Chapter 31
Reilly
Alexander overreached.
By the second morning the far trees were thinner.
Not empty on faith. Empty because two smaller packs east of Hillsford had smelled a wedding that turned into a river invoice and decided they did not like the math.
Gareth pulled back rather than own a war he had dressed as a date.
His last look across the water was for me and then for Owen and then for the hall he was not going to sit in.
Marshall kept the pin.
I did not ask for it.
We started what we could start with whoever stayed: his eight, my wolves who had stood on stones without a title, a handful from the lower houses who would rather a river pack than Pell’s story. Not Landers Ridge as it had been. Not a rogue camp forever. A hinge with a door.
Edward was in the hall. All the way home enough. The bank was empty enough. The words had stood in the woods. They could stand in a room.
That night I took Owen to a real bed.
Not the cabin bench. My rooms. Bar on the door.
Lamp. A mattress that had only held me and my own hand for three years.
He stood inside it like he might be told to leave.
I closed the space and took his shirt off over the torn side.
I took mine off. The binding. The packed shoulder.
We looked like a war. I kissed his mouth anyway, slow, and I kept kissing him while I opened his belt.
“I, Reilly Landers, take back the rite I spoke in the yard,” I said against his lips. “I un-reject you, Owen Tillson. I claim you. I keep you. I do not send you from this ridge.”
He closed his eyes. He opened them. He did not make me say it three times.
“Say my name again.”
“Owen.”
He kissed me like the dawn on the bench, kind, and then he put me on the bed.
He pulled my pants off. He pulled his off.
His cock was already thick, wet at the slit, the base starting to swell because the words had gone through him the way they went through me.
I wrapped my hand around him and stroked, root to head, thumb over the wet, and he made a sound into my mouth.
I kept stroking while he sucked my breast, then the other, then the shack bite that was still a shadow on the skin.
He went down the bed and opened my knees and looked at me.
“Say it again while I do this.”
“I claim you.”
He put his mouth on me. Flat tongue through the slick, then the point of it on my clit, then two fingers sliding in.
He licked and curled and sucked and I came with my fists in the sheet and his name in my mouth.
He did not stop. He held my thighs open and ate me through the shake and built another one, slower, three fingers stretching, tongue steady on the clit until I came again, wet on his chin, knees trying to close.
He licked his fingers. He came up and kissed me so I tasted it.
I pulled him over me. I put the head of his cock at me and rubbed it there until he was shaking. “In. All of it.”
He pushed in slow. I felt the stretch inch by inch.
When his hips sat flush the swell of the knot was already fat against me.
He fucked me without locking first, deep strokes that made the wet sound loud in my quiet room.
I came on that, clenching around the shaft, and he gritted his teeth and kept the knot out until I said please.
He looked at me.
I nodded.
He shoved.
The lock took. Too much and then held, a burn that went to heat, my body gripping a swell that would not come out.
I cried into his mouth. He came into the knot with his whole weight on me, cock jerking, pumping into the seal, no room for it, slick leaking anyway around the lock onto the sheet.
I came on the fill, a hard squeeze that pulled another pulse out of him.
His mouth opened on the left side of my throat.
He bit me.
Teeth through skin. Pain first. Then the bond slamming shut the way it should have three years ago, the septic heat going quiet, the claim sitting in the bite.
I came again tied on him, blood under his mouth, my nails in his back.
He held the bite until it was a mark that would stay.
He lifted his head. Mouth red. Eyes wrecked.
I pulled his throat down and bit him back.
His blood in my mouth. The sound he made. The knot kicked inside me and he spent again, locked, shaking, his forehead on the mattress beside my head. I licked the bite. He licked mine. We stayed tied, breathing, my legs around him, his cock still twitching.
It was not angry. It was not secret. It was not a bargain.
When the knot eased he pulled out slow and a rush of come followed, thick, down onto the bed. I was open and marked and shaking. He put his mouth on the bite on my throat, then on my mouth. I could taste both throats. He hardened while he kissed me. I was sore and I still opened my knees.
He went down again. He licked me clean and then not clean, tongue in the mess, mouth on my clit until I came with my hands over my face.
He pushed back into me without the knot, the slide easy with how wet I was, and he fucked me slow while he sucked the bite he had put on me.
I came with his thumb on my clit and his teeth not breaking new skin.
He pulled out when I told him I could not take another lock yet.
I turned and took him in my mouth, the taste of both of us, and I sucked until he was close and then I stopped and got on my hands and knees.
He pushed in from behind. One hand under me on my clit.
The other on my breast. He found the angle and I shoved back onto him.
The knot fattened. I said yes. He locked a second time, hips flush to my ass, and came with a groan into the bite on my throat, licking it while he pumped into the seal.
I came around the swell with my mouth open on the mattress.
We fell onto our sides still tied. His chest to my back.
His hand on my breast, thumb on the nipple.
His cock locked in me. I slept like that.
It held.
I woke in the night still in the bed. Knot gone.
Him still there. His cock soft against my ass, wet.
The bite on my throat a pulse. I turned and looked at the mark on his throat, dark, mine.
I put my mouth on it. He woke with a sound.
I stroked him in my fist until he was hard and I climbed on him and sank down.
Sore. Full. I rode him slow in the dark, my hands on his chest, his hands on my hips, and I did not take the knot.
I came grinding my clit on his body. He sat up and sucked my breast and I kept riding until he said he was going to come and I lifted off and stroked him through it onto my stomach.
He rubbed it into my skin with his palm. He kissed the bite. I kissed his.
I slept again. He was there when the gray came.
Marshall knocked and did not come in.
“Far bank is empty,” he said through the door. “Gareth’s gone off our dirt. Pell wants a council. I am not giving him one until you walk into it or you don’t. The pin is still mine unless you take it.”
“Keep it.”
A pause. “Is he in there.”
“Yes.”
Marshall left.
Owen put his forehead on my sternum. I held his hair. I was sore between my legs and under the bite and I could still feel the shape of the lock. The bond was quiet. Not gone. Settled.
We got up. I washed around the mark and left it uncovered. He left his uncovered. We dressed. I chose a shirt that showed what I had done on purpose.
In the yard the air was different. Hillsford smell gone. Melanie saw both throats and nodded once, a job finished. Joss shrugged. Edward stood on the step, looked at the bite, looked at my face, and asked if I had slept.
“Yes.”
“Good.” He went inside before his mouth could do something younger.
Idony took in the marks in the hall. She did not offer me the pin. She asked if the watch still stood.
“Until we write the next thing,” I said. “River pack. Whoever stays. Marshall holds the stores. Owen holds the cut. I hold what I hold.”
“Which is him,” Idony said.
“Yes.”
Pell started a sentence. It died.
After, I walked Owen to the ridge. The cabin was still under it. The yard was still there. I did not go to the yard to say anything else. I had said it in a bed with his knot in me and his teeth in my throat.
His hand sat at the small of my back. Not a secret.
At the tree line I put his back to a pine and opened his pants and took him in my mouth because I wanted to, not because a bond was rotting.
I sucked him until he came on my tongue, his hand in my hair, and I swallowed and stood, and he put his hand in my pants and two fingers in me and his thumb on my clit and I came on his hand standing, biting his unmarked shoulder so I would not put a second mark on him in the open.
We fastened our clothes and walked the cut.
Not a battlefield.
A line we had kept.
A claim I had finally said with my mouth after I had already said it with my body for months.
That night I slept in the same bed. He was there when I woke.
He put his mouth between my legs in the gray and I came on his tongue before I was all the way awake, and he did not push in because I was still sore from the locks, and he came in my fist against my hip, and the bites sat on both our throats, and it still held.