Chapter 12
Chapter Twelve
GRüSH
There’s a lot still to say. Promises I should have made a long time ago. Plans to make.
Unspoken words swirl in her hazel eyes, too, but when she slides her palms up my chest, gathering my t-shirt as she goes, all that matters is getting her naked. Tasting her. Burying my cock deep inside her.
I raise my arms and help her peel off my t-shirt.
Her top is next. Her bra. Shoes get kicked off as our mouths meet, lips crashing together, tongues greedily plundering.
Hungry kisses. Impatient kisses. A flurry of hands, hers and mine, unzip and tug at pants. If I could rip both pairs off, I would.
“Bedroom,” she says against my mouth when the last item of clothing is gone.
Scooping her into my arms breaks the kiss, but having her arms around my neck and her lips pressing kisses to my chest as I carry her to the bedroom are worthy temporary replacements.
Like the living room and kitchen, this room looks exactly as it did the last time I was in her apartment.
Warm, light neutrals. Cozy textures. Vintage furnishings.
Plants filling every inch of the low window ledge that runs the width of the room, and many more hanging from the ceiling at varying heights.
The same pale-green chenille bedspread that she once told me she would use until the last day—be it hers or the blanket’s—because she’d inherited it from her grandmother, someone she’d been very close to, covers the bed. And on the bedside table, a short jar of small, familiar stones.
We accumulated those together. Never intentionally looking. Just collecting them as they caught our eye from our rock, our hillside. Our place.
She claims to have become emotionally closed-off, but everything here shows how deeply she cares about the past. About preserving important memories.
Her relationship and commitment to Hope and the baby prove her deep connection to the present and future.
Whatever walls she’s erected to protect her heart haven’t affected how much love it still holds.
I lay her on the soft green blanket, part her legs, and settle at the bottom of the bed.
Already at a full stand, my cock leaks precum at the sight of her glistening pussy.
I draw a deep breath, groaning at the delicious scent of her arousal.
“I’m going to devour your cunt, then I’m going to mount and rut you so thoroughly, you never doubt the truths and depth of our mate bond again. ”
Her soft “mmm” as I drag my tusks up the inside of her leg is music to my ears. The first note of many she’ll make.
I draw her legs over my shoulders, looking up her beautiful body and meeting her eyes as I cup her hips and tilt them toward my waiting, watering mouth. “Pull me in. Squeeze me with your silky thighs. Smother me with your sweet cunt.”
Her back arches the instant my tongue slides through her wetness.
Then her hands grip my ears and she does exactly what I told her—she pulls my face tight to her hot cunt.
“Grüsh,” she moans as I latch onto her clit and suckle.
“God, Grüsh…” She comes instantly, her hips bucking wildly against my face.
“That was too fast,” I say, shifting her onto her hands and knees. “But it won’t be the last.” Kneeling behind her, I slide two fingers inside her, then reach around to massage her clit.
Her head falls forward, her body rocking against my fingers. “More.”
I don’t have to ask what more she wants. I haven’t forgotten what she likes. It’s all I know. All I want to know.
A throaty moan fills the air as I add a third finger.
And when I tuck my thumb in and slide my hand into her cunt while rubbing her clit hard and fast, she comes again, collapsing onto her chest, her gorgeous peach ass raised.
She whimpers at the loss of my fingers, humming and pulling her bottom lip between her teeth when I position my cock at her glistening, gaping cunt and push inside.
“Take all of me.”
“Give me all of you,” she pants as I enter her. “I want your rut, all of it.”
Watching my cock disappear inside her from this angle was always a trigger for me. It still is. Without the old denial, the rutting urge bellows inside me.
Claim. Cherish. Submit.
The words roll through my head as her cunt swallows the last inch of my cock, clenching and triggering my rut.
Claim. Cherish. Submit.
Not just mating words. Our mating words.
Gripping her soft hips, I thrust deeper, roaring as the rut takes hold. I fold myself over her, rolling her clit between my fingers. Biting her shoulder. My balls slapping her flesh as I mount her hard and fast.
“My mate,” I growl, erupting deep in her cunt.
She cries out, panting and moaning, her hips jerking against me, her cunt squeezing me, milking me, until there’s nothing left.
I roll to my back, tucking her alongside me, her leg covering mine, her head resting on my chest. “Was it too much?”
Her silky hair tickles my skin as she shakes her head. “No, it was perfect.”
“We are perfect together.” Lying together, arms and legs entwined, bathed in sunlight and the scent of our mating, knowing this is the beginning of the rest of our story, brings notes to my mind.
“What song is that?” Cate says, sliding her palm from my chest to the base of my throat, where the vibrations are strongest.
“Don’t know yet. Something new. I’ll have to flesh it out in the studio.”
Her body tenses and her fingers curl into a ball on my sternum. “About that. We should talk.”
Now it is my muscles that stiffen. “You are the only woman I have been with, but I have seen enough of the world to know ‘we should talk’ is rarely a good thing.”
Lifting her head, she settles her chin on my chest and looks up to meet my eyes. “In all the years you were away, there was no one else, not even casually?”
“Only you. That is how it is when a troll finds their true mate. Our body responds only to them.”
“Did you ever…try?”
“Never,” I say, stroking her soft, flaxen hair. “I have only ever wanted you.”
The fist on my chest opens and she cups my cheek, her thumb caressing the nearest tusk.
“And I’ve only ever wanted you. There hasn’t been anyone else.
If you hadn’t come back, there never would have been.
I guess I’ve been holding a torch for you, even when it sometimes felt more like an angry-mob torch. ”
Laughter rumbling in my chest, I press my lips to her crown and breathe her in, her scent filling me with peace and simultaneously making my cock hard again, despite having rutted with her mere minutes ago.
Another thing that hasn’t changed. The urge to bury myself inside her cunt again will keep for later.
Holding her close is what I need right now. What we both need.
“I had no right to be angry at you when I’m the one who broke us,” she says, tracing the tattoos on my forearm with her fingertips.
“I did it to survive the grief of losing everything all at once. Framing it in my mind as if you were the one who left me allowed me to feel angry, which was easier. It wasn’t fair, I know. ”
“The fault isn’t entirely yours. I knew something was wrong before you decided not to go to Los Angeles with me.
At the time, I thought the sensation tugging at my insides like an undertow must be guilt for asking you to uproot your life to accommodate pursuing my dream.
Then you told me you’d changed your mind about leaving.
I thought that explained the feeling I’d had.
I’d never pressure you, and I believed lingering in town would’ve been a form of pressure.
It felt wrong to leave, but I did, assuming we would be together soon, somewhere, somehow. ”
She shifts in my arms and looks up at me with sad eyes. “I’m sorry I hurt you.”
The question of what might have happened if I’d come back sooner sits on the tip of my tongue. Any answer would be a guess, and asking wouldn’t change the past. Only cause pain in the present. “We have the rest of our lives together. No more holding back, secrets, or assumptions to get in the way.”
“Just logistics. But I’m okay sharing you with the world. Knowing you’ll come home to me when your schedule permits is enough,” she says, using my chest to push herself up, then straddle my hips.
The things I want to say dissolve as slides her wet cunt along my rigid cock. “You’re not too sore?” I say when she rises and reaches between us to position my leaking tip at her entrance.
Sunlight streaming through the windows makes her hair shimmer like waves of gold as she shakes her head. “My body got its memory back, and it remembers always wanting more.”
“Perfect timing,” I say, gripping her hips and kneading the warm flesh as I guide her down. “Because I plan to give you everything, my mate.”