His fingers threaded into my hair again, and he kissed me, more whining and panting than true kissing.
He came between us, his dick jerking against my stomach. The mess he made smeared out skins and every move he made rubbed it in. My wolf fuckingliked that, and I dragged him in, pulling him down and burying deep as I came too.
His ass flexed around me, and I didn’t know if he meant to or if that was just his body riding the wave, but it was incredible.
Sated, I dropped back on the floor and tightened my arm around his waist to pull him with me.
We laid there, panting against each other, until my softening cock slipped out of his ass.
“Baby?”
Dakota hummed without lifting his head, so I kissed the top of it.
“I need you to know—Grant doesn’t wantyou. He wants the power our pack has. There’s nothing you or I could have done to keep those greedy fuckers from being greedy fuckers.”
He glanced up at me, a scowl on his face. Was I upsetting him? I didn’t mean to, but maybe naked and on the floor wasn’t the best time to talk about this kind of thing.
There was nothing for it—I had more to say and I’d never known an alpha who didn’t love the sound of his own voice.
“They don’t realize the power they want, we’ve already got. We didn’t take it or demand anything, we built it. Together. We know how to use it. So they’re going to have a damn hard time taking anything from us, okay?”
Finally, Dakota’s lips curved. He gave me a dazed smile before he snuggled back into my chest and I couldn’t see his face anymore.
“Yeah,” he mumbled sweetly.
A second later, he shoved the heel of his palm into my chest and pushed hard enough to get a breathy, punched-out laugh from me.
“But stop talking in full sentences while I’m enjoying my afterglow,” he chided.
I laughed in earnest, wrapping my arms around him. At some point, I was going to have to peel us off the floor and get my mate to bed, but for a little while, I was going to enjoy his full weight pressing down on me while I held him close.
“How about this one?” I asked.
Dakota grumbled on my chest, and I felt the twitch in his cheek from his frown. “Which one?”
“I love you,” I whispered into his dark hair.
The tension in his cheek disappeared. Shit, the tension in his whole body just melted. He went warm and limber against me, snuggling in even closer.
“I love you too.”
36
Dakota
Iwoke to the feel of Jax’s body behind me, wrapped around me like an amorous octopus.
Or like an alpha who was worried about losing everything he’d worked decades to get, all because he’d met me.
“No,” Jax mumbled into my ear, still half asleep.
I couldn’t hold back a smile at that. “I didn’t say anything.”
“Can smell you worrying. Guilty. Nothing you need to feel that way about. You’re a blessing on this pack. You saved us from being screwed over by your cousin, remember? He was planning on fucking over ‘those animals’ when we were trying to make the original deal with them? Get control of Prudence’s library with his vague contracts?” He made a face into the nape of my neck, then shook his head. “We’d have been screwed without you. And with you, we have a solid alliance with the Igarashi, and they at least pretend to respect us.”
“Minori actually respects you,” I pointed out. It was all that truly mattered, as long as she was the one in charge of the company.
“Because of you.”
