26 Avaline #2
And then the Founding Alpha of the Sixth Bloodline went down onto his knees on the sacred bedrock in front of me.
It wasn’t graceful. It cost him everything—I watched it cost him, watched the tremor run the length of his spine as he lowered himself, watched the old terror scream through him that if he stopped holding, everything he loved would come apart.
He knelt there in the rune-light, this enormous scarred man, and he looked up at me with his hands open on his thighs, palms to the ceiling, and he gave me the line.
“It’s yours,” he said hoarsely. “I yield it. Lead, and I’ll follow. I—” his voice cracked clean through, “—I’m not holding anymore, Ava. I’m letting go. Catch me.”
And the whole mountain shuddered.
The Veil tore.
It thinned to nothing, the way ice goes clear before it breaks, and for one heartbeat the chamber held two worlds at once.
The rune-light silvered into moonlight though we were under stone.
The full moon hung impossibly in the vaulted dark above us, and ringed beneath stood the faint, luminous shapes of the ones who had come before—the first mated pair at this same Altar, the ancestral Scribes, my own blood witnessing across six centuries—and I felt rather than heard the great tidal recognition move through the chamber, older than language, warm as a hand laid on the back of the neck: Yes. This one, freely. Begin.
Then the Goddess Moon folded away and it was only us again, only the rune-light and the man kneeling at my feet with his soul laid open.
I sank down to him.
I caught his face in both hands and I kissed him, and everything that had been banked and denied and interrupted for days broke loose all at once.
He came up off his knees with a growl that rolled up out of the bedrock, gathering me against him, and I let him—because yielding the line hadn’t unmanned him, it had freed him, and the wolf that had been leashed poured into his hands.
He lifted me onto the warm stone of the Altar, the bedrock radiating heat up through me like a living thing.
His rough, blistered hands gripped the hem of my shirt and tore the ruined linen upward over my head, tossing it aside into the dark. The cool air seared my flushed skin for a single heartbeat before his massive chest crowded in, scorching and bare.
I reached for the buckle of his pants, my fingers trembling with frantic hunger, unfastening the canvas and pushing the layers down over his muscled hips.
When he kicked them free, the thick, heavy length of his erection sprang against my thigh—raging hard, flushed dark with heat, pulsing with an urgency that sent a sharp flood of slick arousal straight between my legs.
I didn’t let him push me down. Not yet.
I planted my hands on his broad, scarred shoulders and slid them down across the heavy slabs of his chest. His skin was scorching, mapped with fire: the pale burn scars along his ribs, the hard, carved ridges of his abdomen flexing under my palms.
“Ava...” he groaned, his hands hovering at my waist, shaking with restraint.
“Let me look at you,” I whispered, my voice dropping into that deep register he’d never heard from the girl by the river. “Let me have you, Reed.”
I dropped to my knees on the warm bedrock before him.
Reed sucked in a jagged breath, his fingers knotting into my hair as I leaned forward. The scent of him down here was overwhelming—scorched lightning, clean sweat, and the rich, musk-heavy heat of a male in full rut.
I wrapped my fingers around the base of his thick shaft.
The heat of him burned against my palm, the skin like hot velvet over iron.
A pearl of liquid glistened on the broad, swollen crown, and I leaned in and swiped my tongue across the tip, tasting him.
He tasted of salt and mountain springs and the magma running through his veins.
A violent shudder ripped through Reed’s massive frame. His knees buckled slightly, his head falling back as a low, guttural roar vibrated in his chest.
“Ava... Goddess, sweetheart, what are you doing to me...”
“I remember every word you told me on that quilt, Reed, and even before that, against the sycamore tree,” I murmured against his shaft, stroking my hand firmly up the heavy length of his cock, spreading the moisture over the sensitive ridge.
“You promised you’d push me down, drive every thick inch inside me, and never let me pull away. ”
“Ava... look at what you do to me,” he groaned, looking down with molten gold eyes, his hand cupping the back of my head with trembling adoration. “I spent twenty years starving for this. My whole body burns every time you touch me. Take it, sweetheart. Let me feel how warm that mouth is.”
I parted my lips and took the broad head into my mouth.
He groaned, his hips jerking forward involuntarily as I took him deeper.
I hollowed my cheeks, swirling my tongue around the swollen crown, taking him down into the heat of my throat inch by agonizing inch.
I sucked hard, rhythmically bobbing my head, using one hand to massage the heavy weight of his balls while my mouth worked him into a frenzy.
Reed’s hands tightened in my hair, holding me there, his breath tearing in ragged, desperate gasps.
“You take all of me so deep... Goddess, yes, just like that,” he rasped, his voice shredded with pleasure. “You feel so fucking good... but stop, sweetheart, stop before I lose control. I promised you in that cabin—no more wasted on blankets. Every single drop belongs deep inside your womb.”
He gently, firmly drew me up by the shoulders, hauling me to my feet and onto the flat surface of the First Altar.
The honeysuckle-and-rain scent detonated between us at full strength, and it undid him. He buried his face in my throat and dragged in a lungful of it, shuddering against me, the low chest-purr I’d felt him strangle for days finally rolling free, unashamed.
“Say it again,” he rasped against my skin. His mouth moved down—my throat, my collarbone, the heavy swell of my breast. “The choosing. Say it while I—”
“I choose you,” I gasped, my back arching off the stone as his mouth closed over my nipple.
He sucked hard, taking the tight, aching peak deep into his mouth, his tongue swirling around the bud in a slow, devastating friction that shot directly to the pit of my belly.
I cried out, my fingers tangling in the thick dark hair at the nape of his neck, pressing his head harder against my chest. He growled in approval, his teeth grazing the sensitive nub, making my toes curl against the granite.
He didn’t stop. He moved to the other breast, licking and lathing the flushed flesh until I was crying out from the sheer sensory overload, writhing beneath his weight.
“Reed... please,” I panted, my hips lifting, seeking friction against his thighs.
“I’ve spent twenty years starving for you, Ava,” he murmured against my ribcage, kissing a wet, searing line down my stomach. “I’m going to taste every single inch of what the Goddess gave back to me.”
He hooked his large hands behind my knees, spreading my thighs wide across the flat expanse of the First Altar, exposing my drenched, swollen core to the sacred rune-light. The amber glow from the floor caught the glistening wetness coating my inner thighs.
Reed went still for a fraction of a second, his obsidian eyes going molten gold as he stared down at me. A ragged groan vibrated out of his lungs.
“Look at you on this stone,” he rasped, reverence and fierce devotion thick in his voice. “Soaking wet for me, just like you were in the cabin. Just like you were against the sycamore tree. Look at how my mate drips when I touch her.”
“I’ve been on fire for you since the moment we first met, Reed.” I clutched his shoulders. “Taste me. Put your mouth on me.”
“I’m going to lick every drop of your heat off this stone,” he growled and lowered his head.
When his mouth pressed against my scalding folds, I bucked against him from the lightning strike of pleasure.
His tongue parted my slick lips and found the swollen knot of my clit in one long, hot, deliberate stroke.
Sensation exploded behind my eyes like white lightning.
My fingers clenched into the smooth stone behind my head as he worked his mouth against me—lapping the honeyed wetness, sucking the sensitive bundle of nerves with a rhythmic focus that obliterated my ability to think.
“Reed—oh Goddess—Reed!”
“That’s it, sweetheart,” he muttered against me, his hot breath scorching my wet folds. “Take my mouth. Let the whole mountain feel how much your Alpha loves you.”
He slid two thick, calloused fingers deep into my dripping passage.
The stretch was sudden and overwhelming, the friction of his knuckles sliding in and out against my tight inner walls drawing a guttural sob from my throat.
He curved his fingers upward, finding the spot that made my me spasm, while his mouth maintained its relentless suction on my clit.
“Feel how tight you squeeze my fingers?” he groaned, pumping his fingers inside me. “You’re soaked to the bone, sweetheart. Let the fever break. Come for your Alpha. Drown me in it.”
I couldn’t stay still. I thrashed against the stone, my hips rocking upward, chasing his mouth, chasing the unbearable pressure coiling tighter and tighter in my groin.
Give it to him, my wolf howled, pacing and snarling in wild ecstasy within my chest. Let the fever break—
The wave crested. My inner walls clamped down around his fingers in a violent, milking convulsion.
I cried his name into the cavern rafters, my back bowing completely off the stone as the first orgasm ripped through me in hot, pulsing spasms. Reed drank down every drop of my release, his tongue catching the tremors of my flesh until the aftershocks slowly subsided into shuddering whimpers.
Before he could pull away, I reached down and grabbed his forearms, using my momentum to roll him onto his back in the center of the First Altar.