The connection between them was too extraordinary.
Never mind the fact that when the sun came up, she could step out at his side and walk in its light.
All because of their mating bond.
She still wasn’t sure how to discuss it. Or how to hope for a true family. How to tell Elijah that in the deepest parts of her heart, she had longed to belong to someone and have them belong to her. For no reason other than that they loved each other. In the dark, violent, vengeful world she’d been raised, she had never dared to admit such a dangerous dream.
Could she now?
With him at her side?
The words trembled on her lips as she awoke to find Elijah sleeping naked beside her. The male had wrung more pleasure from her body than she knew was possible. Echo was pretty sure a human would have had a heart attack.
Smiling at the thought, she moved down his body. His beautiful, hard, sculpted body.
It belonged to her as much as his soul did now.
She might not be able to say it out loud, but she could express her feelings in other ways. Echo wrapped her lips around his cock and slid him into her mouth. It only took a few pulls and licks for him to harden and throb.
For his eyes to flutter open and bleed into gold at the sight of her staring up at him with his cock between her lips.
“Bloody hell, woman,” he groaned hoarsely, his abs rippling as she sucked harder. He hissed and arched into her. “You undo me,” he whispered.
That’s exactly what she wanted. His strong thighs tensed under her fingertips as her tongue trailed along a vein on the underside of his cock. Elijah’s breathing stuttered before seeming to stop entirely as Echo sucked with sudden determination, bobbing her head so her mouth slid with tight suction up and down his length.
“Echo,” he groaned, lifting his hips off the bed to push deeper. “Love, yes, yes, fuck!”
She smiled around him and took him deeper.
“I want to come inside you. Stop, love.” As she kept sucking, his voice deepened as he commanded harshly, “I want your pussy, not your mouth, so get over here and ride me.”
The part of her that hated taking orders from anyone, no less a male, prickled, but her inner muscles squeezed.
She really did enjoy when he bossed her around in bed.
But only in bed, her expression warned as she released him from her mouth.
Elijah laughed softly. “I know.”
Echo kissed the sexy cut of definition at his right hip, her lips tracing a path along his torso as she moved upward. Knees on either side of his hips, she hummed with want as she felt his cockbrush against her inner thigh. Taking his nipple in her mouth, tongue flicking, her moan muffled against his body as she felt his rough hands cup her breasts. Echo rubbed into him, eager for his touch. When his thumbs brushed them, she shuddered, panting against his chest.
Elijah made a pleased sound as he pinched her nipples between his fingers and thumbs. She barely had time to recover from the streaks of white-hot lightning that shot between her thighs before his right hand coasted down her stomach.
As two fingers slid into Echo’s slick heat, her back arched.
“You are soaked. I think your pussy needs my cock, no?”
“All the time,” Echo admitted, lost in her desire. “Will it always feel like this?” she asked as she guided him between her legs.
“Fuck, I hope so,” he snarled as he slammed upward into her, fucking her from the bottom.
Echo arched backward, braced her hands on the bed beside his thighs, so he thrust into her at the most delicious angle. She moved slowly, riding him with the same tempo he’d first licked her earlier that evening. Torturous.
Echo watched him beneath her lashes as his gaze roamed over her. That burnished gold darkened his eyes as he stared hungrily at her breasts that trembled while she rode him. His hands gripped her hips, his fingernails digging in, keeping her moving at a languid pace. His features tightened as the heat between them increased and a light sheen of sweat covered their skin.
“You’re my mate,” Elijah declared suddenly. “I want you to be my mate, Echo Payne.”
Her inner muscles squeezed with want. “I know,” she admitted, tears blurring her vision. “I don’t know … how.”
