Filed To Story: Alpha's Regret: His Wrongful Rejection
The corners of his mouth turn up.
He drops his grip on my hand, but I leave it. He reaches for my damp hair, smoothing it behind my ear. Delicious shivers race down my neck. I swallow a moan.
He strokes over my shoulder, down the sensitive side of my breast, over my ribs, my hip, my thigh. His fingers come to a rest at the crease behind my knee. I’ve never been touched there before. It feels excruciatingly intense, but I’m too spellbound to squirm.
I stepped on an electric fence once by accident, foraging with Abertha east of Moon Lake where our territory abuts human farmland. That’s what Cadoc’s touch feels like. It turns me raw.
I’m breathing in short pants, and I don’t know whether to watch him touch me or watch him look at me, so I switch between his hand and his beautiful eyes. They’re impassive as always, but I know exactly what he feels. I can read him from the inside.
He’s in awe. Burning for me. Holding onto his control for dear life.
My lips curve. He takes me by the hips and pulls me flush against him, my heavy breasts crushed to his chest, his hard cock digging into my stomach. He wraps me in his arms, and lowers his mouth to mine, closing his dusky eyelids, his black lashes feathering his cheeks.
My harshly beautiful mate. He doesn’t know quite what to do with me—it’s not like I know, either—so he does everything.
He kisses me, tastes me, demands that I open for him, lashes my tongue with his, exploring me, his hands roaming my back, caressing my ass. He wants all of me at once, so he can’t make up his mind—slip his rough fingers into my wet slit from behind, bite my lower lip ’til it stings and then soothe it with his tongue, wedge his knee between my thighs to grind against my throbbing clit.
I’m feeling his touch, and through the bond, I know what he feels as he touches me. It’s a feedback loop, and it’s tearing away whatever shyness and reserve is left between us until we’re wrestling, writhing, tasting, sighing. The quilt’s twisted in a bunch. There’s a pillow in our way—it gets pitched to the floor.
We end up gasping for breath, me on my back, him braced on his arms above me.
“Do I get on my hands and knees now?” I pant between kisses.
His arms tense; his abs bunch. “Humans do it like this,” he says. “Face to face.”
“How do you know?”
“Videos.”
“Face to face?”
He nods. The silver in his eyes is a whirlpool. A tornado.
“Okay.”
His lips turn down, and he focuses between my legs. He nudges one of my knees to the side and slings the other over his arm.
I do a crunch so I can watch.
His forehead furrowed, he guides his cock, slides it through my slick folds, and notches it where I ache for him.
“Is this right?” he asks.
“Yeah.” I lift my hips, urging him on.
He sinks inside me, slowly, his muscles shaking with the effort to go slow, his eyes screwed shut. I don’t even try to stifle my moan. It feels so good. I’m so perfectly full.
The sound seems to cut the reins holding him back, and he withdraws and thrusts in again to the hilt, over and over, at first restrained and methodical, and after the third or fourth stroke, hard and greedy and single-minded.
“It feels so good,” I gasp, clinging to him, my arms hooked under his, my fingernails digging into his bunched shoulder muscles.
He lifts my leg higher, and his cock pounds deeper. My stretched channel begins to spasms, clutching him in pulses that send starbursts of pleasure through my belly and outward in a wave of exquisite want and need and almost, almost satisfaction.
Cadoc kisses me feverishly, my forehead, my neck, my clavicle. He grabs my arm, dislodges my grip on his back, and raises my hand to his mouth, squeezing my fingers tight as he kisses my knuckles, my wrist, the tip of my thumb.
I am everything to him.
The knowledge floods my chest, as loud as a bell on a cold winter morning, echoing through me, pumping through my veins, resting in my bones.
Cadoc Collins loves me.
No, more than that.
Ianimate him.
In this moment, he is fully alive, and I’m in awe. I reach up with my free hand to trace his firm jaw. “Mine,” I whisper.
He surges forward, coming with a groan, his whole body seizing, filling me with hot seed, his knot swelling and stretching me to my limit. I burst and dissolve in a rush of bright and sparkling ecstasy. My toes curl so hard they cramp. My lower abs flutter. My pussy constricts around him, and then I go limp like a noodle.
No, not limp. Languid.
Somehow, Cadoc still has bones in his body. He props himself over me on his forearms. He runs his nose along my cheek, over my chin, down my neck. He kisses the pulse throbbing at its base.
He scrapes his fangs gently along my shoulder. Hot shivers shimmy down my arms, my spine. I’d been calming my breath, but now it comes quicker.
He raises himself so our eyes meet. I blink.
He swallows and compresses his lips.
I know what he wants. What he’s asking.
I think I’m already his, though. And he’s already mine.
“Please,” he says, gruff and deep.
I nod, and I turn my head. “Yours,” I agree.
With a growl from his wolf, he sinks his fangs into my neck, claiming me. I whimper in pain, and his distress floods the bond. He carefully extracts his canines, laving the wound with his tongue, his wolf rumbling a soothing purr.
The pain recedes, my shifter healing working overtime. In no time, the claim mark is a sting, and I’m yawning, totally and completely exhausted. His knot slowly deflates, releasing a rush of fluids. Damn. The sheets were clean.
Cadoc scoops me to his chest, wrapping me in his arms. Somehow, he untangles the quilt and covers us. He is strong at my back and anchored to my heart.
While I drift off, he brushes hair off my neck and admires his work, brushing my claim mark with kisses, his wandering hands seeming to check to make sure all my parts are accounted for and well.
I’m losing myself in the mellow contentment of the bond, on the very verge of sleep, when there’s a moment—like when a signal briefly breaks through the radio station from Chapel Bell.
Cadoc is steeling himself. Something is coming. Time is short.
But then, in an instant, the feeling is gone, swept away by his joy and our satisfaction.
Chapter 12
12
Chapter 12
ROSIE
My bite is healed, but the fang marks remain, pink puckered slashes down my neck. I can’t stop touching them. Cadoc notices and smiles. I didn’t know he could look smug, but apparently, he can.
It’s been a mostly uneventful week. Cadoc caught a fat rabbit. Turns out he’s never skinned one before, so that was interesting. I learned that “squeamish” comes through the bond. It’s stronger now, wider and deeper. More nuanced, if that’s the word.
It’s fascinating. And terrifying.
Because strong, arrogant Cadoc is afraid. It’s not cowardice or worry. It’s a fear before battle. I’ve never felt it before, but now it flows into my chest, spiking my adrenaline and making it impossible for me to settle.
So I fuss. We hike up to the den to plan our move, and I fuss over where we’ll put the Airstream, and whether our pup will fall in the pool, and if the cave will flood when it rains and snows, and what will we do if bats come to roost? Or birds? Or both?
Back at camp, I fuss over my nest, and our dwindling supply of tea, and strange sounds in the night that Cadoc investigates and are always the wind.
I fuss about whether he’s actually going to investigate, or whether he’s going to take a leak and then telling me what I want to hear.
Cadoc finds it highly entertaining. He thinks it’s the pup that’s making me irritable. When he’s had enough, he pulls me into his lap and rubs my belly, kissing my claim mark and whispering in my ear.