"You're so damn beautiful." The words tore out of him. His hands fisted in the sheets. "Let me touch you. Please."
The most feared alpha on the Crimson Sea, sayingpleaseto a vineyard girl from Roquemort. She filed that away in the growing collection of moments that proved he was more than the monster the stories described.
"Soon." She reached for his shirt, unlacing it slowly, pulling it over his head. His chest was broad, scarred, the dark hair roughagainst her palms as she ran her hands down his torso. His stomach contracted under her fingers. His scent was thickening, pine and smoke and the dark musk that meant he was getting hard, and she could see the evidence of it straining against his breeches.
She undid the laces of his breeches and freed him. He was already thick and flushed, the head slick, the knot at the base beginning to swell even though they'd barely started. His cock jumped against her palm when she wrapped her hand around him, and the sound he made was nothing like the composed, commanding captain. It was raw. Needy.
"You can touch me now," she said.
His hands were on her before she finished the sentence. Gripping her hips, pulling her forward, his mouth finding her breast. She gasped as his tongue circled her nipple, as his teeth grazed the sensitive peak, and she braced her hands on his shoulders while he sucked and licked and made her legs tremble.
"I need to taste you," he groaned against her skin. "Let me put my mouth on you."
She shook her head. "Next time. Right now I need you inside me."
She climbed onto the bed, onto him, pushing him back against the headboard. He went without resistance, his hands still on her hips, his gold-flickering eyes tracking her every movement as she straddled his lap. She could feel his cock pressing against her inner thigh, hot and insistent, and when she shifted her hips to align them, slick from her body coated him. The scent of it filled the cabin, honeysuckle and vanilla gone dark with want, twining with his pine-smoke until the air was thick with the smell of them together.
"Look at me," she said.
He looked.
She sank down onto him.
The angle was different from above. Deeper in some ways, the stretch of him more pronounced as gravity pulled her down, and she had to go slowly, taking him inch by inch, her thighs shaking with the effort of controlling her own descent. He filled her until she thought she couldn't take any more, and then she took the rest, settling into his lap with his cock buried to the root.
"God." His head fell back against the headboard. His fingers dug into her hips hard enough to bruise, and she liked it. Liked the evidence that his control was fraying. "You feel incredible. So tight around me."
She rolled her hips. Experimentally at first, testing the angle, learning how this position changed the sensation. When she found the motion that dragged him against the spot inside her that made sparks fire behind her eyes, she did it again. And again.
"That's it." His voice was wrecked. "Ride me, omega. Take what you need."
So she did.
She set the pace. Slow at first, rising and falling on his cock, each downstroke sending pleasure radiating through her core. His hands gripped her hips but didn't guide, didn't push, didn't try to speed her up. He let her use him, and the power of it was intoxicating in a way the rum hadn't been.
This was what it meant to choose. Not to be taken, not to surrender to biology, but to climb on top of the alpha who'd bought her and ride him until they both broke apart.
"Faster," she breathed, more to herself than to him, and she increased the pace. The wet sounds of their joining filled the cabin. His cock was so deep at this angle, it stretched her with every drop of her hips. She braced her hands on his chest, fingers splayed over the scar Morvenna's magic had carved into him, and she rode him hard.
"You're going to make me come." His voice had gone guttural, his eyes full gold now, his wolf surging close to the surface. "The way you're moving, the way you're squeezing me, I can't hold back much longer."
"Then don't." She leaned down and kissed him, her tongue sweeping into his mouth the way his had swept into hers so many times before. She tasted rum and the wildness that lived under his skin. "I want to feel your knot. I want you locked inside me."
His hips snapped up. Involuntary, his body overriding the discipline he'd been maintaining, and the force of the thrust made her cry out against his mouth. The impact hit something so deep inside her that her vision blurred.
"Again," she gasped. "Do that again."
He obeyed. The apex alpha, the captain who'd commanded wolves for twenty years, obeyed. His hips drove up to meet her on every downstroke, the slap of skin against skin punctuating the rhythm she'd set, and the combination of her pace and his power built something molten in her belly that was climbing fast.
"I'm close," she panted. "Touch me. Now you can touch me everywhere."
One hand left her hip and slid between their bodies. His thumb found her clit, slick and swollen, and he circled it with devastating focus. She keened, her rhythm stuttering, and he took over the pace from below, thrusting up into her while his thumb worked her toward the edge.
"Come for me." It wasn't a command. It was a plea. "Let me feel you, Jeanne. Please."
She shattered. The orgasm tore through her from the inside out, her walls clenching around his cock in waves, her body locking down on him so hard that his knot caught on the next thrust and swelled to full size, sealing them together. Shescreamed his name, back arching, nails raking down his chest, and he followed her over with a roar that vibrated through her bones.
His seed flooded her in hot pulses, filling her until she could feel the pressure of it, and she ground down on his knot, chasing the aftershocks, clenching around the thick swell of him until every last ripple of pleasure had been wrung from both their bodies.
