“It’s,” I tried. “No one’s ever,” I tried again. I mean, I’d never even done anything like this for anyone else, let alone been considered a candidate for being on the receiving end. Of course, that described more than one aspect of my relationship with Calder.
Any way to finish the sentences I’d started would’ve been painfully honest. Fuck it. After decades of trying to be all kinds of things I never could’ve been, I’d ended up at Calder’s mercy at my very lowest point. I’d been honest with him. Agonizingly so. And now I had a new life, a second chance beyond my wildest dreams.
“No one’s ever thought I was good enough for something like this,” I finally managed to say.
“Good enough? No one really knew you.” He moved at last, coming close enough to pull me into his arms, or to kiss me.
But he didn’t. He tugged my jacket down my arms, one and then the other, tossing it aside. He reached up and wrapped his hand around my throat, caressing the angle of my jaw with his thumb, tilting my head up so that I had to meet his eyes: the palest possible gray shot with icy blue, overlain with silver, fixed on me with an intensity I’d probably never get completely used to. He looked at me hundreds of times a day. And it still gave me a flutter in the pit of my stomach to have his undivided attention like this.
“This isn’t anywhere near what you deserve. Nothing like good enough.” His other hand slid around my waist, under the hem of my T-shirt, and the one at my throat moved down. I liftedmy arms obediently as he pulled the shirt up and off. His hands went to my jeans next, unfastening them and pushing them down to mid-thigh along with my boxers.
I couldn’t help my whimper as he crouched down in front of me and lifted one of my feet to rest on his knee, unlacing my boot for me. My cock stood out in front of me with what felt like all the blood in my body in it; he had to crane his head around it so it didn’t poke him in the eye. One boot, and then the other, working the boots and my socks and my pants and boxers all the way off, until I stood in front of him completely nude.
Hadn’t I meant to get on my knees and suck him and please him until he lost his mind? But he’d gotten there first, and when he leaned in and down and swallowed my cock to the root, I forgot everything but the searing wave of near-orgasm that rushed up my spine and bowed my back, made my balls draw up and my hole clench, desperate for him to fill me.
I cried out, curling over him and burying my hands in his shoulder-length hair, thrusting into the heat of his mouth, lasting barely long enough to moan one more time before I came down his throat.
Calder caught me before I could topple over, scooping me up in his arms and laying me down in the softness of the blankets in front of the fireplace. My head spun, my spent cock giving a final pulse of pleasure. I shivered as he let me go and stood, the air in the room still chilly despite the fire.
I gazed up at him as he stripped his own clothes, tossing them after mine into the dimness and dustiness of the other end of the room. Fine. He usually did our laundry, so I wouldn’t complain, not when it left him so magnificently bare, with wide shoulders and broad, muscular pecs, the ridges of his abdomen, the tree-trunk legs. He made me look small, and I’d always stood out in a crowd for being tall and well-built—before I’d starved and atrophied for two years, anyway. But I’d been getting mybody’s strength back. Calder, on the other hand, had gotten leaner in our prison, but never weak.
He made me look small in other ways, too. That cock. Fuck, that cock. My breath came faster as he stroked it slowly, root to tip, a pass of his thumb over the shiny head and then down again.
Calder knelt between my legs, gently pushing them apart, and leaned down, down, until his lips brushed mine. My mouth trembled into his kiss, my tongue darting out to taste the last of my own release on his.
He lifted his head and met my eyes unblinkingly, like the predator he’d always been. I’d been terrified of him when we mated, and yet I’d given him my complete trust. It’d been the best choice I ever made in a lifetime of terrible ones.
The fire crackled, light and heat dancing over my skin and his, casting his planes and angles into sharp relief. Silver and reddish gold mingled in his eyes, otherworldly.
“This still isn’t as good as you should’ve had, but it’s better,” he said. “I’m going to mate you tonight. Just like I would’ve the first time if I’d been in a position to show you what you were worth.”
“Mate me?” Maybe he’d sucked my last few brain cells right out of me with that killer blowjob, but it took a second to compute, and when it did, it—hurt. A surprising amount, because our mating had been, objectively, awful. But it had been the turning point for me. And it wasours, dammit, fucked-up as it was. The hurt showed in my voice as I said, “Like a do-over?”
Calder’s face softened, the way it only ever did for me and for Arik. The heat in his gaze was all for me, though.
“No, baby, fuck,” he said, and kissed me, lingering and sweet. “Not a—look, mating you? It was the best thing that ever happened to me. But it’s one of the worst memories of my life because of how much I hurt you, and it has to be a million timesworse for you. You should’ve had warmth. Laughter.” He stroked the side of my face, running the tip of his finger over the smile lines by my mouth. “You laugh more than anyone I’ve ever met. Even then, you were trying to crack jokes, and I thought you were out of your mind.”
“Yeah, pot, meet kettle,” I muttered, and he grinned at me, shaking his head. We’d both been a little around the bend by the time we’d met. “It’s not the worst memory. Everything that happened for two years before that is the worst memory. It is what it is. Mating you is the best thing that happened to me, too. And falling in love with you. And I don’t want to replace any of it. Not that I don’t want this! I do, but—”
He cut me off with another kiss. “You know how people renew their vows? When they had weddings to begin with? Like that. I’m not trying to replace anything. We’re making a new memory to go with the old one.”
“People usually wait like twenty-five years to renew—oh, fuck, yes, please—” Calder released the nipple he’d pulled into his mouth and moved to the other, his hand coming up to play with the wet one, flicking it and pinching it and cupping my pec. The shadows of the fire projected up onto the ceiling blurred above me as my eyes rolled back in my head. “People, they wait,” I gasped. “A while. We’ve been mated for…” I couldn’t even count months, he had me so flustered, sharp incisors pricking at my areola while his thumb swiped over the other, slightly too rough, fucking perfect. Fuck. “Less than a year!” I cried out triumphantly. That was true, anyway.
Calder moved down, biting at my ribs. I bucked up, needing, needing—his cock buried in me, his knee to rut against, anything, any part of him between my legs. He pinned me with his hand over my sternum. When I lifted my head, I found him looking up at me through his lashes as he ran his tongue downto my hip. The pathetic, choked sound that came out of me would’ve been too filthy and wanton for porn.
He slipped his hands under my legs and lowered onto his elbows, spreading his arms out and pushing me open.
“I want you to tell me when you fell in love with me,” Calder growled against my inner thigh. “The moment you knew. Usually that’s supposed to happen before you mate,” he added pointedly. “Hence this. Tell me.”
His tongue traced a path toward my hole, and he reached a hand under my balls and lifted them, squeezing them together with my hardening cock. From his angle, he’d be able to see inside me. I clenched involuntarily, and he let out a low, rumbling sound of approval.
“Tell me,” he repeated, and kissed the tender skin under my balls. A flick of his tongue. And then he stopped.
“Fuck,” I whispered, panting up at the ceiling. I knew from experience there wouldn’t be any point in begging; I’d do what he wanted, or else. My eyes prickled with tears. How did he always strip me down to the studs like this, with nowhere to hide? “When you came for me. At the—” I swallowed down nausea, because even now, even here in this perfect place of safety and warmth my mate had made for me, I could go right back there at a moment’s notice. “The place where they took me. From the bar.”
“Shh, sweetheart.” Calder pressed kisses all over whatever he could reach: my thighs, the curves of my ass. Everywhere but the place I wanted him. “I’m sorry I asked.”
Yeah, maybe, but he also had wanted to hear it. “You were in the doorway,” I managed, clenching my hands in the blankets under me, squeezing my eyes shut.
