Am I ready to join with him, to be locked to him by his knot in my sex and his teeth in my flesh as he mates me? Saints, I’m perfectly, joyously ready.
I beckon for him, and he settles between my thighs, hitching one of my legs up around his hips as he drives into me.
“I want your bite, Ian. I want you forever. My imperious, brilliant, inevitable mate.”
He takes my hand and presses a kiss to my palm, then guides my arm up around his neck. I draw him down until he can nuzzle my throat and drink in my scent the way I drink in his. He brushes his lips over the unblemished curve where my neck meets my shoulder, on the opposite side of Cassian’s bite. “Right here?”
“Right there,” I murmur.
He sucks and licks at my sensitive skin, tempting and teasing me as he makes love to me. We move together, made for each other, inevitable. Alpha and omega and so much more.
His knot flares at my entrance, and his thrusts become jerky.
“Need you to come for me again first, my darling,” he begs, his voice ragged with desire.
“Ian,” I protest, but it’s weak and cut off when he finds my clit with two fingers.
He winds me up until I’m on the verge of flying apart and then drives forward, plunging his knot into me. We come together, wrapped around each other, my cunt squeezing his knot as waves of pleasure cascade through me.
At the very peak of my orgasm, he sets his teeth against my skin and bites. He sinks his teeth into my flesh, locking me to him with his bite and his knot until a second orgasm crashes through me. Our bond slams into place between us, and it’s not ecstasy but joy, pure and potent, that flows through us.
He licks and cleans his bite as he works his thick knot inside of me, gently drawing out my desire, but nothing else we could do could ever compare to this feeling. Saints, it’s like how love flowed between us after he unlocked my magic, deeper and more poignant for everything we’ve been through together since.
His instincts don’t spike, though he holds me close, possessive and protective. Instead, through our new bond, I feel the most exquisite serenity.
Because this was inevitable.Wewere inevitable.
Since the very moment we met, everything that’s happened between us, who we’ve become to each other, was inevitable.
* * *
We’re dozing,luxuriating in what we’ve just shared, when a shock of alarm jolts through my new mate. I feel it through our bond, as sharp as if it were my own.
“What is it?”
“I think I’ve solved it. The Ever Ember hex. I think I can remove the embers now. I just need to work, but, but we’re?—”
“Currently very knotted together. But the moment we’re not, you need to get this down.”
“I should be here in your nest, with you.”
“Ian,I’llbe withyou. We finish this together. Tell me what you’ve discovered.”
“It’s those sigils you found. They’re the piece of the spell that’s been missing all this time.”
He walks me through his thought process, thinking out loud, and I fill in the pieces, connecting the gaps in his reasoning until we’re sure it’ll work. Until his knot deflates and we’re able to part.
We dress each other quickly in the first clothes we can find, and then I draw him down from my nest to his brand-new study.
He stops just inside the door, his mouth falling open.
Sweet, surprised awe flows through our bond, and he wraps his arms around me, nuzzling his fresh bite. He takes everything in, from the careful arrangement of his books and notes to the formula for the Ever Ember hex I’ve transcribed on the new blackboard, complete but for the last few sigils.
“You did this all for me?” His voice is soft, as if I’ve given him the greatest possible gift, not just unpacked a few boxes of books.
I smile and I slip from his arms, though it takes everything in me to part from him. I walk him around the office, showing him the exacting organization I copied from his office in the basement of Saint Guinnette’s library.
“The pack helped and did the heavy lifting, but they don’t understand your very elaborate filing system.”
