“To keep you full all the fuckin’ time.” His free hand reaches to rest on my lower stomach. “By the end of winter, I’m gonna breed your ass so fucking hard, you’ll be carrying the next Alpha. Then leaving won’t be a possibility.”
Given the birth control spell my body has, my hormones aren’t much good to him at the moment. Which is good, because having a baby is literally the last thing the coven or pack needs, given my future with Twilight Grove. Yet, despite that—and the fact I’m so far away from wanting a baby, it’s not even funny—it doesn’t sound…bad.
One day.I’d witnessed Ryder with Claire and the other kids, and admittingly, I’ve always had a fondness for them, preferring to hang out with the coven’s children rather than people my own age. One day, but not until everything gets settled between him, me, the war, and our species. Until then, spending the winter trying—letting him attempt to—sounds fun.
“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”
“Yes,” I hiss, half speaking the truth.
After another thrust of his fingers, he pulls them from me and reangles himself behind me. Hot skin comes in contact before his cock slides in deeply, pulling out once before slamming home.
His grip on my hair falters, both of us simultaneously freezing to adjust. He then regains his hold and arches me to the point of discomfort, making his cock feel so much fuller inside me.
“Let me hear you, Carina. Let the pack hear you, so they accept you’re here to stay. You realize you broke all our hearts, right?”
“Yes.”
“So prove to them why you’re not running again. Become my mate for them all to hear.”
Why the hell is this such a turn-on? Never really got the idea behind any kind of exhibitionism until now.
He thrusts deeply, my grip on the stone falters with my weakening arms. Between his hold and the waning of my muscles, my body is torn in two different directions.
Until he releases my hair, grabs my hips, and with minimal dislodgement, manages to flip us over until I’m on my back. Silver eyes stare down and fingers that shift into claws imbed into my skin. It’ll leave cuts, but after tonight, it’s what I want.
My neck, my hips, my thighs. Between his teeth and his claws, I want his claim anywhere he’ll lay it.
He grasps my thighs and pushes my knees down, spreading me wider before coming down on top of me. Hands beside my shoulders, he lowers his arms and his thrusts slow. Slow but reaching deeply inside me, enticing a wave of heat.
“This is what your life will be like. I’ll be inside you every single day. I’ll claim you any way possible—inside and out. You’ll never know another male. I’ll protect you with everything I am and everything I have. You’re the sun my day rises and sets on. My moon in the dark. My direction north so I can always find my way home to you.”
Neither of our kinds follow human concepts of wedding ceremonies. For shifters, the bite on my neck is it, and the oaths spoken during a witch’s union are sealed with magick before their souls are bound. His proclamation are vows I take inside me—feelto the depths of my soul. His claim is already in my skin. By all accounts, we’re wed.
Answering him, I dig my heels into the ground and arch up. “I wouldn’t want it any other way.”
His thrusts continue at a languid pace, and the weight of his body makes me feel everything he promised: safe. I’m where I’m meant to be, and nothing will change that. Heat builds until the orgasm hits me. He kisses me through it, lifting my leg up and over his shoulder to draw it out for longer, until my panting breaths mingle with his smoother ones.
“That felt…”Intense.It was slow building, like our entire relationship.
He kisses me deeply, his tongue flicking against my lip as he nips his way down my cheek to nuzzle my neck again. “That,” he starts into my skin, “was one of many for tonight. That was the way I say, ‘I love you’, but now let me show you how I say, ‘I’m keeping you’.”
He rolls me back to my knees and thrusts inside. A hand on my neck pins me submissively down, my hair tossed over my face as my moans careen into the furs. The angle fills me so deeply, a sound I don’t recognize comes from my throat.
“Ryder.”
He growls, and I’d kill to see behind me—to see what he looks like in this instance as his thrusts increase, the knot in his cock slowly expanding, filling, stretching, reminding us exactly how I’m made for him. The burn is delicious, followed by a heat through my insides as he comes.
My body slumps from his hold, face into the furs. “I’m dead.”
He chuckles, dropping beside me and rolling until my body is tucked into his, his cock still embedded inside me, where he’ll be for the next while. Content, I’m more than pleased to sleep like this.
An apology rests on my tongue, but exhaustion quickly wins. We’re together. Anything that needs to be said can wait until the morning.
Seventy-Three
RYDER
My first-ever shiftwas one of the most exciting moments of my life.
