Dazed.
With a gleeful snarl, he pounced. Landing above her, balanced on the balls of his feet, he surged forward. Hands planted on either side of her slender neck, he braced. Teeth bared around a wild grin, panting, heating her cheeks with gusts of exertion. Arousal. Waiting for her gaze to clear, for the flames of her temper to catch and spread, pressed close enough that he could see it.
But he remained silent as he lingered. Content to watch and wait. The urge to growl—to assert himself and take possession—was caught and held behind gleaming white teeth.
She blinked. Parted lips sagging until she sucked in a breath, the girl came alive in an instant. Thrashing inside the cage of muscle and throbbing testosterone, kicking and screaming, she set blunt teeth to his forearm but couldn’t offer more than a pretty bruise. One he would cherish, his cock pulsing at the thought ofrealclaiming marks laid into his flesh. The rumors of a Hathorian mating bond something he’d long fantasized about.
Her most precious gift. One he would earn, no matter the cost.
By the Nine, he’d ensurethosemarks festered and scarred.
Releasing his forearm, she pressed her palms against his chest and shoved. “Get off me!” she shrieked, panting through an open mouth. Her energy already beginning to wane as she wasted it trying to lift an immovable weight.
He caught her wrist, pressed his nose to the spot where her skin had been scraped raw in her fall, speckled with little dots of beaded crimson. And then, meeting her gaze, he laved her palm from wrist to fingertips. Tasting the ambrosia of a female made just for him.
With a gasp, her pupils narrowed to tiny pricks of black and she snatched her wrist back. Cradling her bleeding palm to her chest, she slapped him with the other.
For a moment, he was still. Cheek tingling, he could feel the outline of each tiny finger. Her palm and the outrage she’d branded him with. But he did nothing in retaliation. Merely pinned her there with the weight of his glare, surprised that a Hathorian would dare.
Delightedby the sheer perfection of the creature beneath him.
“Get off me, feral,” she hissed, the rumbling coo of a feminine growl offered in place of apology. Her knees brought up, tucked between them as she readied herself to throw him off. And then her features grew hard. Determined and fierce, she spat, “You are unfit,” through clenched and blunted teeth.
He blinked, just the once. The only metric of his surprise a shiver of his mane. An unseen twitch where he’d grown swollen with need, the pulse of lust hammering at his restraint. But still, he clung to that control, savoring the challenge offered by a female who had nothing. Not even her adorable pointed stick. Her nostrils pinched white, he took a breath just to know the depths of her fire. Painted her scent along the roof of his mouth, where he could taste it, the rich bouquet of breeding hormones andher.
His mate.
It wasn’t enough.
With a surge of muscle, he caught her about the throat and cut off her squeak of protest. Clasping fingers an unspoken warning, he tipped her head to the side and drank her in. Face dipping low, his nose dented the delicate blue flutter trapped just under her skin, where a vein lay distended and healthy. Trapped and wriggling beneath the press of his thumb.
He drew in another ragged breath, took her in all the way down to the bottom of his lungs, where he’d never be rid of her. Ignoring all her attempts to heft him back, unconcerned by her flimsy claws trying to shred his thick skin or that her face was beginning to purple, he took his time.
Savoring her.
Licked at the spot that made her clench and mewl. Tasting the lingering evidence of her season, that she’d been bred thoroughly but not nearly well enough—her eggs not yet enticed to drop. Utterly taken by the prickle of delicate vertebrae against his palm, that so fragile a creature was his to do with as he pleased.
But still, she fought. Squirming and struggling despite the truth of her helplessness, she raged against his chest. Spine thumping back against the forest floor.
She wouldn’t yield. Not when her eyes grew glassy and pounding fists landed with ever-lessening force, she refused to submit. Utterly so. He could see it etched between her brows. The crease at the edge of her lips, in bared teeth and flattened ears.
Defiant against all reason or sense.
Beautiful.
With a final, lewd inhale, he released her. Shoved her folded knees out of his way, and moved to cover her. To sit back on his haunches, a tiny fraction of his weight balanced on her hips—her legs rendered useless behind him. He left her free to kick and fight and waste the last of her energy, if it made her feel powerful.
His little warrior.
Only when she met his gaze did he offer her a taste of his intentions. Capturing her wrists, he stretched her out and pinned her arms high above her head. Breath caught, fingers hooked under the collar of her shirt, he pulled. Tore the wretched garment down the middle and exposed the full curve of her breasts, eyes catching on the twin peaks of nipples purpled by careless fingers.
Panting as she railed against him, she arched. Displaying all that she was for his perusal. His vision filled with swaths of pale skin bruised by dozens of fingerprints—none of themhis.Marks left on her hips, her ribs, and there, beneath the scent of a female in season, he caught the scent of inferior males.
Their claim weak, but left to linger.
A growl echoed up, surging with a will of its own as he stared.
Free hand finding his laces, vibrating with possessive fury, he pulled his cock forth with no ceremony whatsoever. Pumping that engorged length, he shivered. Glare fixed to the hint of fresh bruises he would soothe with his essence. An unspoken oath of protection, he would bathe her in his scent so all might know this tiny, glorious female was not to be touched lest they invoke his wrath.
