any real force behind it.
His free hand hooks under my knee and draws my leg around his hip, opening me to him, and the intent in his expression sends heat flooding low and urgent through my whole body. My insides ache to feel him.
He drives into me in one deep, forceful thrust that bows my spine off the mattress.
A moan tears from my throat as he fills me.
He swallows it with his mouth, setting a pace that leaves no room for anything else—hips snapping forward, each movement deliberate and hard and precisely calibrated to take me apart.
The grip on my wrists keeps me anchored as my whole body rocks with the force of it, and the wooden bedframe groans.
I can't touch him. I can't do anything but feel, the stretch and the friction and the deep, gathering pressure building with every stroke.
The mark burns warm at my throat, as hot as my insides as they cinch around his invading cock.
It syncs with the rhythm between us, feeding sensation back in tight, amplifying loops, until I can't distinguish where one ends and the other begins.
Alden's control erodes—I feel it in the slight raggedness of his breath, in the way his grip tightens, in the low sounds he makes against my neck that are more wolf than man.
He drives deeper, harder, chasing something that I'm chasing too.
The pressure in my center builds, water against a damn that cannot contain it, as he continues to thrust into me. My pleasure crests in a white-hot wave.
The mark flares at the exact moment the damn breaks within me, the two forces hitting simultaneously in a full-body rush that pulls a cry from somewhere deep in my chest. Alden follows immediately—a guttural groan that breaks against my shoulder, his hips grinding forward and holding, the tension releasing through both of us in long, shuddering pulses.
Then silence.
Heavy and warm, punctuated only by ragged breathing. His weight settles over me, and I don't move to shift it. The mark at my throat hums low and satisfied, and the bond between us settles like something finally put to rest.
His fingers trace a slow line up my spine, absent and unhurried, and for a few minutes neither of us speaks. The lamp throws amber light across the ceiling. Outside, the forest is quiet.
Then he says, "The council will convene soon."
I close my eyes briefly. "How bad?"
"Having a human as a mate is not illegal, but it complicates things for pack leadership." His voice is level, but I feel the tension enter his chest beneath my palm. "Gideon will push for a formal challenge. Some elders will support him."
I push up onto one elbow to look at him. In the low light, the scar through his brow stands stark, his storm-gray eyes already distant and calculating. The Alpha, reassembling himself. "So, they'll try to remove you."
"They'll try," he says, which is not the same as they'll succeed, and the distinction is deliberate. His gaze cuts to mine. "Until this is resolved, I need you somewhere defensible. The east wing has-"
"No." I sit up fully, pulling the sheet around me. "I'm not disappearing into your east wing while you manage the fallout alone."
His jaw tightens. "Cassidy…"
"I have patrol data, attack patterns, and three weeks of behavioral analysis that your council hasn't seen yet." Our eyes remain steadily on each other. "Hiding me doesn't protect you. It just removes your strongest argument that I'm an asset instead of a liability."
He's quiet for a beat, watching me with an expression I'm starting to recognize—the one where he's recalculating. His thumb moves once across the back of my hand, slow and absent, like he doesn't notice he's doing it.
"If you're visible, you're a target," he says.
"I'm already a target." I turn my hand over beneath his. "The difference is whether I'm a target standing next to you or one you've left exposed on her own."
Something in his expression concedes the point, though he looks displeased about it. He exhales slowly through his nose, gaze dropping to our joined hands for a moment before coming back up. "Strategic partners," he says. The words carry weight, like he's testing how they fit.
"Strategic partners," I confirm. "You don't make decisions for me. I don't go rogue on you. We move together."
The corner of his mouth shifts. Not quite a smile, but close enough. "Agreed."
Outside, a wolf calls across the ridge, low and distant, and the night settles back into silence around us.