Chapter 32
Owen
The ceremony was for the pack, not for the bond.
The bond was already in our throats. Her bite sat on the left side of my neck.
Mine sat on hers. We had done the words in her bed.
This was the marker where I had waited in the trees with a hard-on and a contract in my mouth.
Stone. River. A fire small enough that Pell could ignore it if he wanted. He was not invited.
Edward came. Melanie. Joss. Huntington, pin on, face like a man attending a thing he would not stop. Four of the eight. Three Landers wolves who had stood on the stones. Idony at the back. That was enough.
Reilly stood on her side of the stone in a shirt that did not hide the mark. I stood on mine. No old-hall script. She said my name. I said hers. She said she had taken the rite back. I said I had heard her. The people who needed to smell it could smell it.
Edward watched our faces, not our throats for long. Melanie’s mouth twitched. Joss stared at the water. Huntington nodded once when it was done.
There was drink. Not much. Talk about winter stores and a cut that still needed walking. I did not hear most of it. I could smell Reilly. Claimed. Not septic. I wanted her off this dirt and behind a door. She stood close enough that her sleeve touched mine.
Melanie said, low, “You can go. Nobody here thinks you’re staying for the fire.”
We went.
Reilly
We did not pretend it was for sleep.
The cabin was closer than my rooms. He barred the door.
I had him against it before the bar settled, mouth on his mouth, my tongue in him, his already hard against my hip.
I opened his belt. He opened mine. His hand shoved into my pants and two fingers went straight into me.
I was wet from the marker, from standing next to him with the bite showing.
He fucked me with his fingers against the door and rubbed my clit with the heel of his hand and I came standing, clenching, biting his marked throat to stay quiet.
He pulled his fingers out and put them in my mouth. I sucked them.
He dropped to his knees on the boards he knew and yanked my pants to my boots and spread me with his thumbs and put his mouth on me.
He licked a line up through the slick and sealed over my clit and sucked.
Two fingers back in, turned up. I held his hair and the door and watched his mouth work.
He did not rush and he did not tease for long.
He sucked and curled and I came on his face, hips punching, slick on his chin.
He kept licking. I tried to close my thighs.
He held them open and pushed his tongue inside me and used his nose on my clit until I came again, knees gone, only the door and his hands keeping me up.
He stood. I shoved him toward the bench and he sat and I got on my knees between his and took his cock out.
Thick. Wet at the head. Swell already starting.
I licked the underside, then took him deep, hand locked around the base so the knot stayed out of my throat.
He groaned and gathered my hair. I sucked him sloppy, spit down my fist, and pulled off to lick the swell I would take in a minute.
I took him back in until he said Reilly and I stopped and climbed into his lap.
I sank down on him in one drop. Full. Sore from last night and still greedy.
He bottomed out and I sat there stuffed and breathed.
Then I rode him. Slow at first, then not, my clit grinding on him, his mouth on my breast, sucking a nipple while I used his cock.
I came like that, clenching around the shaft, and he lifted me and turned me onto my back on the bench and shoved back in and fucked me deep.
The boards knocked. The wet sound filled the cabin.
He put my knees up and hit the spot and I came again with my good hand on the bite on his throat.
“Knot.”
He shoved. The swell locked. Stretch, burn, hold.
I cried out. He came into the seal, pumping, no place for it to go, leaking around the lock onto the bench.
I came on the fill, a hard squeeze that pulled another pulse out of him.
He licked my bite. I licked his. We stayed tied, his cock jerking, my legs around him.
When it eased he pulled out and the rush of come followed.
He went to his knees on the floor and put my thighs over his shoulders and licked the mess out of me, tongue in me, mouth sloppy, then sucking my clit until I came shaking and pulled his hair too hard.
I pushed him onto his back on the same boards as the first night and I sat on his face and he ate me from below while I stroked his wet cock, and I came on his tongue and then I moved down and took him back inside and the knot caught a second time while I was sitting on him.
He locked. He came with his hands bruising my hips.
I came with my head back and my nails on his chest. I bit the mark I had already put on him, not to make a new one, to hold it.
We ended on the floor. His cock slipped free. Come on my thighs, his stomach, the boards. I laughed once at the lamp.
“The heat is gone,” I said.
“Is it.”
“The septic thing. The unfinished thing.” I put my hand on his chest. “The want isn’t gone.”
“Good.”
He got hard again while we lay in it. I stroked him, lazy, smearing what was left. He put two fingers in me and rubbed my clit with his thumb until I came small against his palm. I sucked him until he came on my tongue, less, enough to swallow. We crawled to the bench and pulled the blanket down.
I slept. I woke with his hand already between my legs. He rubbed my clit until I came into his wrist, half-asleep, and I kissed his mouth and tasted myself and him. I did not get up to look at the hall.
Near gray I took him in my hand again and he pushed two fingers into me again and we got each other off under the blanket without the knot, quiet, his come on my belly, mine on his knuckles. I said, not for witnesses, “I keep you.”
“I heard you at the stone. I heard you in the bed. I hear you.”
We dressed. We walked to the cut. Melanie was already on the line. She smelled us and pointed at a post like work was the blessing.
Edward met us at the inner path with bread that was not a seat at a company fire. He handed it over. He looked at our throats and then at the river.
“Pell’s telling the lower houses this is a camp, not a pack.”
“Pell can tell them. They can look at the bank.”
He almost smiled. He went back to Marshall’s hall.
Owen’s hand sat at the small of my back on the stones. The bond was quiet. Settled. I could feel him like a person I had chosen with my body first and my mouth last.
At the marker we stopped. Dead fire. Moving river.
I put his back to the stone and kissed him and put my hand down his pants and found him half-hard and gave him three slow pulls and stopped.
He put his hand down my pants and found me wet and rubbed my clit once and stopped.
Joss was up the bank. We were not going to finish this on the stone in daylight.
“Tonight,” he said.
“Tonight.”
We walked the rest of the cut.
Noon: stores, not a pin. Idony gave me the list. I took it. Owen waited in the yard. I walked out to him with no title and a marked throat and a body that still wanted his mouth.
That night we used my bed.
He stripped me like he had time. He licked my breasts, my stomach, the inside of my thighs, then my cunt until I came on his tongue twice.
He pushed into me on my back and fucked me until I came on the shaft and then he knotted me, locked, came, licked the bite while I clenched around the swell.
We stayed tied. I told him I kept him again.
He said he knew. When it eased he pulled out and I got on my knees and sucked him clean and then not clean, until he was hard, and he took me from behind and did not knot the second time because I was sore.
He came on my back. I reached back and used it on my clit and came on my own fingers with him watching.
I slept on his chest. It held.
In the morning I woke first. I put his mouth between my legs and he licked me awake until I came on his tongue. He came in my fist against my hip. The bites sat on both throats.
The heat was gone.
The want was not.
I could live with a thing I had slammed a door on and then opened with my clothes off and then said in front of my brother and a steward and a woman who had called him a kept wolf.
I had been the one who kept him. He had made me say the rite the first time so I could not cheat it.
He had not made me cheat the taking back.
I got up to walk a cut that was ours in the only way that had ever worked: not because a council said so, because we had kept it, and then we had kept each other, and I was done pretending those were different jobs.