The Lone Wolf's Rejected Mate (Five Packs #3)(84)

A sharp growl erupts from his throat, and he crushes my curls as he grasps my head, holding me in place as he takes my mouth, stealing my breath, knocking my flower crown onto the floor. He tastes hungry and sweet and warm and like home.

Prowling over me, as fierce and relentless as his wolf, he leans me back, lays me down, his lips not leaving mine for a second, his weight settling on my chest, his hard thighs parting my legs.

“You’re mine,” he whispers against my cheek. “You’re mine,” against my temple. “You’re mine,” on my forehead, along my hairline.

“Yes,” I exhale, my fingers fumbling at his waist, tugging his undershirt free, popping the button on his jeans. I want to touch him. I want him inside me, making my body believe what he says, that I’m his, that he’ll never leave me again.

He bats my fingers away, shucking his pants and stripping me of my leggings, greedy in a way he wasn’t even when he was going into rut. Our legs tangle, smooth against rough, and his forearms pin mine to the hardwood, his palms enveloping mine, his lips quivering against the tender skin around his bite.

I feel how desperately he wants me in the tension of his muscles, the pressure of his weight, the raggedness of his breath. The knowledge makes me want things. Gives me ideas.

I nip at his lower lip, wriggling my arms until they’re free. I shove at his chest. His eyes fly open, a question shining through the gold.

“Roll over,” I tell him.

It takes him a second, and then his brow smooths and his mouth curves. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.” I push him as he rolls, following until I’m straddling him, spread wide, open and vulnerable in a way I’ve never been before. His happy trail bristles against my wet, swollen pussy.

I straighten my spine. My knees barely reach the floor, and my hip sockets ache. His rough hands are resting on my splayed thighs, and he’s smiling, broad and dopey and gently amused.

“What are you going to do now, Miss Mari?” he asks.

He’s so big, I feel like I’m on top of a horse. His hot cock rests against the cleft of my ass, huge and thick and insistent, and I’m not sure what to do next.

I fold forward and crush my needy breasts to his chest, pinning his forearms to the hardwood. I twine my fingers with his and gaze down into his face, drawn tight with self-restraint and bemused at the same time. His wolf rumbles, and my nipples stiffen impossibly harder.

“I guess I’m not going anywhere,” he says. His voice is happy and ragged. I do this to him. I make his eyes sparkle and his heart thump.

I lean down and kiss him, softly, licking his mouth open, sliding my tongue inside, his tortured growl buzzing my lips.

He could flip me back over as easy as pie or grab me by the waist and hold me in place as he slams his cock into me. Perched on top of him, it’s never been clearer how much bigger and stronger he is.

He’s not going to, though. He’s keeping himself very still, as if he’s afraid the slightest move will frighten me away.

I sit back up with a happy sigh. I love this. The wild male is completely tame for me.

I rock, rubbing myself against his hard lower belly to assuage the throbbing need between my legs. He groans, the creases in the corners of his eyes deepening as if in pain.

I prop myself on his chest with one palm, slipping my other hand through my legs to find him. When I do, he tenses under me and sucks in a breath.

I notch the head of his hot cock into my aching entrance, and I smile down at him. I lean forward. My hair tumbles into my face, a curl catching in the corner of my mouth. He reaches up, freeing it, spinning it around his finger.

He smiles up at me. “So what are you gonna do, beautiful girl?”

I wriggle my hips, but I don’t sink down. His smile freezes into a grimace.

I hover above him, close but not close enough, and I growl, “Say it.”

“Say what?”

I let my wolf’s voice join mine, and we bend lower, our cheek brushes his, our lips dusting the crook of his neck.

“Say it.” We scrape our fangs across his skin.

He folds his arms around us.

“I’m yours,” he says, and we sink our teeth into him, taste his blood as he bucks his hips, driving in to the hilt with a snarl of victory.

He works me, and I ride him, sending the waves cresting inside me higher and higher as I lap at my mark, and he digs his fingers into my shoulders, holding me to him as if nothing in the world could ever make him let go.

“Say it again,” I pant.

“Yours,” he rasps. “Always yours.”

I wrap my arms around his straining neck, clinging for dear life, taking him, taking it all, trusting him with everything, knowing I own him, heart and soul.

The waves inside me crash, and I sob my release while Darragh snaps his hips a final time and spills inside me with a hoarse shout. Dazed and trembling, I straighten on top of my mate, my bleary gaze rising from the abandoned flower crown up to the tiny white lights strung around the sanded, stained, and polished wood beams.

In this hazy, blissed out state of mind, it looks like I always imagined happy ever after would look. The exact aesthetic.

A cold, sober thought snakes into my mind.

It can be mine.

I can be a princess in a tower.

I can have a perfect happy ending.

All I have to do is ignore the monster inside the man. Accept this perfect approximation of what I’ve always wanted and avert my eyes from the part of my mate that’s broken and lost in the past and doomed to be alone.