“You get off in me,” I said flatly. “Are you fucking kidding me?”
“I didn’t say that,” he muttered.
“Unlike some people in this room, I’m not an idiot! Those were the next words out of your big fucking mouth. And how the hell is it two different things that I can’t give birth and also don’t want any kids? I mean, yes, they’re two things, but they’re very related. You like children. I’m starting to think—” I had to stop for a second and take a deep breath, because that prickliness in my sinuses meant trouble. Crying while knotted had to be at least a nine out of ten on the embarrassment scale. Ian would probably get even more turned on, freaky fucker. Gods help me. “I’m starting to think you really want some. You know. Your own. Not just children in general. And I’m not…”
Not going to cry while knotted, that was what. Maybe I should put that bullshit tongue twister on a coffee mug and drink tequila out of it alone later, when Ian had gone off to find someone less completely unhinged to be in love with.
I turned my head away. I couldn’t look him in the eye while I sniffled. Then I’d have to grow a mustache, change my name, and move to Thailand to escape the shame—as soon as I’d recovered from the tequila hangover.
“Baby,” Ian said, sounding genuinely shocked. “No. Look. You know I’m not very good at this. I was trying to figure out how to talk about it while you were in the shower, but then you were naked. Nate, come on, look at me.”
“I won’t,” I said, and squeezed my eyes shut. I’d cry for real. Tequila, mustache, Thailand. No.
“Fine.” He let out a long sigh. “Sweetheart, yes, I like kids. Yes, if you changed your mind, I’d be open to it. Later. Much later. But do I need them? Fuck no. I needyou.”
Now I could look at him, because he’d annoyed me enough to glare at him instead of being all sad-eyed.
“You really expect me to believe that you don’t wish I wanted some or could pop them out on demand when you’re telling me you want tobreed me?”
I’d hoped that the disbelieving two-octave rise in my voice would distract him from the quiver that went through my still-knotted abdomen as I said those words.
Ian’s eyes narrowed. Shit. No such luck.
“I’m thinking maybe I’m not the only one,” he said slowly. And rocked his hips. Oh, gods, when he stayed in me this long, sometimes he’d get a new erection without fully losing the last one. And somehow he felt bigger when that happened. Like he’d gone deeper with every passing minute. Another gentle thrust knocked the breath out of me, and I gasped and grabbed onto the sheets under me. “I think you like the idea of me getting you so stuffed with my knot you can see it under your skin.”
My eyes nearly crossed with the effort not to moan out loud. “That’s insane,” I gasped. “That’s not—breeding. That’s not what that means!”
His gaze sharpened, and he cocked his head. “Yeah, I think the metaphor works,” he said, and I stared up at him, mouth falling open. Metaphor? Fuck me sideways. Usually Ian had all the subtlety of a clawed, glowing-eyed sledgehammer, and then he’d come out with something like that.
“Did Arik get you another word of the day calendar for Christmas and I didn’t see—oh, oh fuck, please,” I choked, as he knelt up and tugged my ass up too, tilting me onto his thighs. The new angle of his cock…no, I couldn’t actually see it through my skin, but then he put a hand on my stomach and pressed down, massaging in circles.
“I know what a fucking metaphor is, Christ,” he growled. “Breeding you. Filling you up so that there’s a not a fucking minute of the day where you’re not leaking come out of you, and there’s always more. You always have me inside you.”
Okay, maybe crying while knotted wouldn’t have to be embarrassing, or at least not the bad kind. Maybe Ian’s eyes going all wide with overwhelming desire while I sobbed out my own, spreadeagled over his lap with his big hand rubbing me and practically trying to jerk himself off through my taut, stuffed belly wouldn’t be badat all.
“Tell me how much you want it,” he said, his voice coming out rough and feral through his dropped fangs, and I found myself doing exactly that, moaning out broken, wanton pleas for him to claim me, own me, use me like an alpha werewolf’s little bitch.
By the time he came inside me again, roaring loud enough to shake all those ceiling spiders out of their webs, his knot forming even bigger this time, I’d come again too. Twice. Every one of my muscles felt like jelly.
Ian leaned down over me again, nuzzling into my neck. I could barely feel it. My nerves had strung and then unstrung and then spooled off into the distance, and there was a fuckingmetaphor for you, Ian. Except that I didn’t have the strength to move my numb, gasping lips.
“I love you,” he said. “So much.”
You got it right that time, I wanted to say. Instead I slid into the world’s most well-earned nap.
***
It’d been a really long time since that soft, quiet half hour of post-coital drinking coffee and finding my clothes had made me all blushing and shy. In fact, maybe it never had. It’d never been soft or quiet before Ian, for one thing. And I’d been living with Ian long enough that I felt more comfortable with him than I did in my own skin, most days.
But I shivered as he came up behind me where I stood getting a sweater out of the closet. He rested a hand almost tentatively on my hip and kissed the shell of my ear. I’d gotten a pair of jeans on, but my bare back goose-bumped from his proximity.
“I love you,” he whispered, and kissed me again. I glanced over my shoulder, my cheeks hot, a sappy smile tugging at the corners of my lips. Everything between my legs still felt kind of…melted. Wet. Thoroughly used.
Bred.
Gods.
Ian’s face had the same flushed, glazed quality to it that I knew mine did. His answering smile set my fool heart fluttering.
