The Lone Wolf's Rejected Mate (Five Packs #3)(23)

There’s a tang of salt in the air, and I know it’s coming from him. The scent drives my thinking self even further back into the recesses of my mind, and I pat a few last pillows into place.

Hazily, I note that Darragh is stripping, so I roll onto my belly and prop myself up on my elbows to watch. He’s the best possible male for me. His body is the kind of strong that looks tested and tried, tanned and tough, faint scars decorating his skin like random hash marks. A shifter has to be hurt very badly—or very young—to scar. My mate is a warrior.

I smile. He will be a good protector for our family. He’ll never hurt us. I know it in my bones.

For a moment, an echo from the past casts a shadow over my happiness, but I don’t reach for it, so it passes as easily as a cloud blown by the wind.

Darragh’s thing—his cock—is standing up straight, and even though I’ve seen plenty before—we’re shifters, we get naked—I’ve never looked. It’s thick and long and vaguely threatening, but in a way that makes me rock my hips into the mattress, chasing relief for the ache I started with my fingers.

He strokes his length with his strong, rough hands, his eyes swirling so prettily. It’s weird that a male so rugged and imposing and standoffish can be pretty, but he is. To me.

I want to do what he’s doing. I sneak my hand under my flushed body to slip through my sopping wet folds again, finding the nub that’s throbbing and flicking it like I do sometimes late at night when everyone’s asleep, or sometimes in the bathtub, quietly, so no one suspects. This feels so good. His eyes on me makes it feel sharper, more raw, more all-consuming.

Darragh’s chest rumbles. I reach for him with my free hand. He comes to me immediately. My wolf and I growl in harmony, pleased and ready and brimming with squirming, gnawing excitement.

I’ve been waiting too long. It’s past time.

Darragh kneels in my nest, and I roll over onto my back, scooching towards the headboard to make room for him. My knees fall open, and his eyes drop immediately to watch me plunge my middle finger inside my hole as I thumb my clit.

“You know what you like,” he says, gruff but approvingly, and I flush with the praise. His face is hard and inscrutable, but his dick strains, and every one of his muscles is bunched impossibly tight, like he’s holding himself back.

“You don’t have to. It’s okay,” I tell him, and I know he’ll understand what I mean, because the bond between us is singing, speaking tongues that I’ve somehow known since before I was born. This is the male made for me, designed by Fate to please and protect me. The sire of my pups. The male who’ll replace the family I lost.

Everything is unfolding exactly as it’s supposed to.

He reaches for me with shaking hands, running the calloused pads of his fingers down my side, over my ribs, along the crease of my hip, his touch exquisitely gentle.

“Up you go,” he growls and takes me by the waist, rumbling reassurance as he turns me onto all fours, stroking my spine as I arch like a cat, raising my hips and sliding my knees apart. I look at him over my shoulder, my curls bouncing.

He’s focused between my legs, brow knit, lips speared down, a sheen of sweat glistening on his beautiful chest and abs and arms.

I whine, impatient, rocking back and forth. My wolf and I are past ready, the want becoming almost a burn. An agony.

“I won’t hurt you,” he tells me again, so low that I don’t think I’m meant to hear. He notches himself at my entrance and takes a deep breath. “Say stop if you need me to stop,” he says in a stronger voice.

I need him to start. I push back, but nothing happens. The pressure against my opening feels good, so good, but I want him inside. I growl and wriggle my knees wider, reaching behind to grip him by the base and urge him to do it. He hisses.

“Be patient,” he says and slaps my ass, not hard enough to even sting, but it sends a wave of sparkling, rolling wonderfulness crashing through me.

I mewl and mash my chest into the mattress to hike up my hips, to show him what I want him to take. A drop of my wetness tickles a path down my inner thigh. He rumbles and finally—finally—flexes his hips, pushing harder, forcing me to open for him, and I do, stretching to accommodate him, and with a jagged groan, he slides inside me, filling me near to bursting.

I squeak and tense. He freezes mid-thrust, and after a moment, he strokes my flank, shushing me even though I’m not making any noise. I’m adjusting. It's a lot. I’m stuck. Pinned. Surrounded.

Does it hurt?

I can’t tell. It pinches where he’s entering me, but further in, it feels amazing, like he’s pushing something that wants to be pushed so bad, and I had no idea my insides could feel as much as my outsides, but in a different way. Blunter, but better. A delicious taking. No, a belonging.

“Could you, uh, move?” I ask him, realizing as I speak that I’m panting.

He growls low, and his hands stop soothing me and grasp my hips, hard, holding me in place while he carefully pulls out and plunges into me, over and over, in a steady, controlled rhythm, and even though it feels strange, somehow too careful and too controlled, the strokes inexorably ratchet up a tension inside me, twisting me tighter and tighter like a wrung washcloth, and I begin to chase the feeling with my rocking hips.

He slips a hand between my legs and touches my clit, exactly the way I like, in firm circles. I yip and bury my head in my arms. I feel so good, surrounded by softness, my mate at my back, his fingers playing me perfectly, tingles skating up and down my limbs like a hundred burning wicks, sizzling brighter and faster until the sensation explodes in waves and waves, obliterating my mind and shattering my heart into glittering shards like diamonds.