Chapter Fifteen #2
She threw herself into all of it with the fierce concentration of a woman building a wall inside her own mind.
During the day, when her hands were busy and her thoughts were occupied, she was almost herself.
Sharp, quick, asking questions that surprised the crew with their insight.
The omega who'd won at cards and earned her place.
But at night, the wall came down.
On the third night, he tried the only thing left.
It wasn't a decision he made with his captain's mind.
It was a decision his wolf made for both of them, somewhere in the hour between midnight and dawn, when Jeanne lay beside him on the main deck staring at the wrong-colored sky and he could smell the pull working on her.
Her scent had changed over the past three days.
The honeysuckle was still there, the vanilla and the sea salt, but underneath it was something new.
A thinness, like a candle flame guttering in a draft.
The curse was wearing her down from the inside, and every hour she fought it cost her something she couldn't get back.
"Come below with me," he said.
She looked at him. Her eyes were shadowed, bruised from nights of interrupted sleep and days of fighting an enemy that lived inside her own chest. "The cabin?"
"The cabin. Just us. I'll lock the door."
She didn't ask why. She already knew. Three days of guards and distraction and sleeping on the open deck, and the pull was still winning.
They'd tried everything rational. What was left was the thing that had always worked between them, the connection that existed outside strategy and outside the curse's reach.
He locked the cabin door behind them. Checked the windows, the porthole, every point of entry that might allow the hum to penetrate louder than it already did through the floorboards. Then he turned to her.
She was standing in the center of the room, her arms wrapped around herself, and the hum was vibrating through the soles of her bare feet. He could see it in the way she swayed, the slight lean toward the door, the constant gravitational pull that never stopped.
"Look at me," he said. "Not at the floor. Not toward the corridor. At me."
Her eyes found his.
"What do you see?" he asked.
"You. Anatole. My mate who's running out of ideas."
"Then let me try the one I have left." He crossed the space between them and kissed her.
Not gentle. This was a man kissing a woman he was terrified of losing, and the fear made it rough, urgent, his mouth claiming hers with a desperation he didn't try to disguise.
His hands fisted in her hair, tilting her head back, and he kissed her the way a drowning man breathed air, like she was the only thing keeping him alive.
She made a sound against his mouth. Not a whimper, not the heat-driven moan he'd learned during those three burning days. A different sound. Relief. Like she'd been waiting for him to stop being careful and just hold on.
"Don't think about the door," he said against her lips. "Just feel me. Stay here with me."
"I'm here." Her hands were pulling at his shirt, yanking it over his head, her fingers spreading across his chest like she needed to confirm he was solid. "I'm here, Anatole."
He stripped her clothes off with none of the patience he'd shown before.
Buttons scattered. Fabric tore. He didn't care.
He needed her skin against his, needed the scent of them together to fill the room until there was no space left for the curse to occupy.
When she was bare, he lifted her, and her legs wrapped around his waist, and her scent bloomed, honeysuckle deepening as her body responded.
Slick wet his stomach where she pressed against him.
He carried her to the bed, laid her down, and covered her with his body.
All of him. His full weight, his arms braced on either side of her head, his chest against hers so she could feel his heartbeat.
He wanted to be everywhere at once, wanted to fill her senses so completely that the door's song couldn't find a gap to slip through.
"Your scent." She was breathing him in, her nose pressed to his throat, her whole body arching up against his. "I need more of it. When I can smell you, the pull gets quieter. Like your scent drowns it out."
He rubbed his beard against her neck, her collarbone, the swell of her breasts.
Scenting her the way wolves scented their mates, marking her with the pine-and-salt signature that told every nose on this ship she was claimed.
She gasped as the coarse hair of his beard dragged over her nipples, and her hips rolled up against his, seeking friction.
"More," she breathed. "Keep going."
He kissed down her body. Her throat, where her pulse fluttered fast beneath thin skin.
The hollow between her collarbones, where the scar from her childhood fall was a silver line against flushed skin.
The curve of each breast, taking her nipples into his mouth one at a time, sucking until she cried out and her fingers twisted in his hair.
"Stay with me," he said against her ribs. "Keep your eyes on me, Jeanne."
"I'm looking. I see you." Her voice was ragged. "Don't stop."
He kissed down her stomach, felt the muscles tense beneath his lips. Kissed the jut of her hip bones, the soft skin of her inner thighs, and when he spread her open with his thumbs and put his mouth on her, the sound she made erased every other sound on the ship.
She tasted like honey and salt, like her scent distilled to its purest form.
He licked into her, tongue flat and slow, and her thighs clamped around his head as her hips bucked.
He pinned them down with one forearm across her lower belly and kept going, lapping at her clit, then lower, gathering the slick that was flowing freely now and spreading it with his tongue until she was shaking.
"Anatole." His name came out broken. "Please. I need you inside me. I need to feel you."
"Not yet." He slid two fingers inside her while his mouth worked her clit, and she arched off the bed, a sound tearing from her that was half-scream, half-sob. Her inner walls clamped around his fingers, slick and hot, and he curled them upward, pressing against the spot that made her vision blur.
"I can't. I'm going to..."
"Then let go. Come on my fingers and my mouth and then I'll give you the rest."
She came with his name on her lips, her body convulsing, her walls pulsing around his fingers in rhythmic waves. He worked her through it, gentling his touch as the aftershocks rippled through her, and when she finally went limp, he kissed her inner thigh and moved up her body.
Her eyes were clear. Focused on him. Not glazed, not distant, not pulled toward anything except the man above her. It was working.
"More," she whispered, reaching for him. "I need all of you. Fill me up until there's no room for anything else."
He pushed inside her in one long stroke, and they both stopped breathing.
The wet heat of her body gripped him, slick and swollen from her orgasm, and the sensation was so intense his arms shook.
He buried himself to the hilt and stayed there, forehead pressed to hers, fighting the urge to move before she was ready.
She was tight around him, her inner walls still fluttering with aftershocks, and each flutter sent sparks racing up his spine.
"Move," she said. "Anatole, please move."
He moved. Long, deep strokes that he could feel in his entire body, each thrust designed to reach as deep as he could go, to fill her so completely that there was no space left for the curse to inhabit.
Her legs came up around his waist, heels digging into his lower back, pulling him deeper, and the angle changed in a way that made her gasp.
"There," she breathed. "Right there. Don't stop."
He didn't stop. He fucked her like the curse was a tide and his body was a seawall, like every thrust was a declaration that she was his and he was hers and no dead witch's magic was going to take that away.
The bed groaned beneath them. The cabin filled with the obscene, wet sounds of their joining and the mingled scent of alpha and omega, pine and honeysuckle so thick in the air that breathing was like swallowing each other.
"Talk to me," she gasped between thrusts. "Keep talking. Your voice helps."
"You're mine." The words came from somewhere deeper than thought.
"You're mine and I'm yours and this is real.
This isn't biology, this isn't the curse, this is us.
You chose me on the deck of this ship in front of my pack and I'm choosing you right now, in this bed, with my cock inside you and my wolf howling your name. "
"Yes." She was crying. Not from pain, not from sorrow. From the intensity of being so full of him that the door's song was nothing but static. "Keep going. Don't let me go."
"Never." He shifted his weight to one arm and slid his hand between them, his thumb finding her clit, circling it in time with his thrusts. "Come again. Come on my cock this time. Let me feel you fall apart while I'm inside you."
She came harder the second time. Her back bowed, her nails raked furrows down his shoulders, and the clench of her body around his cock was so intense that his knot swelled in response, catching on her rim with every thrust. He could feel the bond hovering at the edge of his awareness, the place where the mating bite would seal them permanently, and his wolf lunged for it with the same single-minded fury it had every time.
He turned his head. Buried his face against her shoulder. Not her throat. Not the mating gland. Her shoulder, where his teeth could sink into muscle without triggering the bond that might feed the curse.
"Bite me there," she said. "I know you need to bite. Do it there. I can take it."