20
Logan
My mate gives a squeak of unadulterated pleasure every time I thrust into her again.
I shift her ankle up to rest against my shoulder, freeing my hand to brush a thumb over her mouth.
I’m not entirely willing to hush her, warn her that sound carries in these woods, because that would sacrifice the chance to hear all those perfect little sounds, every gasp and smothered cry.
On the second night of the full moon, there is a glimmer of human clarity that I didn’t have last night, a presence of mind to bear witness to everything I thought impossible: Ava, mine.
It’s a powerful happiness that sunders every reflex in me to mask it. The tail wagging is non-negotiable; I couldn’t stop that if I tried.
Everything I’ve been holding back from—biting her, claiming her as a wolf, calling her mine—suddenly lies before me, on her back in the grass.
My wolf is better at allowing myself to be moved by this feeling, and I let it lead, running kisses along her collar, her neck, her jaw, taking in a deep breath of her scent.
Ava tugs on the hand holding her face, bringing the pad of my finger into her mouth and sucking on it, even as my claw presses into her cheek.
She kisses her way down my palm, worries her teeth against the skin playfully.
I’m so focused on the claw not marking her face that I barely noticed the pressure of her teeth on my hand, until her bicuspid punctures the surface.
Her eyes widen and she dislodges immediately.
“Shit, I didn’t think it’d be that easy,” she mutters, bringing my hand up to inspect it. My attention snags on the back of her hand, the reddened outline of my teeth, the healed over scar from that night I bit her, a month ago.
“That’s gonna leave a mark,” Ava winces, her apologetic eyes flicking to mine.
I cup her face with the non-bleeding hand and brush my thumb over her cheek. “Good.”
She rolls her eyes at me, and flops back onto the grass, a few dark blades sticking into her hair. She rocks her hips, stirring sensation where our bodies join, teasing the edge of my knot a moment before a thought strikes her.
“Wait, bite me here,” Ava waves, gesturing vaguely toward her lower half. Then she mutters, “If I gotta get more rabies shots from this, they’re gonna be somewhere with less bones this time.”
I would explain to her that she didn’t actually need the first round either, but my mouth is preoccupied, dragging my teeth from the ankle on my shoulder, down her calf to the inside of her thigh, just below her knee.
She’s tight and perfect, and I savor her pleasured gasp as I withdraw and push into her again.
If there was a thought to draw this out, to go slow and carefully, it’s quickly lost or even abandoned at the first satisfied breath she lets out when I push back into her, my knot bumping her clit.
I need that sound again and again, until I’m slamming into her hard, feeling every filthy noise she makes like a shock through my body.
She clutches her arms around me as I rock into her. Her breath becomes shallow as her nails score across my back.
“Logan, oh, I’m close—” she says, her voice breaking into a squeal, as she comes mid-word. She’s overwhelmed, gasping for breaths between whines of pleasure. This is an entirely new feeling, as her inner walls started clenching uncontrollably in her climax.
She lets out the most delicious cry when I thrust again, and my knot pushes fully into her. It’s breathy with a note of surprise that drowns in the pleasure.
The decadence of the sound brings me all the way to the edge, surrounded by her tight wet heat. The fluttery spasms of her pussy around my knot take me the rest of the way. Her orgasm clenches around me, each shuddering wave of it milking another spurt from me.
“I can feel you coming in me,” she gasps, and the need to sink my teeth into her is almost irresistible.
It heats my blood, stirs something deeper, more primal in me.
I hook her knees up over the crook of my elbows, keeping her legs spread wide, practically folding the rest of her against the ground.
“Please, Logan,” Ava begs, with one of those wide-eyed blinks that makes me notice her sweeping eyelashes, all my objections grounding to a halt instantly. “Do it now.”
Her thigh hooked over my elbow is soft to my teeth. She nods blindly through the throes of pleasure, biting her lip. The puncture of skin blooms hot and earthy in my mouth.
I growl around her flesh, the only response I’m capable of while knot-deep in her.
The final little shivers of her orgasm keep drawing mine out when it feels like it should be done. I can feel it in my knot, following the aftershock shivers of her climax responding in kind.
The ground has deep gouges in it from my claws, by the time I come back to myself. It’s never lasted so long or tried to wring every last ounce of my strength. I pull my cock from her, utterly spent. My seed drips heavily from her, thick and white.
I don’t even think before I drag my tongue through her folds.
She yelps in surprise, but her knees lock around my head and keep me there.
I lick her until she can’t stop saying my name in increasingly fervent and needy pitches.
She finally manages to pull my attention upward, tucking and curling her body against mine.
“When did it get so chilly out here?” Ava mumbles and tugs my arm around her like an ineffective blanket.
I can’t say that I feel it, but when she shivers beneath me, I push up onto my knees. She makes a noise of protest before I scoop her up. She mumbles something incoherent against my chest, dozing a little further off with every step.
The first few rays of morning light are already peeking over the hills. The house is dark and quiet when I carry Ava inside, upstairs to my room.
I should have tried to get some sleep, even a couple hours’ worth.
But watching Ava curled up in my sheets was unexpectedly captivating.
Hours passed lying next to her, simply watching her breath rise and fall as the dawn crept into the room.
Every so often she’d twist and roll over, nuzzling her face against my pillow.
She’s the sweetest thing I’ve ever seen right now. My mate.
That thought has such an edge of clarity to it, I feel like I haven’t had my eyes open for months. I don’t know how I thought for a second that I could manage a lifetime avoiding her. There’s something ridiculously perfect about how she managed to find me last night.
Ava is a force of nature. She’s loud and brash, and everywhere she goes, there’s a path of destruction in her wake.
I’m left in awe of it every time. She still followed me out into the woods, even though she’s seen the worst of what I can become, the beast that terrified even my family.
She makes me feel loved in a way that I didn’t know I needed.
Eventually the sound of my family downstairs draws my attention. The front door opens and closes, there’s some footsteps.
As much as I want to dwell in this moment endlessly, I know it can’t last forever. But unlike every moment I’ve spent with Ava before, I don’t feel a sense of creeping unease. The gnawing worry has quieted within me.
There will be more time. There will be more quiet, tender mornings. More full moons and nights of lost sleep. I dress and leave Ava curled up in my sheets, knowing this.
I don’t have a plan for explaining anything, how to tell my family about Ava, or what’s happening with the brewery. It feels weird not to have some idea that can become a plan. Maybe I’m just too tired to panic over it.
I’m a little thankful that it’s only my sister-in-law downstairs. Elise is in the kitchen, she’s got a pack of bacon open, lowering pieces onto a pan. I step into the doorway.
“Oh, thank fuck, it’s you again.” She looks a little relieved to see me but holds back on the big display of emotion. “All in one piece?”
“Yeah.” I nod, glancing around. “Where’s everyone else? You didn’t come here with Shawn?”
“I told him to go collect Laura and Aiden. I’m making breakfast. Thought it’d be nice after the full moon. Everyone sleeps in, wakes up hungry and cranky.”
I nod and I’m about to say something to the same effect as an excuse to go back upstairs to Ava, when Elise sets a block of cheese and a grater down in front of me.
Resigned to my fate to always be volunteered, I rummage around in the cabinet for a cutting board to work on. “Careful, they might lobby for it to become a new tradition. You’ll get stuck making breakfast after every full moon.”
“Oh noooo, big family breakfasts, the horror.” She scoffs, rolling her eyes. “As long as someone else gets stuck with the dishes.”
“You mean Shawn.”
“And Aiden. If they’re volunteering me, I’m volunteering them.”
Without a hint of irony, Elise puts me to work on other things as soon as I’ve finished with the cheese. “You should make coffee that way you always say is better. Make enough for everyone.”
As if summoned by this, the sounds of the rest of them come stomping through the front door.
Part of me tenses, wondering if it’s going to be just the same as the morning after the ruined wedding a month ago. It’s only been a month, somehow, but all the heartache and confusion I’d ever known seemed to fit in it.
Shawn, Aiden, and Laura crowd through the kitchen doorway as quietly as a herd of cattle. Aiden manages to snag a strip of bacon off the pan and burn his tongue on it before he spots me.
“Dude where were you?” Laura asks, throwing her hands up in the air.
I remember I haven’t seen her for a few days. It’s a long story, and I don’t really want to tell any of it, but I don’t think I’ll be able to avoid it.
“Ava’s,” I sigh, and walk right past their alarmed expressions. “We were breaking up, and then—”
“You guys broke up?” Elise interjects, surprised.
“I knew they were together,” Shawn says, like that’s the important takeaway.