Chapter 34
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
MAGNUS
"Fuck you, Magnus."
"That's not a no, Petronella."
I took the opening. My hands found her face. I kissed her the way the wolf had been demanding, which was not softly, and not carefully, and not with any of the restraint of the last ten minutes. I kissed her like a claim. Because that's what this was.
Her gasp arrived against my mouth; the sound of a woman whose body had answered before her mind could object. She was vanilla and heat and mine. She didn't say no as I walked her backward toward the bedroom.
"You're an asshole," she said as I reached beneath her shirt to unsnap her bra and found a sports bra. The bane of men's existence.
Lucky for me that I had claws. I let her feel them against her spine before the tip of my index finger against the band. "Tell me not to."
"You're a cheater."
Snap. My hand snagged under the loosened material and found her breasts.
"I will lie, cheat, steal, and start a war when it comes to you, Nell.
When I officially call my wedding off, I will lose allies.
There will be a target on my back. My family will be in danger.
The woman I love will be in danger. But there is no way in this world that I will not have you, unless you tell me no. "
Nell threw her head back, arching her chest into my hand. "I didn't ask for any of this."
Figure out what you cannot live without; that's what my father had said. I could not live without this woman.
She wanted me. That much was not in question.
I could read it in everything: her scent, her pulse, the way she had looked at me in the living room when I told her there would be no other woman.
Something had moved in her face in that moment, something she had not let herself show for long, but I had seen it.
She wanted me. What I did not know was whether she would choose me.
Those were different things. Nell could want me her whole life and still decide that the cost of my world was too high, that the pack politics and the Alpha obligations were more than she had signed up for.
If she didn't choose — if she walked away — the other packs would not let her walk far.
She knew too much. She had dismantled the Volki.
She was inside the Blackwood infrastructure in ways that made her a target the moment she stopped being under my protection.
I could not let her walk out into the world unguarded and unallied.
I wouldn't let her get more than a block away from me.
I just needed to give her the opportunity to say no first.
She didn't protest when I laid her down on the bed.
"Tell me to stop," I said.
"Fucking bastard."
"Nope. My parents were married before they had me." I reached for the hem of the shirt. Slowly. Giving her every second to move away from me. Not that I'd let her get further than the foot of the bed. "Tell me to stop."
"I don't want kids."
"Might be too late for that."
Her eyes went wide. "Fuck you."
I pulled the shirt over her head. Dark nipples pointed accusingly back at me. I filled my mouth with one of them, palming the other with wicked promises.
"I have a career," she whimpered as she arched into my mouth.
"I would never take that away from you." I licked the tip of her nipple while I snaked a hand up the short skirt she was wearing. "You're too fucking brilliant to keep out of the office. I'd build a daycare on the office floor. Or you could work from home."
"Gah," she said when I thrust two fingers inside her. They went in easily with how wet she was.
"Was that a no?"
"I fucking hate you."
"I'm fucking obsessed with you. Since the moment I lifted your limp body in that park, I have not stopped thinking about you. When you type, it makes me hard. When you tap a pen against your lower lip, I fucking nut in my pants. But if you tell me no, I'll stop."
She whimpered. I watched her throat. Watched her lips. She was trying to form words. The lie would not surface.
I pressed my mouth to the hollow of her throat. I was going to mark the fuck out of her when she accepted the bond, right where everyone could see and know that she was mine.
Every time she reached for me, I pulled back. I was edging her not to deny. To force her to admit it; that she was mine as much as I was hers.
She made her displeasure known. This was Nell. She was not passive in any room she occupied, including this one. The sounds she made when I redirected my attention had an edge of fury in them that was making me harder.
"Tell me to stop," I said, against the inside of her knee.
"I hate you," she said through clenched teeth.
I wrapped my tongue around her clit. She gasped.
I ran the smooth part of my canine against her labia, letting her feel a hint of the point. She cried out.
I brought her to the edge with my mouth. The tension gathered. I pulled back. Not far, just enough that her core was clenching without release as it tried to capture my tongue and bring it deeper inside her channel.
"Magnus!"
"Tell me to stop." I sucked her clit like it was the center of a Tootsie Pop.
"Fuuuuck"
I backed off before she could climax.
Then gave her more.
Then less.
Then more.
Nell was shaking by the time I moved up her body. My weight settled on her. Her legs wrapped around me with a grip that communicated her feelings about the pacing in precise physical terms.
I lined my cock up with her swollen entrance. Her chest moved fast. Her nails dug into my shoulders. The sharp points of them nearly made me give up the game.
"Tell me to stop," I said, one last time.
Her eyes were open. The hazel blown almost entirely dark. My mind was playing tricks on me, or I was seeing my wolf reflected back in her eyes, because there was a flash there. A spark of gold, like a cat flashing a warning.
I realized then that it didn't bother me that she was human. It didn't matter that she would never shift and run with me. This woman was my perfect match in every other way.
"Please."
That was all I needed from her. She reached up and pulled me down. I thrust inside her, deep, fully seating myself inside my queen.
We moved together with the ease of two people who had known each other's rhythm from the beginning of time. There was no urgency. No more pleas. No more demands. Just connection.
I brought her up slowly. Taking her higher than I had taken her before. Reading every signal. Every change in her breathing. Every shift of her hips.
I stopped holding back. She stopped pushing me away. The room held all of it; her voice, my name in it, climbing and breaking and open.
She arched off the bed. Her hands gripped my ass as I pushed even deeper. Her voice broke wide open. What came out of her was raw and unguarded and real. It was not stop or no or fuck you. It was a surrender, in only the way that Nell could offer it.
Her legs shook. Her core clenched. The contractions yanked my own climax from my balls, holding my dick in a chokehold. I would've begged for mercy, but I wanted more.
I held her through it. My face in her hair. My arms around her. The wolf finally, completely, profoundly sated.
After the knot settled down, I reluctantly withdrew from her. She was limp on the bed. Eyes closed. A half-smile on her lips. I pulled her back to my chest. She came willingly. All the fight had gone out of her.
I swiped the long locs of hair away from the nape of her neck and ran my lips from her shoulder blades, trying to decide exactly where I'd leave my mark. That's when I discovered the raised skin.
There was already a mark there.