Текст книги "Mate"

Автор книги: Ali Hazelwood

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 21 (всего у книги 26 страниц)

He almost pulls out. Pushes in again. My moan meets the air rushing out of him. He repeats the same motion, wild eyed, lips curving in a dumbfounded, incredulous smile. I feel him rearranging my cunt, my soul, my entire damn life, and lose control of my body. My head falls back. My thighs tremble. His thrusts are slow. Shallow. Redefining.

“’S good,” I say, meaning that it’s the best thing I’ve ever felt in my life, bar none.

“It’s good,” he agrees, looking like he means the exact same thing.

Another stroke. Another one, slow, like he wants to make each last as long as possible. He luxuriates. Indulges in every second of friction. “Serena,” he breathes out against my cheekbone. “I think this might be it, for me.”

His arms slide under my back before I can ask him what he means. Gather me up in a viselike embrace. The drag of our skins. Wet noises. A terrible, all-consuming heat. His eyes, never leaving mine. It all whirls together and winds down to the place where Koen is fucking me.

“I’m going to come,” I gasp, and convulse around him before I’m even done announcing it, pawing desperately at his shoulder. He stays still while I do, waits it out crammed inside, pressing against all those spots.

When I’m done, he kisses my cheek, tells me how beautiful I am, and orders, ruthless, “Again.”

I want to laugh at him, but he makes me come in less than a minute with slow rolls of his hips and watches every second of me falling apart.

“Serena,” he says, except there’s no sound other than the whimpers in my throat. “Again.”

“I can’t,” I tell him, but I’m so wrong, and his pace is measured, a patient, unforgiving rhythm, and this time my release is so intense, I forget to breathe.

“Absurd,” he says, and I know he’s going to ask me for more. It occurs to me how terrifying it must be, for an Alpha whose existence is predicated upon control, the unraveling that comes with pleasure like this. I wonder if he knows. I wonder if anyone has seen him this vulnerable in the past two decades.

I reach up to cradle his face in my hands. Kiss his hot lips. Say, “Koen. Next time, I’d like for you to come, too.”

He can’t say no to me. The steady, controlled movements become frantic, pounding, the thick of his cock filling me over and over, words of adoration and filth murmured in my ear. Another orgasm crashes into me. His cock gets even bigger and fuller, and—

My breath catches in my throat. “What– Koen?”

He kisses me, deep. Lovely. He’s not really moving anymore, just grinding inside me, trying to find a perfect spot, and the feeling of fullness becomes unbearable. I feel a tinge of alarm. Stop, I should say. Stop. It’s not normal. It’s too much. But it’s not. And Koen knows it.

“Take it.” He shoves deeper. “Be good and take my knot.”

“I– I don’t– ”

“You do. You were made for it. How could I ever think of fucking anyone else, when you take it so well?”

His cock starts jerking, and he holds me tighter, groaning against my gland something about his “perfect mate” and her “perfect, tight cunt” that almost sounds like poetry, and his orgasm lasts for . . . for minutes, I think. “That’s it,” he grits out. “That’s where my come goes.”

It’s perfect. I comb a hand through his hair and wrap my arms around him, feeling his heavy breaths reverberate through me, the sounds of his pleasure. Being filled up, witnessing him let go, it’s all so good, another orgasm crashes into me, so violent that everything goes blurry around the edges.

I stay there, spasming, holding tight, for a long time.

So long, I startle when he says, “I’m crushing you.” He rolls me on top of him, my breasts flattened against his ribs, and he’s still inside, still as hard as when we started. In fact . . .

I squirm. Shimmy my hips. Tug at whatever is happening down there, whatever is making it so that we can’t quite separate yet. It’s like he’s lodged inside me. Locked.

I test the connection, finding that it holds strong. The rational part of me says that I should be panicking, but my hindbrain is in charge at the moment, and it’s profoundly okay with what’s going on.

Instincts, Layla said. And one of them is to squeeze my internal muscles to make sure that there is no give.

“Fuck,” Koen swears, and he’s coming again, a short burst that has him driving his hips up into me, and he mumbles into me that “there’s no need,” that he’s “already fucking gone” over me, that I’m “so good,” it’s going to “destroy” him. So I do it again, just to watch the way the pleasure transforms his face, the tendons of his strong neck in relief as he arches back, his muscles tensing and releasing.

And once more, because he’s losing his mind, and I love it.

I could continue. Instead, I ask, “Koen?”

He’s too out of breath to reply, but he presses a kiss of acknowledgment against the crown of my hair.

“Please, don’t take this as a complaint.”

His hand was tracing my spine, but stops. “Did I hurt you?”

“Nothing like that. But I think I’m going to need a Were anatomy lesson before we . . . Actually, I think I’m gonna need it right now.”

His chin dips. He studies me to figure out whether I’m joking.

“Well,” he says at last. “Fuck.”

CHAPTER 34

One stolen moment. And another. And another.

ICANNOT BELIEVE LAYLA DIDN’T MENTION IT!”

“She probably assumed you knew.” Koen smiles a little and keeps drumming his fingers on the curve of my hip. “I certainly did.”

“This is mind-blowing. Does Lowe have one?”

He scowls. “I have not personally witnessed it, but– ”

“I didn’t mean . . . I’m not interested in my best friend’s husband’s penis. Or, I am, if she wants to, you know, talk about it because of issues they’re having. Say he was struggling with erectile dysfunction and Misery wanted to confide in me, I wouldn’t be like, I don’t care, shut up, but I also wouldn’t solicit nudes of Lowe– ”

“Serena.”

I clear my throat. “I think Misery may have tried to warn me.”

“About knots.”

“I thought she was on her usual bullshit, so I ignored her.”

“Understandable.”

“There’s a Human urban legend that Weres have inflatable dicks, but it’s widely believed to be made up. Like the rumor that Vampyres pulverize in the sun? But lo and behold, we found a single conspiracy theory grounded in reality. Of course it’s the one about genitalia.”

Koen doesn’t reply, so I lift myself up on my forearm and look at him. The knot– here I am, using new vocabulary in full sentences– has deflated, but I’m still half on top of him, clearheaded once again. He plays with my hair, marks every inch of my skin, squeezes the fat and muscles of my body, moving from curve to bone like he couldn’t stop even if he wanted. I wonder if he’s storing every little touch for later. If he’s even aware of what he’s doing, staring at me with a faint half smile that is just . . .

Lovesick.

It’s like a boulder in my stomach, the transience of this. Of us. We’re momentary. Impermanent. Doomed.

He deserves better. “So,” I say lightly, a little forced. “You do like sex, after all.”

“Did I say that I didn’t?”

“No. Just . . .” I chew on my lower lip. “Amanda said you never looked like you missed it.”

“Because I didn’t.”

I swallow. “Do you think . . . After this is done, do you think it’ll be harder for you to go back to not having it?”

“Serena,” he says, deliberate, level. “None of this is about sex.”

“Then what– ”

“You. This, all of it, is purely about you.”

I sit up, desperate to find the right thing to say. The sheet slides down to my hips, and Koen doesn’t pretend to look anywhere but at my breasts. “Still spectacular?” I joke, fighting the impulse to cover myself. It’s a little uncomfortable, being on display, even after what we just did.

“I hope you never find out the things I’ve done while thinking about them.”

I flush. “I was so self-conscious about my body. For the longest time.”

“Why?”

I draw up my knees. Cover myself. “Just the side effect of being the short, busty sidekick to a tall, elegant, cypress-like princess creature.” My cheeks are hot. “It’s nice, I guess. That you’re not disappointed in the way I look.”

“Disappointed?”

“Yeah. I mean, it could have shaken out in a different . . . Why are you staring at me like I just told you that angels’ wings are made of porridge?”

He exhales, speechless. “You know what? You wouldn’t get it.”

“How so?”

“Leave it alone.”

“But I want to know.”

“Just . . .” He bites the inside of his cheek, looking for the right words. “You are my mate. I would have wanted you no matter what. I will want you no matter what. But you are also . . .” He licks his lips. “If someone had given me a piece of paper and asked me to list everything I liked, everything I dreamed of, everything that I was sure would make me happy, you would have been the final product of it.”

My heart thuds in my chest. Good line, I want to tell him, just to dull the way it stabs through my ribs. No need to waste it on me, I’m already a sure thing.

But it’s so obviously not a line. He’s trying to explain something to me, something that he knows in his belly, and I . . .

I guess I’m listening.

“There could never be disappointment, because there were never any comparisons, or expectations, or hopes, or standards to meet. There’s only . . .” He casts a glance around the room, searching. Then his eyes settle on me. “There is only you, Serena.”

It’s unacceptable, his adoring expression. I hide my burning face in my knees and scramble for something, anything to say, but my mind is blank and—

“Hey.” He pulls me closer, into his arms again. “It’s a Heat. It’s normal, feeling unsteady. I’ve got you, okay?” I nod, and he twines his fingers with mine. Lifts my arm and inhales the skin in the crook of my elbow, where my scent pools. “I could live here,” he murmurs. “In this crease.” A kiss, soft lipped.

“I thought my elbows were too ‘fucking sharp’ for your distinguished taste.”

He smiles. Nips at me. “It’s going to build up again. Soon. You’ll feel more and more out of control.”

“More out of control than earlier?”

“Yes.”

“How do you even know?”

“I’m the Alpha of this pack. I know everything.”

I squint. “What’s the square root of pi?”

“Zero point nine.”

“Okay, I should have asked you a question I know the answer to. I’m just surprised, since you’ve never had the exigency of spending a Heat with– ”

“I educated myself when you started smelling like you’d have the exigency.” He lifts me into the curve of his body. Spoons me. “Just fucking believe me for once.”

“Hmm.”

“Rest while you can,” he orders.

Why not? This is nice. Perfect, even. I fall asleep nestled under his chin. Still thinking that– worse than earlier? Probably an exaggeration. I’ll be fine.

IT’S NOT. (AN EXAGGERATION.) BUT I AM. (FINE.)

Better than.

It hits me halfway through the first day, in the late afternoon light, a fleeting spell of clarity as I stare at Koen’s wide shoulders glistening above. He rocks inside me slowly, a languid, wet rhythm. I just came. A couple of times. He hasn’t yet. He tries to make it last as long as possible, every single time, and this is the best I can recall feeling in years. My world, when narrowed to just Koen and our nest, is light and kind and full of revelries.

I lean back. Study his slack mouth. His eyes, closed, squeeze tighter with every thrust. Like he has to brace himself. Build a dam every time, to keep his orgasm from spilling out. Pleasure is written all over his features.

I smooth his damp hair back with my palm and say, “Koen.”

His eyelids flutter open. He nuzzles into my hand like a big, half-tamed beast. Presses a biting kiss into the flesh right undermy thumb, an invitation to continue. It makes my insides spasm.

“Thank you,” I tell him. “For this.”

“I told you not to– ”

I arch to shut him up with a kiss, and with a soft curse he slides one arm between my back and the mattress to pull me up.

“You’re welcome. Lucky for you, I’m so fucking”– a harder stroke– “selfless.”

I inhale sharply, already quivering along his cock. My orgasm builds quickly, violently, a warm rush that has my thighs locking around his hips. “No, I . . . Thank you. For making this so– ”

Before I can tell him how disorientingly good this feels, his knot is growing, thick, inescapable, and he’s too busy hiking one of my legs back toward my chest to hear what I have to say.

This is how things should be, I think. Always.

AFTER WEEKS OF TRUANCY, MY APPETITE RETURNS AT THE WORST possible time.

I decide to give it the cold shoulder and focus on what’s rapidly becoming my favorite thing in the world: thrashing around and begging Koen to do something, anything, everything to me. Unfortunately, he really did educate himself about Heats. Not only did he memorize some doctor’s office pamphlet, but he’s also extremely literal about it.

We can start again after you have a strawberry, he tells me.

One more sip of juice. Like that. Be good. Give me one more.

Open up. No, not later– now.

You have to drink. A kiss against the flushed skin of my throat. Girls in Heat only get what they ask for if they finish their water.

“You know you’re not going to get a surprise visit from the Heat inspector, right?” I ask between shallow gulps of electrolytes. “There are no thumbs– up stickers for doing exactly what the textbook– ”

He grasps my chin and taps the pad of his thumb against my lips, pushing against them until I have no choice but to open. “Since it’s obvious that your mouth is not nearly busy enough, you’re having another glass before we continue.”

The nutrition is a boon. For the first time in months, I’m not exhausted or dizzy or confused. I don’t have a headache. In fact, I feel surprisingly healthy, even as I rub myself against Koen to get him to pay attention to me. The rational, cortical part of my brain knows he hasn’t so much as cast a glance elsewhere since the day we met. But as my Heat progresses, his scent becomes compulsive, and my wants snap into unprecedented focus.

Koen is perfect. Koen is strong. Koen is maddening and beautiful and mine, and I want what I am due. At my best, I am enamored with every inch of his body, with every word he rasps against my ear. At my worst, I am a savage, impatient, rude creature that tolerates no competition. Possessive. Impossible to reason with.

“Spoiled,” he mumbles against my lips, but there’s a touch of a smile at the corners of his eyes, in the webs of wrinkles irradiating from them. “Nuisance.”

So he seats me on his cock and splits me open, and as I strive to relearn how to breathe with him inside, he feeds me slices of fruit, whispering, Sweetheart. This is really fucking good. He rubs his thumb against my clit, and I clamp hard around him. My mind empties. I don’t think about the day I arrived here, unicorn waffles and too few chairs, and I bury my face in his throat as I try to finish chewing so that he can go deeper, so that we can move.

“Such a damn nuisance,” he repeats when my thighs squeeze around his waist, punching a grunt out of his chest.

I gasp for air, and he shouts out his pleasure when I suck his gland as hard as I can.

BY THE END OF THE FIRST DAY, WE’RE BOTH A LITTLE OUT OF OUR minds. The hormone bomb went off inside my body, but Koen wasn’t spared.

“Okay?” he asks, before starting to rock inside me the second his previous knot goes down. “I just can’t– ”

I nod. Lift my arms above my head, trying not to squirm as he kisses, licks, sucks, nibbles, worships my breasts.

“Fucking spectacular,” he says again. I cannot help my smile.

By now, he slides in like a dream, and I cognitively reframe the concept of having sex: not an act with a beginning and an end, but a continuous exchange of pleasure and hushed words. I know, rationally, that Koen and I are separate beings. It just doesn’t feel like it.

I come a lot. So does Koen. My ex– boyfriends are pale gray memories with no hope of bursting through the pink haze surrounding me. I do know, however, that sex has never been like this for me, and I cannot help but wonder, What’s the hinge? What makes the difference, really? The biology of the Heat? Or the fact that it’s with Koen?

I’ll never know. That’s the stipulation: afterward, we’ll go our separate ways.

I stroke my fingers through his hair. Pull him in for a kiss. Our eyes meet, and his face lights up with a grin.

“Hey,” he says.

“Hey.” I force myself to smile back and forget about after.

THINGS GET REAL ON THE SECOND DAY. I THOUGHT THEY WERE before, but . . . I should just accept that I know nothing and go with the flow. Yeah. That’s what I’ll do.

We don’t sleep through the night, but I do doze off at dawn, while Koen’s knot is inside me and he’s still twitching with pleasure. The last thing I remember is him coming and whispering in my ear, “Unbelievable, how fucking unreal you feel, soft and wet and warm and every good thing in the world, baby.”

I open my eyes to orange sunlight streaming through the window. Birds chirp in the tall trees surrounding the cabin, and Koen hugs me tight, my back pressed to his chest, both hands closed around my breasts.

He’s already moving inside me, shallow, staccato strokes that feel nothing like usual. I tilt the curve of my ass back to meet him, and his sharp inhale tells me that he wasn’t quite awake yet.

“Shit.” He buries his face in my hair. “Sorry.” My scent must broadcast how little I mind, because he doesn’t stop. His long fingers splay on my abdomen. Curl against my hip. He moves me against him in little circles, like I’m a doll, like my body is the most precious object he’ll ever own. He develops a quiet rhythm, chants things that have me questioning whether he’s still partially asleep. “This is it. How I want to wake up for the rest of my life.”

I must be asleep, too. I tell him, “Yes, yes, please.” Wonder: What if he just took me? What if I lived here, in this nest, hidden, stolen, stowed away? What if my entire life were just to be here, to make him happy? What then?

It sends him into a frenzy. He pounds inside me, his cock deeper than ever, bottoming out. I feel him in the back of my throat. With a snapping motion he splays my thighs open and rams me into the mattress. The heel of his palm presses between my shoulder blades, flattens me, and it’s sublime.

“Good. C’mon, killer, you can do it. Take it like– Good.”

Heat licks down my spine. Thrums in my belly. I try to grind against him as he swipes away the hair from my nape to find the green swirl on my upper back. Muffled obscenities vibrate through my body. Praises, slurred. His tongue against the thin, fragile skin of my gland.

He hasn’t touched me there yet, not since my Heat started.

One of his arms wraps under my rib cage to lift me up, fingers bruising me as his grip tightens. A hint of claws grazing against my flank, like he’s starting to lose control of the shift, the borders between man and animal becoming blurrier.

It’s the best thing I’ve ever known.

“Please,” I beg, not sure for what. But he knows. A low groan. He stuffs me so full, I wail at how good it hurts. Hot breath puffs against my hair, and he once again presses hot, open-mouthed kisses over my gland. I come instantly. His teeth scrape, then touch, then brace. He’s ready to pierce my skin. To sink them inside me.

It’s like the world stops spinning. Every cell of my body coalesces on my upper back, where my gland lives. Ready for Koen’s scar. Welcoming it.

I feel his knot starting to swell, and all at once I know what I’m asking for.

“Do it,” I say. “Please.”

He groans.

“Please.”

“God fucking damn.”

Koen rips himself away. He pulls out and turns me around, landing me on my back. His hand hooks under my knee, spreads me open, and he knots me like that. I come again. So hard, I think I see the edge of the universe.

“Don’t let me do that again,” he orders, catching his breath.

I peer up at him, trying to gauge his tone. I’ve never seen him so serious. “What?”

“You don’t want me anywhere near the back of your neck right now.”

“Why?”

“You smell beyond belief. And . . .” He covers his eyes with his palm. “I don’t know my limits. I might not be able to stop myself and might just bite you.”

It’s exactly what I want him to do.

I don’t say it, but he hears it anyway.

“No.” He gathers me closer. “It’ll just make things worse when you leave.”

Any response that comes to mind involves me shouting at him that I know what I need. I know what he needs, too, and it involves his wolf teeth as deep inside me as physics will allow. But I just came, and I’m too clearheaded to push his boundaries so shamelessly.

So I let him kiss me. I let him tell me how much he loves every single part of me, even as he doesn’t mention the whole. I let him touch the place where we’re joined together, where his come and my slick overflow and dribble out, like we’re the only thing that matters in the history of the universe. I let him make me come again, and I massage his knot till he’s coming, too.

I let him do everything he wants, and pretend that we have more than a short time left together.

I WAKE UP IN THE EARLY AFTERNOON AND WATCH HIM SLEEP. MY heart flutters and my stomach bubbles at how beautiful he has grown to be to me, specifically. Everything that his face means. The sides of him no else can see. Cheekbones that dust with dark olive when I loop my arms around his neck. The long, straight nose he scrunches as he calls me a nuisance. The scars that split his face when he cannot help a smile, and the shallow dimples hidden under the stubble he can’t be bothered to shave.

I could spend the next hundred years cataloging new things about him, and never be done. He could be the project of my lifetime.

Just like I’m his.

The Heat mounts, but I let Koen get some rest and I go to the kitchen to grab a new bottle of water, trying not to dwell on how wrong it feels, being out of my nest.

That’s where he finds me two minutes later, and he immediately crowds me against the fridge. The stainless-steel presses against the backs of my thighs, and I shiver.

“Are you wearing fucking clothes?”

“It’s just your sweater. I can– ”

“You’re not supposed to leave.”

He’s not joking. He’s genuinely upset that I . . . walked twenty feet and put on a hoodie? Hormones, man.

“I’m sorry,” I say, appeasing. He can’t help this any more than I can. “I didn’t mean to worry you. Let’s go back to bed.”

But we don’t. He silently flips me around and bends me over the table, uncaring of the papers scattered all over or the bottle rolling into the living room. He maneuvers me until one of my knees is on the edge, and once I’m spread open, he pushes inside me so roughly, I come halfway through the first thrust. He knots me quickly, in a few unceremonious, glorious strokes. For him it seems to be more about locking me closer than about coming, but my thighs shake with my orgasm and the effort to stay upright.

“Poor killer.” He hugs me and kisses my cheek. “She didn’t do as she was told, and now look.”

It doesn’t feel like punishment, not when his knot grinds inside me. That little bit of friction, coupled with his hand strumming my clit, makes me come so many times, I don’t even remember making it back to the bed.

ON THE MORNING OF THE THIRD DAY, THE URGENCY SUBSIDES. Somewhat.

“Is it over?” I ask Koen.

He scoffs. Twenty minutes later, when I climb on top of him, desperate for relief, I understand why.

But it is getting better. Less intense. With longer spells of normalcy. The fuck or die is waning in favor of . . . “Fuck or cry, maybe?” I tell him, and he laughs.

The end of this is in sight, and I do not want to look at it.

I feel good enough to take a shower, but Koen tries to talk me out of it, protesting that I won’t smell like him anymore.

“We are in your house. You are right here. There’s no way I’ll smell like anyone else.”

He grumbles for a while, even as he joins me and helps me clean up, looking morose the entire time.

Cute. He’s so cute.

For the first time in weeks, the water doesn’t sucker punch my skin into submission.

“What came before Neanderthals?” I ask him afterward.

He shrugs. Pouts.

“Whatever they were, you’re the one before them.”

He tosses me an apple, and his shut up and eat look is wry enough, I think I’m forgiven. But I’m deluding myself, because afterward, once the fever rises again, he makes me pay for it with his mouth on my cunt.

“I didn’t mean to– ”

“You didn’t mean to wash away my come like it’s a bad thing?” He sucks on my clit so hard, I almost pass out.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Koen, please, you said– ” I sob. It’s too much. Too good. Is this what happens when people slowly descend into madness and despair? Is this the feeling? “You said that I can’t come from this.”

“You can’t.” He leaves a bite on the tender strip where my thigh and my abdomen meet. I yelp, even though the pain is better than the constant, unbreakable tension.

“Then why are you doing it?”

“Because unlike you, I can.”

He can. And he does. A minute later I watch him, wide-eyed, as he comes just from eating me out. He growls his orgasm into my flesh, twitching with pleasure, kissing me throughout, and even though I’m left trembling and unsatisfied, even though I’m still in my twenties, I know that it’s the most erotic thing I’ll ever experience.

When he moves up, he’s still hard, tacky once again, and I cannot look away. My hands shake. I’m rapidly approaching the point where I’ll beg him, but this is my first chance to truly look at his knot. Since it’s usually inside me.

“Can I– ”

He sits back in the nest. Pulls me into him, wedging me under his chin. “What?”

“Can I touch it?”

“My cock?”

“No, your . . .”

He laughs. “Out of all the things to ask permission for, touching my knot is not one you need to worry about.”

“Is it sensitive?”

“I’m not sure. The knot and I are still making each other’s acquaintance.”

I peek up at him. “Does celibacy include . . .”

He snorts. “No. Though the Assembly would love to monitor the frequency of me jerking off.”

“Then . . . why?”

“It only happens when we’re with our mates.” His pecs rise, then fall as he catches his breath. “Or after we find them, anyway.”

“Oh.” My chest tightens.

“It’ll go down soon. Never lasts as long when I’m not inside you. Or maybe it won’t. It gets really happy when you’re around.”

I sit up on my knees. Observe him, fascinated by how free he is with his body. Even after three days naked, I still feel a little bit shy when I catch him staring.

But he said I could. Or, he said I didn’t even need to ask for permission. So I reach out and gingerly run a finger down his cock. The soft heat of him is a small shock, and I realize that I haven’t done this yet. Touched him. Enjoyed him.

I trail down to the base, where his knot is still distended and dark with blood. Koen shudders, eyes fluttering closed. His hand white-knuckles the comforter.

“Does it hurt?”

The question amuses him. “No.”

It’s an impulsive decision, leaning closer. And maybe the twenty years of forced celibacy did leave a trace. Maybe teenage Koen didn’t do it all and left some things off the table. I can point my finger at the exact moment his quiet, curious expression morphs into wide-eyed understanding: not until my mouth is just a hairbreadth away from his cock.

Caught by surprise, at last.

“Serena– ” he starts, then stops with a choked groan.

I swirl my tongue around him. Suck a bit. He tastes like a drug. Pulsates in my mouth. Sends me into a stupor.

“Fuck,” he swears.

I don’t attempt anything fancy, but Koen seems dazzled enough. Speechless. His neck falls back, brow drawn tight and beaded with sweat. The head of his cock catches against my throat, and he runs a hand through my hair.

“I’m going to– You need to– No.” His cheeks are dark with blood.

I hum in agreement, but his scent is like a leash, tugging me closer, begging me for more. He needs me, now. It’s heady, having him at my mercy. Knowing that his pleasure depends on me. I smile, truly happy, and lick his knot once.

It’s so rewarding, how he immediately starts coming. The out– of– control guttural sounds he makes. He grips my scalp so tight it hurts, and then he’s pulling me into his lap.

“You are so fucking– ”

His cock doesn’t flag. He drives inside me, hard, elbows hooked under my armpits, crossed on my back. The knot won’t allow him to go as deep as we want, but he certainly tries.

I snake my arms around his neck, hold him tight, and refuse to let go.

THE HEAT BREAKS ON THE FOURTH DAY.

The morning sunlight sneaks inside the room, dappling every surface. I stretch, pop my eyes open, and realize that a pyramid-sized boulder just rolled off my shoulders.

I haven’t felt this good in months, even though I’m approximately thirty hours behind on rest and badly need another shower. My stomach is a cavernous pit clamoring for nourishment. I’m sore between my legs, but the usual suspects are gone: no headache, no pulled muscles, no overall fatigue.

It’s paradigm shifting. The symptoms of my Heat rose so slowly, they became my new normal. I forgot what it’s like, not feeling like a box of stale saltines left open in a cupboard in 1947. It’s nothing extravagant– I doubt I could spring out of bed and run a half marathon, or even a 5K, without needing immediate resuscitation. But I’m decent. After being on the brink of croaking, it’s kind of a big deal.

I lift my arm up, right into a sunbeam. Stare at my hand and, without stressing too much, think about the other me. The crunchy sounds that rise from the bed of the forest. The cold rush of the first dive into a stream. The inescapable tug of the moon.

Yes, my body says. New cells knit together as old ones break apart. My nails grow three times their size. My ulna and radius reshape, and the flesh around them merrily follows suit. At last.

I exhale giddy, delighted laughter, turning my midshift limb back and forth, savoring the beauty of—

“I still haven’t seen your wolf form.”

Koen’s scratchy morning voice rolls into my skin. He’s still holding me, his arm heavy across my belly. I doubt he plans to let go.

“Don’t even know the color of your pelt,” he adds, musing.

I force my arm back into human form and turn on my flank, facing him. He is– perfect. Mine, mine, mine.