Chapter 2
Owen
They took the knife off me at the tree line and marched me down under the ridge like I might still run. I didn’t run. I asked for the Luna. That was enough to get me a cabin instead of a ditch.
Two of hers put me on the bench and tied my wrists in front. They left the lamp. They left the mud on my boots. They shut the door and stood outside and argued in low voices about whether a Tillson was worth waking Reilly Landers for.
I already knew she would come. I had smelled her on the path before I crossed the river. Pack and woodsmoke and a woman who had been running on too little sleep. I had told myself I was here for the west cut and Hillsford’s schedule. That was still true. It was not the only true thing.
I sat with the rope cutting my thumbs and listened to the hall up the hill settle after the raid. Someone laughed. Someone cursed. A boy’s voice said her name and got told to stay put. Then boots on the path, lighter than the men who had dragged me, and the door opened.
She closed it behind her.
I had seen her at a distance two years ago on a border I was not supposed to be on.
That did not prepare me. Up close she was blood on the sleeve, dark hair coming out of a tie, a mouth that looked like it had been saying no all night.
She said, “Name,” and the bond hit me hard enough that I had to fist my hands so I didn’t reach for her with the rope still on.
Mate.
It was not a soft word in my head. It was a hook behind the ribs and a heat that went straight to my cock. I breathed her in and my wolf tried to go to his knees. I stayed on the bench until I couldn’t. I stood up because sitting felt like waiting to be owned.
“Reilly Landers,” I said. “Acting Luna. I know.”
She wanted a name. I gave her mine. Owen Tillson. I watched it land. Everyone on this ridge had a version of Tillson Ford. None of them were the version where I pulled civilians out of a burning hall while Hillsford set the back wall.
I told her the rest because that was the job. Hillsford had staged the raid. They wanted Landers Ridge looking south. The west cut was next. The alliance was a schedule. She called it convenient. She was right to. A rogue in a holding cabin will say whatever keeps his throat closed.
Then she came close enough to check the knot on my wrists and I stopped caring about the west cut.
Her fingers on the rope. Her thumb on my pulse. I made a sound I did not plan and turned my hands and caught her. Not to hurt her. To keep her from pretending she didn’t feel it. She told me not to. I told her to stop touching me. She didn’t.
The stove ticked. I could hear my own blood.
She smelled wet already. That did something to me I was not proud of.
I had not come with another person in three years and I had stopped trying after the last time my body refused to finish.
Standing in front of her I was hard in my pants like I was twenty and stupid.
She said this was not simple. I told her she smelled like she wanted me on the floor and also like she was going to walk up the hill and lie about it. She kissed me for that.
I have been in bad rooms. I have been in worse ones.
I have never had a woman’s mouth knock the sense out of me like that.
I pulled her against me by the ass and she felt what she was doing to me and bit my lip.
I walked her to the table because if we stayed in the middle of the room I was going to put her on the boards before she finished deciding.
She said wait. I waited with my forehead on hers and my hands on her belt. She listed her pack and the morning and the fact that she would still have to choose what to do with me. I said I knew. Then her mouth was back on mine and I stopped waiting.
I got my hands under her shirt and dragged the binding down until her breasts were in my palms, heavy, nipples already tight.
I put my mouth on the right one and sucked and she grabbed my hair like she wanted it to hurt.
I gave her teeth enough to sting and licked it better and did the other side while she ground on my thigh.
I could feel the heat of her through both layers of our clothes. My cock hurt against my belt.
“Off,” she said.
I got rid of the shirt. She put her mouth on my throat like she was hiding a word in my skin. I knew which word. I wanted it and I wanted her not to say it yet, because if she said it I was going to bite her and this cabin would become a claiming whether her council liked it or not.
I yanked her shirt off. Binding off. Her breasts against my chest, nipples dragging through the hair there, and she made a noise that finished the last of my patience.
Belt. Pants. They caught on her boots and I went to my knees and pulled everything down and off and then she was on the table with her legs open and I had no excuse left.
I looked at her. Dark hair between her legs, slick already, inner thighs tense like she might close them. I held her open and put my mouth on her.
She was wet enough that I got it on my chin on the first pass.
I licked through it and found her clit and sucked.
She slammed a hand back on the table. I pushed two fingers into her and she clamped down on them, hot, tight, soaked.
I turned them up and rubbed while I sucked and she said my name like she didn’t want to.
I didn’t ease off. I wanted her to come on my face before I got inside her so I would have that if she walked out.
She came hard. Her thighs locked on my head and her cunt squeezed my fingers in pulls I felt in my wrist. I licked her through it until she yanked my hair. I stood up and kissed her so she would taste it.
She opened my belt. Her hand wrapped around my cock and stroked, tight, and I had to lock my knees. I was wet at the head already. The base was starting to swell. She felt it. She didn’t take her hand away.
“Floor,” she said. “The table will go over.”
We hit the boards. She tried to get on top and I rolled her because I needed my weight on her and I needed her legs around me and I needed not to come the second she sank down. I dragged the head of my cock through her wet, over her clit, down to where she was open, and pushed in.
Tight. Hot. She took me in inches and her nails went into my shoulders. I bottomed out and the start of the knot pressed against her and I had to stop or I was going to shove it in on the first stroke like an animal.
“Look at me,” I said.
She did. That was a mistake for both of us. The bond opened all the way with my cock in her. I felt her want. I felt how close she already was again. I felt my own orgasm sitting in my spine waiting for permission I was not going to get for long.
I fucked her. Hard. The floor knocked under her back. I held her ass in one hand and tilted her so I could get as deep as the unswollen part of me would go. Her breasts moved. I sucked a nipple without slowing down. She told me harder and I gave it to her. Wet sounds. Skin. Her heels in my back.
I found the angle that made her voice break and stayed on it, short thrusts, and she came around my cock so tight I saw nothing. I kept going. I was going to come. The knot was past starting now, thick enough that it caught on her on every stroke.
I tried to pull back.
She locked her legs.
“Reilly.”
“Don’t stop.”
“If I knot you—”
“I know what it does.”
I looked at her mouth. I looked at her throat. My wolf wanted teeth in that throat so bad I bit the inside of my own cheek until I tasted blood. Then I pushed.
The knot stretched her and she cried out and I forced it through and it locked.
I came with my face in her shoulder, cock jerking, pumping into her with nowhere for it to go but in.
The knot swelled harder and held. She clenched on it and came again and I ground against her because I couldn’t thrust, little trapped movements that dragged the lock against her from the inside.
Come leaked around it anyway. I felt it run down her ass onto my knee.
I did not bite her.
I wanted to. The claim sat right behind my teeth. I bit my cheek again instead and breathed through it with her shaking under me and my cock locked in her and the bond roaring like I had already done the thing I refused to do.
“How long,” she said.
“A few minutes. Maybe more. First time with a mate, I don’t know.”
I said mate. She didn’t correct me. I kissed her because if I kept looking at her throat I was going to break the decision.
When the knot eased I pulled out slow and a lot of come came with me.
I sat back on my heels and looked at what I had done.
Her on the floor of her own cabin. Thighs wet.
Stomach wet. Hair wrecked. My marks on her shoulders from my hands.
She said come here and put me on my back and took my cock in her mouth.
I was still sensitive. I didn’t stop her. She tasted like both of us. She took me deep and used her hand on what she couldn’t fit and I came again with my hand in her hair, less this time, enough that she had to swallow. She wiped her mouth and the sky outside the window was turning gray.
Then she stood up and put her clothes on like she could stuff the night back into her belt.
I watched her do it from the floor. Pants. Boots. Shirt. The binding shoved in a pocket. She would walk up that hill smelling like my come and tell herself it was a mess she could clean.
I told her she was going to act like it was nothing. She said she was going to decide if I lived through breakfast. I told her that was not what I asked. She threw my shirt at me.
“Get dressed. The rope stays off. You try the door before I come back and my wolves will put you down.”
I got up. I put my pants on. I left the shirt off because I wanted her to look at what she was leaving in the room. She told me Hillsford would use me. She told me her council would help them. She had not decided, she said. She had decided when she put the belt back on.
She left.