My only requirements.
Noa whines against my chest, her fingers curling into my shirt, her face rubbing over my heart as if she’s trying to thread herself closer. The scent of her need is thick now, clinging to the frigid, damp air. Sweet, aching, and sharp enough to make my head spin and nerves turn raw. It’s stronger than I’ve ever scented it before, even when my cock was nearly knot-deep inside her. It’s proof of what’s coming. Proof that something bigger is looming on the horizon closer than Noa’s ready to admit. To me. To herself.
The warm, syrupy scent of her need is hitting me like a match to dry kindling. My veins burn with it, igniting my own breed of carnal arousal. One that has blood surging low until the heavy weight of my cock is a constant pressure against the confines of my jeans. Every step makes me painfully aware of it as I follow behind the property manager.
Teeth clenching, I shove it down. My own desire is irrelevant right now. Not when I have the weight of Noa—a living, whimpering ball of raw need—in my arms.
The manager stops at a room far from the main lobby, on the ground floor, tucked into the corner. He barely gets the door unlocked before I shoulder past him and push it the rest of the way open. His mouth opens, maybe to explain something about the establishment’s amenities, maybe to offer additional help, but I don’t give a shit. I pull the key from the handle, slam the door shut in his face, and turn the lock until it clicks.
Turning, I take a quick inventory of the room. Queen-sized bed. Red plaid bedding. Faded green carpet. A TV that has to be two decades old sits on the heavy wooden dresser. Various wildlife pictures hang on the wallpaper-covered walls—including one of a wolf.Ironic. It doesn’t smell musty like I half expected. Instead, it smells heavily of a lemon disinfectant spray.
Noa makes another, needy omega noise and her body presses even closer to me—getting relief where she can.
“Please,” she manages, voice hoarse. “I need… It hurts.
It’s not the words that gut me, but the way they’re said.
“I know,” I murmur, pressing my mouth to her damp temple as I cross the room. “I know, baby. You’re doing so good.” The instinctive praise slips out without conscious thought. “I’ve got you. I’m going to help you now.”
I lower her onto the middle of the bed with care, moving fast but never rough, making sure my hands never leave her long enough for the panic of my absence to creep in. I ensure she knows I’m still here. Always here. I tear through the layers of clothes that separate us, impatient now, my only priority easing the discomfort that’s tearing my girl apart. My fingers hook into the cotton of her dark-plum thong at her hips and drag it down her legs. The second the scrap of material clears her ankles, she curls inward as another wave of that unbearable need crashes through her. Her breathing turning into groans, my name spilling from her lips like a broken prayer and plea at once.
I catch her by the thighs before she can curl in on herself, stopping the instinctive retreat and guiding her back until she’s lying flat. A faint noise of protest trembles in the back of her throat, but it dies before it can truly take shape when my fingers circle her ankles and I drag her body down until her ass meets the edge of the mattress. Her glazed-over, haunting eyes watch me closely as I bend her legs, pressing her heels into the comforter, before dropping to the floor on my knees before her delightfully open and exposed body.
The truth settles deep in my gut. This is my favorite view. Eye level with my mate’s cunt, pink and glistening with slick. Proof of her body preparing to let me thrust deep into what’s mine—begging for me to give it my fat knot.
“Ren…”
“I’m here,” I tell her, voice steady even as something dark and feral coils low. “Breathe, baby. I’ll take care of you.”
I don’t make her wait any longer. My arms hook around her smooth thighs, holding her open for me as I lean in and lick up the slick that’s spilled from her entrance. The warmth blooms across my tongue, sweet and heady, and I linger just long enough to savor it before giving all my attention to where she needs me most. My lips seal to her clit, applying suction without a semblance of mercy until her spine bows off the plaid bedding and her breath catches hard in her lungs.
With the amount of slick she’s given me, I know she’s more than ready to take my cock. Still, the need to break her once first—to give her release before I drive myself into her—has me coaxing her closer to that edge. She’s been hovering there since this spike began, teetering, and waiting.
I shove her over it within seconds, devouring her sweet cunt until she comes apart.
Noa falls over that edge with a sharp cry and near-violent, whole-body tremor. Her muscles lock, her thighs trying to snapshut, but I tighten my hold on her legs and keep her open, licking her through every second of it. I take everything she offers, devouring every drop, swallowing it down like a starved man who’s found the only thing that can sustain him. It’s moments like this that I think there might be truth in it.
But there’s no peace waiting for her on the other side of it. Her hips still rise and fall, restless and searching when I pull back, panting. It’s not enough. The spike hasn’t eased the way it should have. It’s still burning hot. If anything, by the way her scent has deepened, nearly making my head spin with its intensity, I think it’s only grown stronger.
I don’t allow myself to sit with what that means—that the clock we’ve been trying to outrun is catching up to us—even as worry squeezes my ribs.
That’s not something I can fix right now. What Icando is keep helping my mate through this.
I kiss along both of her inner thighs, lingering and sucking on the right side long enough for a mark to bloom there. The simple, primal act of marking my mate eases the beast pacing beneath my skin as I straighten to my full height. In the same way I stripped the clothes from her overheated body, I do the same to mine. Boots kicked aside, jeans, shirt, and canvas jacket all gone within seconds.
I never take my eyes off Noa. Not the way her petite body strains, not the broken sounds slipping from her parted lips, each one nearly undoing me as she pants through the discomfort of the spike.
Naked, I step back to the bed and reclaim her ankles. I bend, lifting her legs until they’re pressed to my chest, her feet hovering all the way up by my fucking ears. The position and our size difference has her hips lifting and tilting off the mattress, but it gives me the access I need. The position—andthe difference in our size—forces her hips to lift and tip off the mattress, but it gives me exactly the angle I need.
“Eyes on me, sweet Noa,” I tell her, threading enough alpha command into my voice to fight through the haze she’s drowning in. Her shining eyes snap to mine and to my delight, they’re fluxing between her human irises and the gilded ones that belong to her wolf. This moment is for her human half, but I’ll never reject an opportunity to look into her beast’s eyes, to acknowledge the part of her that’s still locked away from me.
Soon, I promise myself and her wolf,we’ll free you soon,little mate.
“Are you going to be a good little omega and take my cock?” I ask Noa.
She pulls in a sharp breath, my words landing exactly where I want them to. Her pink tongue slips out to wet her lower lip. “Please,” she breathes. “I need it, Ren. Give it to me.”
Making my mate beg isn’t something I’m interested in.
