Like acceptance.
Mate, I said, the word guttural and rough inside my own head.Claim.
Ivy pulled away with a soft smile and moved to the bed, beckoning me with a hand to join her. As she climbed atop it, I crawled above her, drawing in a deep breath at the sight of her beneath me.
Spread out on the blanket, she somehow looked smaller. One of her hands skimmed my chest to cup the back of my neck, drawing me towards her, while the other went between us.
Her legs shifted, allowing me to slip between them, and I felt my cock against her wet, warm heat.That’s where you need to be,she whispered as she kissed me, pulling me against her hard.Are you ready?
I would always be ready for her. Instinctively, I knew what would come next. And yet I responded with desperation, with need.Yes,I said.Please.
Ivy made a pleased sound in the back of her throat as she wrapped her fingers around my cock.I’m going to guide you through this, she promised.You’ll know when to mark me.
I could already feel my incisors growing, the ache in my jaw dull compared to the way she held me. Her hand barely wrapped around my length, but she stroked me as if I weren’t already close to finishing. Before I could tell her that, warn her I would explode, she slid me through her wet core. My entire body went hot at the feel of her, stiffening when she notched me inside her.
Gently, she whispered.Move your hips into mine.
I shuddered, almost afraid. She was tight, small. Would I hurt her?
And yet, I inched inside her with slow precision, pushing deeper without resistance. Ivy gasped against my lips, fingers digging into my shoulder until our hips met.
My breaths came hard as I pulled my mouth from hers and looked down. Something flared in her eyes, like a small flicker of light that was easy to miss. In my chest, I felt my beast clawing at me, pressure building in my lower belly as well as in my jaw as I thought about marking her.
One shoulder had been claimed by her wolf mate.
And I would take the other.
But not yet. First, I had to bring her to completion, just like the others had. I’d heard her before; the whimpers as she found pleasure, her cries of ecstasy. I wanted to hear it all for myself. I wanted tofeelit just as the others had.
Instinctively, I rolled my hips, pulling out of her. “That’s it,” she whispered, fingers digging into my shoulder again, her other twisting in my hair. “Thrust into me. Gentle, even strokes.”
I did as she instructed. Her hips met mine with each thrust, somehow taking me deeper every time. With each stroke, her entire body moved, and I grew more confident in what I was doing at the soft sounds she made.
I braced my hands either side of her head and moved with more intention, picking up my pace and thrusting harder into her warmth. Ivy’s eyes fluttered, her back arching off the bed, and her thoughts inside my head urged me to keep going, telling me she was close.
I didn’t need her thoughts to know she liked it. Around me, she fluttered, the walls of her core clamping hard around me. It pushed me closer to the edge of my own release, dragging me along with her.
“So close,” she whispered, her burning stare finding mine once more. “Just a little longer.”
I grunted, unable to stop my incisors from popping free. The pressure to mark her, to sink my teeth into her shoulder, became a pounding thought in the back of my head.
“Make me yours,” she whispered, guiding my face to her shoulder. “Claim me.”
It happened in an explosion of heat; my mouth covered her shoulder, teeth breaking through the tender flesh.Her blood filled my mouth for a moment as my mark burned into her skin, and around my cock, she clamped hard, her entire body going rigid beneath me. A cry left her lips as I exploded within her, my movements coming to a stuttering halt as I finished.
My beast rose within me for a moment, almost taking control as she whispered inside my mind,Mate, mine,over and over again.
But I felt the moment she slipped away, too.
I tore my mouth from her shoulder and watched as her eyes rolled into the back of her skull and her head lulled to the side. In an instant, she went from speaking inside my mind to eerily silent, her words cutting off and turning dark.
My breaths came panicked as I pulled out of her. The mark on her shoulder was already healing, the scars of my bite a dark red. As I sat back, my release spilled from between her thighs. But she didn’t move.
Why isn’t she moving?
“She’ll be okay,” a voice said, coming from somewhere behind me. “It was only a matter of time.”
Before I could turn, shadows edged at the corners of my vision. My body lurched to the side as I slipped into an unending darkness, the world falling apart around me.
