Beauty in Spring (Beauty #1)(20)

Mine. Always mine. Forever bound to me.

Chest heaving, I pull her up and she sags back against me. “I can’t,” she pants breathlessly. “I can’t come again.”

I won’t force her to, then. Not for another hour, at least.

My cum spills down her inner thighs as I slowly withdraw, but before she can reach for her clothing to wipe it away, I swing her up against my chest. Cradling her against me, I start off toward the manor house.

Toward home.

In the moonlight, her pale hair is silver. Her blue eyes shine with love as she gazes up at me, her swollen lips forming a soft, shy smile.

Then curving downward, her brow creasing.

I will allow nothing to mar her happiness. “What?”

“Your teeth,” she says quietly, her lips quivering. “You still have fangs.”

So I do. But they are already gone. “I will keep them small, if they displease you.”

“Displease…?” Confusion forms a furrow between her eyebrows. “No. But I thought we broke the curse.”

“There is no breaking it,” I say gruffly. “There is no cure.”

And I would not want it if there was. Unless Cora asked it of me. Because a cure now would be like ripping away half of my soul.

But I would sacrifice that for her.

“Then…what happened? How did you fight free of the beast and gain control?”

“Because there’s nothing to fight now. I am that beast.” I struggle to explain what I don’t understand myself. But it is what I know. “We shared a heart and soul. And it was as if we were two halves of a whole with a rift between us. But you healed that rift. Now we are not two halves. Just a whole.”

She gazes silently at me for a long time. “That’s a little weird.”

I nod.

“But so are magical necklaces.” Linking her arms around my shoulders, she smiles up at me. “The fangs were kind of sexy.”

I grin.

“Maybe not that long,” she says, then laughs in delight when I shrink them again. “Now ask me.”

My voice thick with emotion, I do as she says. “Will you marry me, Cora?”

Her blue eyes are solemn. “If I say yes, will you ever let me go?”

“No,” I vow.

“Then yes,” she says, smiling happily.

“I love you, my beautiful Cora,” I growl softly, then capture that smile in a heated kiss.

And far less than a hour passes before she comes again.





Epilogue





Cora




Fourteen months later, the first day (or night) of summer…

Silver light from the full moon shines through our bedchamber windows as I lie half-asleep in bed, awaiting Gideon’s return—until sleep deserts me completely when plaintive cries sound from the nursery.

Since the date of his birth—which came a month early, on the night of the winter solstice—our son has never had a good sense of timing.

Smiling, I wrap a silk robe around my nude body and slip through the door to the adjoining chamber. The glow of a nightlight offers gentle illumination—and a view of the eight-foot-tall werewolf bending over the crib, with a six-month-old baby protectively cradled in one giant clawed hand.

“Just because our son is crying doesn’t mean he’s hurt,” I tell the beast. “So you can stand down. It’s probably a wet nappy. Or he’s hungry.”

Those vivid green eyes narrow on my breasts. His wolfish grin exposes razor-sharp teeth.

“Bad beast,” I tease him, and gently lift Lucas out of his arms, turning toward the changing table. “He needs a new diaper. But you probably already smelled that.”

His rumbling growl holds the sound of a laugh, and he edges in close behind me as I tend to the baby. His enormous form radiates heat like a furnace against my back, his breath hot over my skin as he bends to lick my neck.

“Behave,” I whisper, even as shivers of pleasure race through me.

He behaves until I lay the sleeping baby down in the crib, then his big hands roughly grip my hips from behind and pull me back against his thickly furred chest. Through the thin silk between us, his steely arousal is a massive burning length against my back, too massive, yet the beast still takes what he wants, tearing aside the robe and sliding his hand into wetness and heat, the rough pads of his fingers rubbing over my sensitive clit.

Clinging to his forearm, I gasp out his name. “Gideon.”

His answer is a ravenous growl, and he swings me up against his broad chest.

My breath coming in ragged pants, I tell him, “Put me down.”

His snarl draws his lips back over gleaming teeth.

“Put me down,” I say again. “Then you can chase me.”

Because his beast loves that. And I love what happens when Gideon catches me.

Though they are the same man. This I know with a certainty through to my bones. They have the same heart, the same soul. Whatever the beast is, he’s not something that came from outside of Gideon. Instead it was a part of Gideon that was unleashed.

Still, the beast that he is never relinquishes me easily. This time he sets me on my feet for only a moment before he grips my waist and easily lifts me straight up into the air, thick muscles bulging in his shoulders and arms, my body dangling in front of him. Through a haze of arousal, I look down at those shining green eyes—and at that wolfish grin as he nuzzles the glistening curls between my thighs.