Because I really, truly, loved Giselle with every fiber of my being. She was a saint for putting up with so much more than she ever should have had to, but thanks to her, we’d found something beautiful.
Thanks to her, I was watching my family heal in real time, something that I’d been holding them back from without even knowing. Because of her, dozens upon dozens of children were going to continue their schooling with positive outlooks and strategies to help them figure out what their learning style was. She was a force of nature, an unrelenting purveyor of good, and I was lucky to be in her presence, let alone have her love me.
“I’m sorry if I used the word wrong,” Giselle said, and I was horrified that her scent was souring. Shit! I’d gotten a bit too far in my head again. I had grown better at that lately, but the surprise had knocked me back into old habits.
“No, no, nothing to apologize for.” I had to kiss her again, so I did. I could tell she was confused, but the slightly sour smell of uncertainty left her. “That word threw me a bit, that’s all. I never thought I could possibly have that again.”
“A mate?”
I nodded. My cock pulsed in protest, disappointed at being neglected, but I had more important things to worry about. “I know it’s ridiculous, but I was so focused on being able to admit that I am head-over-heels, irrevocably in love with you, that I hadn’t really thought about...”
“Is that something you want?” Giselle asked.
I wanted to lie and brush it off. The thing was, Giselle was always painfully honest with me, and she deserved the same respect. Even if it made me cringe a bit.
“Yes, I do. But that doesn’t mean you have to do anything. I’m fine with being in love, being a couple, or any other relationship milestones that happen.” I was botching it, I was botching it so bad, but to my surprise, Giselle smiled at me.
“You’d wantmeas your mate?” She said it as if that was somehow baffling. “You’d wanna bite my neck? Have me wear your teeth marks so every shifter who sees me knows that I belong to you, and you belong to me?”
That was the last thing I’d expected to hear her say, and it went right to my heart and my straining length, making both jolt.
“I… you…” I fumbled.
“If it’s what you want, then I want it too. I told you I’m in this forever, and I mean it. So, if you’re ready to share that part of your culture with me, please, do it. I don’t care if I don’t have a mating gland, and I don’t care if it leaves a scar. In fact, I want it to.
“Please, believe me when I say that I want to share every part of our lives. Your culture, my culture, our worries, our pains, and all the victories we have to come. We’re in this together, as long as you will have me.”
My wolf was rising higher and higher, his mind running parallel to mine. He wanted nothing more than to do exactly as she asked, and I could feel my teeth expanding as they did every time she riled us up. But it was such a serious thing, such a sacred thing, that I had to be absolutely sure she understood what she was asking.
“Please, Giselle, you have to be sure. You can’t ask me to do this if you’re not one-hundred-percent resolute about it.”
It was only my deep, intense love for Giselle that was holding me back. Because my entire mind, body, and soul wanted nothing more than to be mated to the woman who made each day better and brighter. But I had to do right by her. I owed her so much, and if I mated with her irresponsibly, then I would deserve the worst of hells.
Giselle yanked me back down to her a second time, a surprising amount of strength left in her after how physical we’d already been, and she kissed me with a fervor that made my knees weak. Tongue beseeching, scent spiking, heart going a million miles a minute. This time it was she who kissedmebreathless, leaving me panting when we parted.
“You listen here, Benjamin Poynter. I love you. I love you more than I ever thought it was possible to love a single person. And I want to be your mate. So, if you’re ready for it, you put your damn teeth in my neck and make me come so hard I lose my voice.” The seriousness in her expression faded slightly, and she sent me a look that would have made the devil himself blush. “And if you’re not ready, that’s okay, we can just do the second part.”
“God, what you fucking do for me,” I managed to get out before giving in and doing what we both so clearly wanted.
I reached between us, gripping my straining erection. I wanted inside of her.
No, Ineededto be inside of her more than I needed to breathe.
So I slid in, bit by bit, drinking in her gasps with a kiss as I did. She was impossibly wet for me as she always was, her smell filling the whole room like a drug. I relished being intoxicated by her. I wanted her seared into every aspect of me until it was difficult to tell where one of us started and the other ended.
Mate.
I kissed my way down her neck as I made the slow, deliberate slide into her. Like always, the wilder side of me wanted to thrust into her unabashedly, but I knew my love. She needed time to adjust before she begged for more.
And I always gave her more.
I waited until I was fully seated within her, one arm curled around the small of her back to press her to me, and the other buried in her hair. We were connected at all points, our heartbeats syncopating into our own percussive movement.
God, I loved her. My whole body throbbed with it. So, I poured all that passion into finding that spot where her neck met her shoulder, where all large predator shifters had mating glands.
She didn’t have one, but that didn’t matter. No, all that mattered was us and the family we were forging together.
“Are you ready?” I asked, pulling my hips back an inch, feeling her walls relax around me as I stopped about halfway out of her.
