Chapter 1 #2
I got his belt open with hands that were not steady.
His cock was thick, already wet at the head, the base starting to swell in a way I understood and did not have time to be wise about.
I wrapped my hand around him and stroked once, twice, feeling the weight of it, the heat, the way his breath punched out of him when I tightened my fist on the upstroke.
“Floor,” I said. “The table will go over.”
We went down in a graceless pile of clothes and knees.
He landed on his back and I straddled him and he rolled us before I could sink down, my spine on the floorboards, his body between my legs.
I liked that better. I wanted his weight.
I wanted to be held down so I could tell myself I had not climbed there.
He rubbed the head of his cock through the wet, up over my clit, down to where I was open, and pushed in.
I was wet enough. He was still a lot. The stretch burned and then opened and he kept going until his hips sat flush against me and I could feel that swelling base pressed to my body, not in yet. I dug my nails into his shoulders and breathed through it.
“Look at me,” he said.
I did. That was worse than the stretch. The bond sat wide open with him buried in me. I could feel his want like it was mine. I could feel how close he already was. I could feel my own body clamping down on him in pulls I was not directing.
He pulled out and thrust back in. Hard. The floor thudded.
I wrapped my legs around him and pulled.
He set a pace that had no courtesy in it, deep and steady, the wet sound of it filling the cabin.
My breasts moved with each thrust. He ducked and sucked a nipple again without slowing his hips and I swore and held his head there.
“Harder,” I said.
He gave me harder. One hand braced by my head, the other under my ass tilting me up so he could get deeper.
I felt every inch. The head of him dragged inside me on the pull-out and shoved in until I saw nothing but the lamp and his throat.
I put my mouth on that throat again, teeth on his skin, not breaking it, because if I broke it I was going to say the word.
“Don’t bite me,” he said, rough, like he was saying it to himself too.
“Then don’t—” I lost the rest when he changed the angle and hit the place his fingers had found. “There. There.”
He stayed there. Short, mean thrusts right on it. I came a second time with my mouth open on his neck and my heels in his back. He snarled and kept fucking me through it, the rhythm going sloppy.
I felt the knot.
It caught on my entrance on a thrust, thicker than it had been a minute ago, and he tried to pull back. I locked my legs.
“Reilly.”
“Don’t stop.”
“If I knot you—”
“I know what it does.”
He searched my face like he was looking for a way out I was not going to give him.
Then he pushed. The knot stretched me past comfortable, a burn that made my eyes water, and then it shoved inside and locked.
I cried out. He buried his face against my shoulder and came with a groan I felt in my chest, cock jerking, heat spilling into me in pulses while the knot swelled tighter and held us there.
I came again from that alone, from being filled and locked and flooded, a raw clench around the knot that made him curse and grind like he could get deeper when there was nowhere left to go.
His come leaked around the seal anyway, slick on my ass, on the floor.
He kept rolling his hips in small trapped movements that dragged the knot against me from the inside.
I was shaking. I could not get a full breath.
We stayed like that. His weight on me. My hands in his hair. His cock still twitching. The bond was loud and stupid and satisfied in a way that scared me more than the raid had.
“How long,” I said.
“A few minutes. Maybe more. First time with a mate, I don’t know.”
Mate. He said it into my shoulder like a fact. I didn’t correct him. The knot was still tying that word to my body.
He lifted his head. His mouth was red. My blood was on his lip from where I had bitten him earlier, or he had bitten me.
I could not sort which. He kissed me slower than anything we had just done.
I let him. My wolf was quiet for the first time in two years.
That should have been a relief. It felt like a door closing that I had wanted left open.
When the knot eased he pulled out carefully and a rush of come followed him. I felt it run down. I stayed on the floor because standing up was going to make this a decision.
He sat back on his heels, still half-hard, breathing like he had been punched. He looked at me, naked on the boards of my own holding cabin, come on my thighs, shirt gone, hair wrecked.
“Come here,” I said.
He did. I pushed him onto his back and put my mouth on his cock because I was not done and I needed him not to talk.
He was wet with both of us. I tasted salt and my own smell and I took him as deep as I could and sucked.
He groaned and put a hand in my hair but didn’t shove.
I worked him with my hand on the shaft and my mouth on the head until he thickened again and warned me.
“Reilly—I’m—”
I stayed on him. He came in my mouth, less than before, still enough that I had to swallow twice. I sat up and wiped my lip with the back of my hand.
That was when I heard the sky changing. Not light yet. The thin gray that comes before it.
I stood up. My legs disagreed. I found my underwear, my pants, my boots. I put them on without looking at him. Shirt next. Binding shoved into a pocket because I was not going to fight it back on with him watching. Belt.
He sat on the floor and watched me dress like I was doing something worse than what we had just done.
“You’re going to walk out of here and act like this was nothing,” he said.
“I’m going to walk out of here and decide whether you live through breakfast.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
I looked at him then. Still on my floor. Still smelling like me. Mark on his shoulder from my nails. I wanted to get back down there and put my mouth on it. I picked up his shirt and threw it at him instead.
“Get dressed. The rope stays off. You try the door before I come back and my wolves will put you down.”
“Reilly.”
“Don’t.”
“You felt it. You let me knot you. You know what that means.”
“It means I had a long night and I made a mess in a cabin I am going to have to clean.” I fastened my belt. My hands were almost steady. “It does not mean I can keep a Tillson on this ridge. Hillsford will use you to take this pack apart. My council will help them if I give them a reason.”
He stood and pulled his pants up. He didn’t put the shirt on. “So you get to have me and then throw me to them.”
“I haven’t decided that.”
“You decided it when you put your clothes back on.”
I went to the door because if I stayed I was going to take them off again. The bond pulled when I put my hand on the latch. Physical. Stupid. I felt him behind me like a second pulse.
“Stay here,” I said. “I mean it.”
“I’m not going anywhere. You already made sure of that.”
I opened the door on the cold. The path was empty. The men I had left at the turn had the sense to keep their distance. Up the hill the hall lamps were still on. Edward would still be awake. Marshall would want a report. Idony would want a name for the dead scout and a letter for Hillsford.
I stepped out and shut the cabin on him.
The air outside smelled like smoke and wet grass.
Under it I could still smell him on my skin, in my mouth, between my legs where I was sore and wet and leaking into my underwear with every step up the path.
Dawn was a pale line behind the ridge. I had until that line got brighter to turn a mate into a problem I could stand in front of a council and explain.
I did not look back at the door.
I wanted to.