Chapter 25 Cassidy #2
His mouth drops lower, and when his lips close over my nipple, the sensation arcs through me sharp and bright.
He works slowly, tongue, then teeth so gentle they barely qualify, and my hips move against him involuntarily, a silent need for release as my clit swells and warm arousal pools between my legs.
He gives the same attention to my other breast while his hands spread warm and broad across my ribs, and the careful, deliberate thoroughness of it winds the coil in my belly tighter with every passing second.
"Alden." His name comes out softer than I intend.
He makes a low sound against my skin that means he heard me and is choosing his own pace regardless.
His mouth moves down my sternum, over my stomach, pressing open-mouthed kisses along the line of my navel.
His hands drop to the waistband of my pants—the button, the zipper—and he eases them down as his mouth follows the newly exposed skin along my hip bones, kissing each one like he doesn’t want either to feel left out.
By the time he pulls the last of my clothing away, I'm past pretending to be composed about any of this.
He grips the backs of my thighs and draws me toward him, and when his mouth finally finds the center of me, the sound I make has no relationship to dignity, and my chest heaves.
His tongue moves through my folds with slow, precise intention, tasting me, and when it circles my clit—slow, exactly calibrated, giving me no room to anticipate the rhythm.
The pleasure builds is the kind that has nowhere to go except up. I throw my arm across my eyes and breathe through it, my hips chasing his mouth in a way I'm not entirely in control of, and when he doesn't stop, doesn't rush, just maintains that steady devastating focus—
The climax breaks through me in a long, shuddering wave that pulls a cry from my throat and leaves my thighs shaking and my lungs empty.
I lie there for a moment in the aftermath, arm still across my eyes, piecing myself back together one breath at a time.
The mattress shifts as Alden moves up over me, and I hear the soft sounds of him removing the rest of his clothing.
I drop my arm and look at him—his expression is intent and warm, the silver fully present in his eyes, and when he grips himself and strokes the slick tip of his cock against my entrance, the sensation of it even there makes me arch.
"Look at me," he says quietly.
I do.
“You are mine,” he says in a husky voice.
I nod. “Yes…” my voice a breathy gasp.
He slides inside in one long, slow stroke, and my toes curl hard as he fills me—the stretch of him, the fullness, the way he presses into territory that makes my inner walls pull tight around him in immediate welcome.
The sound he makes is low and rough and deeply satisfied, and I feel it against my collarbone where his mouth has found my skin again.
He sets a pace that is nothing like the first time—deep and unhurried, each thrust drawing almost fully out before returning, his hips rolling forward with a patient, searching pressure that hits somewhere inside me making coherent thought genuinely difficult.
His hands grip my hips with warm, firm certainty, steadying me against his rhythm, and when he drops his head to press his mouth against my neck his breathing is ragged and rough against my skin.
I cling to his shoulders, nails digging into his back as his thrust raise the pleasing pressure tingling and shaking my legs.
"Cassidy." My name in his voice, low and fraying between ragged breaths.
I slide my hands up his back and hold on.
The pleasure builds differently this time, layered, accumulating, winding upward in a spiral that I feel in my knees and my jaw and the backs of my eyes.
His pace deepens slightly, the need in it unmistakable now, his control giving way to something more urgent, and I feel the moment his breath changes — shorter, rougher — and match it with my own.
When it crests, it takes both of us at once. He shudders and pulls me hard against his hips, and the deep sounds he makes against my throat as he releases are the most unguarded thing I've heard from him, raw and uncontrolled and entirely unperformed.
My own climax moves through me in slow, rolling waves, and I hold him through all of it, fingers pressed into his back, feeling every aftershock move through him.
Silence settles over the room gradually, replacing urgency with warmth.
His weight shifts to the side but doesn't leave entirely, one arm drawing me against his chest, and for a long moment neither of us says anything. The Blood Moon light through the curtain edges deepens to a darker red. Somewhere outside, very distantly, a wolf calls and another answers.
"He's going to invoke the duel," I say finally.
Alden's hand, which has been moving in slow, absent strokes along my spine, pauses once and then continues. "Yes."
"Can you take him?"
"Yes."
The confidence in it is so complete it's not even arrogant.
I tilt my head up to look at him. "You've fought him before?"
"Training bouts, years ago. He was formidable." He meets my eyes. "He's older now, and angry. Angry wolves make mistakes."
"And if he pulls something before the duel?" I ask. "The interference clause—"
"Brynn recorded the shift against you in the clearing," he says. "That's one strike already documented under ritual law."
"But not disqualifying on its own."
"No." He exhales slowly. "Not on its own."
I sit up slightly, pulling the sheet with me. "So, we need the cabin evidence before the duel." I look at Alden. "Ciaran is already moving, but if we have physical evidence in front of Brynn before Gideon can reframe the narrative—"
"Then the trial becomes a formality rather than a lifeline." He nods, storm-gray eyes focused now, the Alpha thinking behind them again. "Ciaran has people at the cabin tonight. If the evidence is intact—"
"It will be," I say. "Kieran wasn't expecting anyone to know where it was."
Alden looks at me long and hard. "You mapped the terrain when you ran out."
"Force of habit." I settle back against his shoulder. "I always know where I am."
He makes a sound that is almost a laugh. His arm tightens once around my shoulders, brief and certain, and then the room goes quiet again—both of us thinking through the same problem from different angles, which is, I've come to understand, what strategic partners do.
Outside, the Blood Moon holds its position in the sky, red and patient and entirely indifferent to our timeline.