North grunted in reply, already reaching to help me peel off my t-shirt. “Gods, your scent is so strong right now… it’s driving me crazy.” He took his time, letting his hands and eyes explore my body. He was more than a little pleased to find I was going commando under my flannel pajama pants.
I’d always been a little nervous getting naked around boyfriends in the past, but this time was different. Maybe it was because North wasn’t a boyfriend—he was mymate. There was something comforting in knowing we were made for each other, because that meant even my body would be perfect in his eyes. But also… there was no denying he liked what he saw.
“I want to taste you, Joel,” he said, eyes focused on my cock, hard and aching, dripping precum. He took a single step closer, and my heart bucked in my chest, a prey instinct telling me to run.
Instead of fleeing, though, my mind recalled the wayhe’d licked up my throat, his tongue hot and searching, and I found myself nodding hard. “O-Okay.”
Gripping me around the waist, he showed off his shifter strength by lifting me into the tub, without even straining. He followed me in, before he reached back and cranked on the shower. The water was ice-cold at first, and I yelped, jumping out of the spray. But the tiles were even colder when North pressed me back against the wall.
“Stay,” he demanded, before he dropped to his knees right there on the floor of the tub. He ran his nose along my length, groaning lewdly at my scent, then without so much as a tease, swallowed me whole.
“Holy shit!” I cried out, clambering to brace myself, and finally grabbing his shoulders to keep from falling over.
North took me as deep as he could, lingering with his nose buried in the curly hairs, and let out a long groan that sent vibrations all the way through me. He drew back slowly, his tongue laving the underside, before he sucked on the tip, teasing at the slit.
Oh gods, there was no chance I would be able to hold off from coming. What he lacked in skill, he absolutely made up for with fervor.
He found a rhythm that made me whine, and then got faster the louder I got. North’s hands started to roam, massaging my thighs, pinching my nipple, and when he reached up and put his fingers in my mouth, I sucked just as he did.
I was getting too close, and I wasn’t anywhere near ready for this to end. “North, we should… slow down before I…” I panted, releasing his fingers from my mouth witha pop. When I tried to pull myself from his mouth, though, he let out a feral yowl that reminded me of trying to take food from an alley cat. He slapped my hands away and pinned me to the tiles so I couldn’t even writhe, adding even more suction.
“Oh fuck, N-North. I-I’m going to—” That was as far as I got before I threw back my head with a cry and shot my load down his throat. He suckled, swallowing everything I gave him, as he murmured in utter satisfaction. Then he cleaned me thoroughly with his tongue, as though he didn’t want to waste a single drop.
When he rose up to stand in front of me, his eyes were fully gold. “That was… everything,” he rasped. He reached between us and stroked my soft length tenderly, before cupping my balls and giving them a gentle squeeze. “I want to do it again.”
I laughed huskily, dropping my head back on the shower tiles, my eyes rolling back at his ministrations on my oversensitive cock. “You’re going to have to give me some time to recover.” Although with his fingertips teasing over my slick taint, I could already feel myself stirring.
North simply smiled a very feline grin of mischief and drew me under the spray. “Then it’s a good thing we have all the time in the world.” He grabbed a bar of soap and set about cleaning every single inch of my body, until I was begging for more.
Chapter 15
North
WhenI’dshownupat Joel’s apartment, I hadn’t had much of a plan beyond trying to win a chance to prove myself. I needed to show him I could be the perfect boyfriend for him, regardless of my ability to shift into a jaguar. I’d halfway expected to be kicked straight back out, and I was ready to grovel if need be. Instead, he blew my mind by readily submitting to the connection he felt too.
I refused to let him do anything he might later regret, so I promised myself that no matter how much Joel begged, we weren’t going to have sex yet, and there would be no marking. And boy, did he ever beg. It was a true test of my resolve.
There were plenty of things we could do without full penetration, things I’d spent years hearing the other alphas in my pride bragging about, things with fingers andtongues. I wasn’t a prude, I’d watched porn, but so many videos were about an alpha’s satisfaction, and that wasn’t what I was interested in. To me, there was nothing hotter than pleasuring my mate, and so, instead of sex, I spent the day learning every sound he made, mapping them out on a scale of one to “I can’t feel my legs.”
That wasn’t to say that I didn’t climax a few times too, but one of those came simply from tonguing his ass, so… it seemed more than fair to me.
And between orgasms, we talked. Like,reallytalked. About his parents and how lonely he’d been growing up as an only child, his regret that they’d been too old to really play with him. In return, I told him about how overwhelming it was to grow up in a large pride, surrounded by well-meaning aunts, uncles, and cousins who all knew your business. There was no privacy where I’d come from. We talked about how maybe together, we could find a happy medium.
Shifters, especially fated mates, often jumped straight to the claiming, skipping straight past the talking phase. I was grateful for the opportunity to get to know my mate properly. Maybe there was something to this human dating thing after all.
For dinner, we ordered pizza and ate it in bed naked, cuddling up to watch a movie on his phone—though Icouldn’t have told you a single thing about the movie once it was over; my entire attention had been on Joel the whole time. And, of course, you couldn’t have dinner without a little dessert…
While Joel was still in his post-orgasmic stupor, spread-eagled in the middle of the bed, I threw a towel around my waist and ran to the kitchen to grab the tub of ice cream he asked for.
I’d known Kedi and three of his friends were out here, but I hadn’t expected them all to be staring at me menacingly. I stopped in front of the fridge and nodded to them. “Evening,” I said, and when none of them said anything right away, I turned to pull the tub of mint chocolate chip ice cream out of the freezer.
Kedi sighed, and I heard the springs of the couch twang as he stood up, his friends moving to flank him as they approached me. “Come on, let’s just get this over with.”
I laughed under my breath at the image they portrayed. “Is this where you warn me not to hurt him?”
“No, this is where wethreatenyou not to hurt him,” the big guy on Kedi’s right said, cracking his knuckles in a fist.
Kedi shook his head, seemingly embarrassed by his friend’s macho attitude. “Now, I wouldn’t gothatfar, Ricky. They are fated, after all,” he said to the alpha. The guy muttered an apology and lowered his fists to his sides.Kedi turned to me. “Look, Joel might not be pack by blood, but he’s still one of us, and it’s our duty as his unofficial family to watch out for him. So… just treat him right.”
