“Yes.” I want to feast on her. Lick her, fuck her with my tongue again because she tastes so sweet.
She lifts up and notches the head of my meq to her opening.
It shouldn’t be like this. I want to tell her to stop, but as she sinks on to me I can’t do anything but groan as if I am fatally wounded. I don’t like this desperate need. This lack of control.
My hands grab her hips.
She stills, and I want to thrust all the way into her until I am buried deep in her slick core.
“No, put them behind you.”
She glares at me, and I glare back. I’m going to lose this battle. I need to lose it. If I do not obey, then I will suffer. I should accept the suffering, though that would mean also accepting death and I am not doing that. And neither is she.
She is the stronger, smarter one in this moment. She’s the warrior I want at my back.
I place my palms on the dirt behind me.
“Good.” She nods and I warm at her praise.
Her hips rock and she takes a little more of me. Then she puts her hands on my shoulders and steals a kiss. “You’re bigger than I’m used to.”
I should be annoyed that she’s slept with other men, but I am grateful because it means she knows what she’s doing. As much as it is killing me to hold back and remain still, I don’t want to hurt her, either. My claws dig into the dirt, needing to dig into the soft skin of her ass cheeks and drag her harder on to my meq.
With each movement, I sink a little deeper into her, but I can already tell that she’s not going to take all of me. She bites her lip and doesn’t quite make eye contact.
While her core is slick, and her heartbeat quickened, there is no scent of lust on her skin like there was last night.
She’s doing this out of duty, not because she wants to.
The realization cuts me deep, and the lust in my blood cools. “You don’t want this.”
Ruby stills and looks at me. “I was hoping to do more tonight…but with you being weird, I figured I’d done something wrong.”
I shake my head. “You have done nothing wrong.”
I should never have encouraged her. I should’ve remembered that she is more than a warrior. Now I must suffer.
The heat in my blood has cooled.
We are sitting in the middle of a trail, with a carcass only a step away. If a screamer ran at us now, we’d be dead in an instant.
Her eyebrows draw together. “And neither have you. You didn’t know this would happen.” Her lips brush mine. “I’m giving you what you need. You can owe me.”
“What can I possibly owe you for this?” Aside from my life.
“We’ll work it out.” Her thumbs sweep over my jaw as she kisses me again.
There is nothing to work out. I am bound to her.
And I am a duty to be performed. I wish that I had the strength to push her away, but I need her. Her kiss is a balm and a drug.
Even though she is barely moving her hips, my pleasure bumps send jolts along my meq to my balls. If she were Honey, they would rub on hers. Her bump is in the wrong place.
I lift one hand and, keeping my now dirty claws away from her skin, I use my knuckle to rub her bump.
“I know what you’re trying to do and it’s okay,” she says as she rides my meq.
I won’t be able to live with myself if she does not enjoy it. What kind of mate would I be? The wrong kind. Everything about this is wrong. Though my body is lying and telling me that she is mine and exactly what I crave. Her lips on mine and the way her tongue slides into my mouth as though she is claiming me.
