“Winslet—“
She didn’t answer with words. Her hands found his hips, her thumbs stroking the defined V that led downward. She heard his sharp intake of breath, and felt his muscles tense under her touch. Then she took his hard cock into her mouth.
Korrak’s groan was a raw, unfiltered sound that vibrated through her. One of his hands came down to cradle the back of her head, his fingers tangling in her wet hair. His grip wasn’t forceful, just grounding, an anchor point in the swirling heat. She worked him with a skill born of wanting to please, to worship, to prove that her choice was absolute and enthusiastic. She tasted salt and soap and him, and a fierce, feminine pride surged through her as he grew harder, his control visibly fraying.
Her own arousal was a slick, aching heat between her legs, a counterpoint to the rhythm she set with her tongue. Withevery movement of her mouth and every stroke of her hand, her confidence grew. This man, this Alpha who commanded an entire territory with a look, was shaking apart under her touch.
She wanted this every day. She wanted him every day. For eternity.
She took him deeper, her throat relaxing, and felt the tense, coiled readiness in him. A thrill shot through her—she could bring him there, could shatter that legendary control right here.
His hand tightened in her hair, not to guide her, but to still her. “Not yet,” he growled softly, the words strained.
He gently guided her head back, his eyes blazing with a heat that threatened to incinerate her. “I’m saving that for when I’m inside you. When the mate bond seals.”
He reached around her and shut the water off with a decisive twist of his hand. The sudden silence was profound, broken only by their ragged breathing and the drip of water from their bodies. He grabbed the towel on the hook as she stood back up, his movements deliberate despite the tension humming through the air. He dried her first, the coarse cotton dragging softly over her skin with a tenderness that belied the fierce hunger in his gaze. Every pass of the towel was a promise and a prelude.
When he was done drying himself off, he simply lifted her into his arms, and she wrapped her legs around his waist instinctively. She looped her arms around his neck, pressing her face against the skin of his throat, and breathed in his scent.
He carried her the short distance to the bedroom, to the bed where everything would change. He sat down on the cool sheets, and she straddled him, her heart thundering with anticipation. He was all she could see.
“Last chance to change your mind,” he said, his voice low and gravelly. The offer was genuine, and it nearly broke her heart.
Winslet reached down between them to guide his throbbing cock to her entrance. “I’m not changing my mind. And I’m not going anywhere,” she whispered.
The air between them felt charged and thick, like the moments before lightning strikes. Her fingertip brushed the head of his cock, a bead of moisture already gathering there, and the low growl that vibrated in Korrak’s chest was pure, unvarnished instinct.
Then her world tilted on its axis. One moment she was guiding him, the next his mouth crashed against hers, swallowing her gasp. It wasn’t a kiss. It was a claim, demanding and hungry, a perfect mirror of the physical joining that followed. She felt the blunt, heated pressure of him at her entrance, and then he was pushing in, an exquisite invasion that stole the breath from her lungs. Inch by torturously perfect inch, he filled her, a stretching fullness that melted into pure pleasure.
She clung to him, her arms locking around the solid expanse of his back, her fingers digging into the powerful muscles that corded there. He began to move, a slow, deep rhythm that was less about friction and more about permanence. She rolled her hips, meeting each measured thrust with a fervor that surprised even her. This was no passive surrender. This was a dance, and she was leading as much as following.
Pleasure coiled low in her belly, a tight, sweet spring winding tighter with every drag of him inside her. She tore her mouth from his, a broken moan escaping as she threw her head back, exposing the line of her throat.
The world dissolved into sensation. The scent of him, the searing heat where their bodies joined, and the sound of their ragged breaths syncing in the quiet room.
Rational thought was a distant memory. All that remained was a kaleidoscope of desire, a bedrock of trust, and a soul-deepawareness that this act was the final key turning in a lock she hadn’t known she carried.
“Korrak,” she breathed, the name a prayer and a demand.
His control was a marvel, but she could feel it fraying at the edges. The rhythm of his hips grew more urgent, and the depths he reached more profound. She took it, welcomed it, riding him with a new, desperate intensity. The coil inside her wound to a breaking point, white-hot and frantic.
His voice was a ragged scrape against her ear. “I’m going to mark you now.”
Her eyes flew open. She felt the shift in him before she saw it—a subtle tension and a predatory focus that narrowed to a single point on her body. She glanced at his mouth and saw the lethal elongation of his canines, ivory sharp against his lips. A spike of nervous excitement pierced the fog of her pleasure.
This was it. The point of no return.
Her climax was a wave gathering force, ready to crash. She met his blazing ice-blue gaze. “Do it,” she gasped, the words torn from her as the first tremors began. “Mark me. Now.”
He moved with the lethal grace of the apex predator he was. His head dipped, his mouth finding the tender junction of her neck and shoulder. There was no hesitation. The bite was swift, precise, and shocking.
Pain, sharp and bright, lanced through her, a searing counterpoint to the exploding pleasure of her orgasm. The two sensations collided, fused, and detonated into something else entirely. A second, more violent climax ripped through her, wringing a choked cry from her throat as her inner walls clenched around him in rhythmic spasms.
The pain was already transforming, melting into a strange, exhilarating warmth that seemed to flow from his mouth into her very bloodstream. It was in that transcendent instant, asshe was shuddering through the aftershocks, that she felt him shatter.
A guttural roar was torn from Korrak’s chest, a sound of pure, animal release. He drove into her one final, devastating time, his body bowing against hers as his own climax seized him. She felt the hot, sudden rush of his release filling her, a claiming as intimate as the bite. It was possessive, primal, and it sent another, smaller shockwave of pleasure through her spent body.
Then, it happened.
