Unbound: Shifters Forever Worlds(13)

The image of those magazines flashed across his mind. And in almost every one, he was linked to one female or another — whether that was true or not. Most often not.

No wonder she doesn’t want anything to do with me.

He hadn’t been an angel, true, but he wasn’t quite the manwhore the tabloids made him out to be.

His shifter skills preternaturally fast, he was behind her before she’d opened the front door. He took hold of her arm, turned her, and froze.

That wasn’t anger on her face. Those were tears.

Fuck.

His leopard snarled at the dismay etched in her face. Dane pulled her close, put his arms around her and held her to his body.

He’d done this to her. He’d wounded her. The only woman who’d ever mattered, the only woman he’d consider a soul mate, and he’d hurt her.

Her face was pressed against his chest, her tears seeping through the fabric. He looked at the top of her auburn head, and a part of his heart shredded into fragments.

Finger on her chin, he tipped her face upward. Tears cascaded down cheeks blotched with pink. The white of her eyes were red, making the green so much more vivid. Her bottom lip trembled and she bit into it, putting a stop to it.

Index finger still on her chin, he placed his thumb on her lip and released it from pearly white captors. Her gaze remained focused on his face, not straying, not looking away. Accusations in the emerald depths took the shredded fragments of his heart and ran them through a blender.

“Glory.” Her name came out with his breath, hushed, low, and ripped from his very soul.

His shifter senses picked up her heart rate speeding up.

The heat between their bodies, the electric charge where she leaned against him traveled through his torso, ending up in the one place showing how she affected him.

His cock pressed against his zipper painfully.

Full breasts pressed against his chest, her nipples hardened peaks.

Let her go before you f*ck her. Right now.

He pushed his conscience away. Or maybe that was his leopard pushing his conscience away.

Who cares? As long he pushed that thought away. The temptation to be with her was too great.

He hissed his desire, a whistling sound that escaped between his teeth and bore witness to the depths of his emotions.

He wrapped one hand around the long braid that trailed down her back and pulled her head back, baring succulent lips and tear-streaked cheeks.

A small gasp slipped from her lips. Her breath warm on his approaching lips.

“Don’t hurt me,” she whispered. Her voice low and tortured.

“Never.”

Fuck. I shouldn’t have said never again.

He lowered his head until his lips rested on the rosebud of her lips. He pulled her closer, his thighs melding to hers, his cock pressed against her mound.

Dane closed his eyes, sinking into the memories of their first time together. The way her body had opened and taken him in, though she’d been so tight, it had been painful for both of them — but only at first.

By the time he’d climaxed inside her, she’d been able to take his thickness and had reached her own orgasm.

That didn’t help.

No, that trip down memory lane did nothing other than make his cock harder and his heart more entrenched in a woman soon to be someone else’s.

Just. Fucking. Great.

He didn’t care if she was supposed to be someone else’s. That was another group’s codes. That wasn’t his code. His was clear: Glory was his. His body ground against hers.

She tasted so sweet. His tongue swept in, and gave in to the overdue need to take her, to make her his.

She can belong to no other.





9





Glory was unable to push away the yearning that Dane created in her. At the juncture of her legs, her body throbbed and her muscles spasmed in response to his thigh ground into her clit. The friction made her pulse race and her core thump a beat that drowned out all other sound.

Dane’s tongue took her prisoner. His mouth claiming her, reminding her she belonged to him all those years ago.

Her inner thighs tightened. In her mind, her ivy pushed for his snow leopard. Glory knew she’d missed the leopard, but she couldn’t allow this. She pushed her ivy away, deep into the recesses of her mind.

Glory tipped her head further back as his tongue explored and conquered. A shudder ran through her. Her ivy, responding to him, even though Glory had tried to push her back. His kiss became more demanding while moisture built between her legs in response to his attentions.

His hand ran up her side, from her hip, under her shirt, to just below her breast. She held her breath, her lungs swelling to bursting from the built up pressure.

A hiss escaped him. His hand traveled up, over her lace bra, found her nipple, hard and peaking for him. She shook as his forefinger and thumb rolled the rosy tip, making her ache for his mouth to be where his fingers were.

His bulging length pressed against her mound, his hand on her breast, his mouth on hers, it was too much. Glory moaned — a sound she couldn’t have controlled if she’d wanted to.

Another thing she couldn’t have controlled — her hands. She found the hem of his shirt and slipped her fingers beneath, running hands over a set of abs that rippled as her fingers trekked over his flesh and headed north. His chest was sprinkled with hair and covered with solid muscle.