"How long?" she asked, her fingers tracing the scar on his chest.
"Until my knot goes down?" He shifted slightly, and they both gasped as the movement sent sparks through their joined bodies. "Half an hour. Maybe more."
"And we just... stay like this?"
"We stay like this." He rolled them carefully onto their sides, keeping her close, his knot tugging inside her in a way that made her moan. "Knotting is intimate. For wolves, it's when mates bond. When they share things they wouldn't say otherwise."
"We're not bonded."
"No." His hand stroked down her side. "We're not."
She was quiet for a moment, feeling him inside her, feeling the strange intimacy of being locked together. His seed was still warm in her belly. His scent surrounded her completely, mixed now with her own. They smelled like each other. Like mates.
His knot pulsed inside her, and she gasped, her walls clenching around him. He groaned, his hips jerking involuntarily.
"The heat," she said breathlessly. "I can feel another wave coming."
"Already?" He pulled her closer, and she felt his cock twitch inside her, beginning to harden again even though he hadn't pulled out. "Then we'll ride it out together. As many times as you need."
She should have been exhausted. Should have been sated. But her omega body was already responding, heat building again, slick flooding around his knot.
"I need you," she whispered, and it wasn't just biology talking anymore.
"You have me." He kissed her forehead, her cheeks, her lips. "For as long as this heat lasts, for as long as you'll let me, you have me."
Chapter Seven
JEANNE
The second wave hit before his knot had fully released.
One moment Jeanne was lying in Anatole's arms, feathers from the mangled pillow drifting down around them like snow, his spent cock still locked inside her. The next, her body was burning again, need clawing through her veins with renewed urgency.
She whimpered, her hips rolling against his, and his eyes snapped open. Blue, not gold. Still human, still in control.
"Again?" His voice was hoarse.
"I thought—" She gasped as heat spiked through her core. "I thought it would stop after the first time."
"No." His hand slid into her hair, gentle despite the renewed hardness she was already beginning to feel stirring inside her. "Heat comes in waves. Hours between them at first, then closer together. Three to five days before it burns itself out." He tilted her face up, forcing her to meet his eyes. "You've never actually experienced a real heat before, have you?"
She shook her head. The suppressants had made her heats manageable—uncomfortable, yes, but nothing like this consuming fire.
"Then let me take care of you." His thumb brushed her cheek. "I'll get you through this. All of it."
