19 Reed #2
Her free hand slid down the flat curve of her belly, slipping past the waistband of her drenched panties. Her slender fingers pushed through the soaked cotton, parting her own swollen lips right before my eyes.
The sound of her fingers sliding through her filled the quiet room, an agonizing torture that made my hips jerk off the mattress.
“Like this?” she gasped, her middle finger circling her dripping clit while her index finger slid deep inside her tight channel. “You’re going to hear how wet I am for you, Reed? Look at my hand. It’s soaking. My pussy has been dripping for you since the moment I saw you.”
“Fuck,” I roared under my breath, my knuckles turning white as I pumped harder, matching the frantic rhythm of her fingers inside herself. “Yes. Just like that. I’m going to push you onto your hands and knees, grip your hips, and fuck you so deep and hard you won’t remember your own name.”
“Harder,” she begged, her head tilting back, her throat corded as she worked her fingers in and out of her dripping heat. “Tell me more, Reed. Tell me how you’re going to pin me down.”
“I’m going to bury myself to the root,” I groaned, the veins on my neck bulging with pressure. “I’m going to hold you down against the stone and you won’t be able to pull away. You’ll take every drop of my seed straight into your womb until you’re completely full.”
“Yes,” she cried as she frantically stroked her clit, her hips rolling in wild circles on the quilt.
“I want your mark.” Her hips rolled against the mattress in helpless, aching rhythms, her fingers rubbing frantically through the wet cotton between her legs.
“I want to feel your teeth in my throat, and I want you to fill my womb until it leaks down my legs. I want our pups, Reed. I want a house full of little wolves with your dark eyes and your stubborn heart.”
PUPS! the wolf roared, the word blasting through my blood like a high-explosive charge. OUR BLOOD! OUR HEIRS! TAKE HER!
Not yet! Hold the line! I roared back at the beast, pumping my fist with brutal, blinding speed.
She arched violently off the bed, her fingers burying deep inside her pussy as an orgasm tore through her core, her slick gushing over her knuckles and soaking the mattress beneath her.
A feral, guttural roar tore from my chest. My hips bucked off the mattress, my muscles locking like steel cables as my climax exploded with volcanic violence.
Hot, thick ropes of my seed jetted across my knuckles, splashing in heavy white arcs over my flat stomach and soaking into the dark wool quilt between us.
I pumped through the spasms, milking every last drop of my release, my head thrown back against the pillow as the room spun with blinding relief and sharp, bittersweet ache.
No... the wolf whined, a low, frustrated growl rattling through my ribs as the seed hit the blanket instead of her flesh. Wasted on wool. Wasted on our own hand. We wanted the mate.
We saved the plan, I panted to the beast, struggling to catch my breath as my heart thudded against my ribs. We kept our sisters and brothers alive. We saved our vengeance.
The wolf slumped down onto the floor of my mind, ears pinned back, unsatisfied and bitter, but quietly resigned. The Caldera. You promised the mountain.
I promised the mountain.
I collapsed back onto the mattress, chest heaving, sweat dripping from my brow into my eyes.
The only sound in the dark cabin was the synchronized rasp of our lungs and the wind whistling through the cedar eaves.
Neither of us moved across the gap.
The careful distance between us on the iron bed remained unbroken—a deliberate, agonizing line drawn by discipline. Avaline lay on her side, breathing hard, her slick-coated hand resting on her stomach, her golden eyes watching me through the dark with reverence and clarity.
The ache of not wrapping my arms around her was a dull throb in my chest, but the boundary held.
“You gave me back my soul tonight, Reed,” she whispered across the space between us, her voice thick with emotion.
I wiped a forearm over my sweaty brow, looking at her across the quilt.
“You’re the only thing that kept my heart beating, Ava,” I said, my voice rough and stripped raw. “I waited twenty years to touch you. I can wait six more hours to give you everything for real.”
She pushed herself up slowly, pulling the corner of a dry blanket around her shoulders to cover her damp tank top, her golden eyes steady in the moonlight. Her body was still humming with the baseline resonance of the unconsummated bond, but the lethal fever had been banked.
“I’m holding you to that,” she said softly, her voice dropping. “But first... we have a war council to lead.”
A dark chuckle rumbled deep in my chest.
Outside the cabin window, the crunch of boots on gravel and the low murmur of my pack brothers grew louder.
Santos, Brann, Levi, Tommy, Finn—and the women who anchored them: Nell, Wren, Genny, Kaia, Sloane—were standing ready in the yard.
For years, I had fought a shadow war in the ash.
Now, the quorum of six bloodlines was finally united.
“Dry off, sweetheart,” I said, meeting her gaze across the dark room as my obsidian wolf gave a final, grudging rumble of anticipation. “It’s time to change the world.”
We rose from the bed, cleaned up, and left the sanctuary of the dark room to meet our pack.