“Here?Now?”
I glanced down the empty stretch of road, the fading sunlight, and the secluded spot between the trees I’d pulled into. There wasn’t a soul in sight, and I hadn’t seen another vehicle for the last hour of our drive.
“Right here, right now. Out.”
Chapter 31
Elodie
“Valens…” I had no idea what he had in mind, but it wasn’t the mission.
He grabbed me by the waist and picked me up, chuckling at my surprised squeak when my butt left the leather.
Shutting the door behind me, he pressed me back against it, taking a fistful of my hair and tilting my head back. “If you really don’t want to, I’ll stop. But I think you need it. You need to clear your head, hit the reset button. Let me help you.”
“How do you propose we do that on the side of the road, hmm?” I was still feeling saucy, but I couldn’t deny the heat and excitement simmering just below the surface. The anger had gone, replaced with curiosity and need. Maybe he was right and a reset wasexactlywhat I needed.
He glanced around, considering. “Hood of the car, or forest?”
I blinked a couple of times. “Hood of the car sounds uncomfortable.”
“Forest it is.” His lips were on mine a heartbeat later, his hands coming up under my thighs to lift me, and I wrapped my arms and legs around him on instinct.
Valens devoured me with lips and tongue and gentle nips of teeth as he carried me into the shady forest, but we didn’t have to go far.
He stopped at the base of a massive oak tree. It was so big, I couldn’t have put my arms around the trunk and touched my fingers on the other side. He backed me up against it gently, so nothing bit into my skin, and set me on my feet.
Then his hands were back in my hair, his lips trailing down my neck with renewed vigor. When he reached the collar of my shirt, his hands skated slowly down, caressing me all the way to the hem.
He didn’t hesitate as he peeled it off me, and, a second later, my bra. “Put this behind your back so you don’t get scratched up,” he ordered, handing over the shirt. I did as he asked. All the while, he gazed at me hungrily. Satisfied that my skin was protected, he cupped my breasts in both hands with a groan.
“You’re sheer perfection, you know that, Firecracker?” He started kissing his way back up from my navel without waiting for an answer. Which was good, because my tongue was tied, and my attention was fixated on how fucking amazing his lips and hands felt on my skin. By the time he was teasing my nipples with his tongue, I was already on the edge and needing him like oxygen.
“Brute, I need more. Faster,” I all but begged, not caring how desperate I sounded. Iwasdesperate, for every little bit of heat building between us like the first sparks of a wildfire, heat I’d been ignoring until it was practically an unstoppable blaze.
“Yes, ma’am,” he said, grinning against my skin as he looked up at my face. His fingers went to the waistband of my pants, and then they were gone, shucked off at lightning speed and forgotten somewhere among the leaves.
He didn’t hesitate as he dropped to his knees in front of me, urging me to a wider stance with his hands on the inside of mythighs. I complied, and he groaned, dropped his forehead to my stomach, inhaling harshly.
“Do you know how tempting you are? You look like a damn goddess of the forest, wild and free and perfect, like every dream I’ve ever had come to life. And your scent…” He inhaled again, trailing his nose down, down, down, until his face was even with my folds. One soft, tentative lick up my seam, and when he made eye contact this time, his eyes were glowing with his wolf.
His voice was all gravel when he said, “Mine.”
The way everything inside me reacted to that one word was practically criminal. Never had I been more aroused by a male laying his claim on me, until Valens. Everything was different with him.
He urged my legs wider still, and then he fastened his mouth to my pussy with the devotion of a drowning man given a life raft.
The pleasure intensified inside me, building like tension on a spring. Stronger and stronger, until my thighs began to shake and I had to grab his shoulders for support.
He hummed happily against my flesh and gripped my hips tighter, never pulling back as he devoured me. Licking and sucking, he worked my clit in faster circles, as if he could tell I was close.
Something, though, wouldn’t quite let me fall over the edge, no matter how desperately I wanted to.
“V, I… I can’t. I don’t know?—”
His eyes met mine, piercing in their intensity. And then I heard it. A soft rumble started in his chest, that soothing sound alphas made just for their mates. Meant to calm and reassure, no matter the situation. And he would only do it for me. Because I was his, and he wasminetoo.
It was like a dam burst. All the emotions I’d been holding back by sheer force of will since he claimed me as his mate broke free, welling up in an unstoppable wave.
