“Oh my God,” Pippa whispers, her hands fly to her mouth and her eyes fill with tears. “Really? Oh Maya, I’m so happy for you. I’ve always worried you wouldn’t be able to find this.”
She pulls Maya into a hug, and then the tears come. Both Maya and Pippa cry as they embrace. I feel like I’m intruding until Maddie walks in and joins the hug without words. Her sleepy eyes take a moment to notice me, and another second passes before she remembers where she knows me from. Then she loudly whispers to Maya that I owe her a cookie.
“You need to get some sleep,” Maya says as soon as we get home from walking the dogs. I take off my shoes and leave them on the rack by the door. “You’re dead on your feet.”
She’s not wrong. Between the days I spent awake in wolf form, racing away from the pack, and the long hours since I woke up from my brief sedative-induced sleep, I’m barely functioning at this stage. And yet the thought of being away from Maya for even asecond has me on edge. I can’t bear even the idea of sleep separating us.
Maya smiles softly at me before taking my hand and leading me upstairs to her bedroom. “One of the things I love about you is how you look after me,” she says, and my heart stutters in my chest at hearing that word. “How you force me to think about my own needs and not just everyone else’s. But you and I share that trait. You worry about everyone else and put yourself last. And I love that; I really do. But if you’re going to do it for me, then I’m going to do it for you too. Let me look after you.”
Maya lifts my t-shirt up and over my head before lowering my sweatpants and pushing me to sit on her bed.
A grin stretches across my face as I stare up at her. “All I’m hearing is that there are things you love about me.”
Maya pulls my sweats the remainder of the way down and off my legs before dropping to her knees before me. “There are lots of things I love about you,” she says, spreading my thighs and shuffling between them. “I love how you listen to me,reallylisten, and take on board what I need.” She kisses the inside of my thigh just above my knee, and the gesture goes straight to my cock.
“I love how safe you make me feel.” Another kiss, further up my thigh. “I love how you push me out of my shell and make me face reality.” She drops a soft kiss mere inches from my groin, and my balls ache with need for her. “I love how hard you have worked for your pack, and how you were willing to step aside when you realized you were no longer the person for the job. It shows strength and selflessness.”
Maya swirls her tongue over my balls and up my shaft, circling the head of my cock before looking up at me through her lashes and licking her lips. “Let me look after you.”
She takes my cock into her mouth, straight to the back of her throat, and I groan at the feeling of being surrounded by her wet heat, enveloping me in pleasure I never could have imagined before meeting her.
“You’re so good at taking my cock, Kitten,” I say, my voice a growl from the combination of exhaustion and need. She’s so damn perfect. So beautiful with her cheeks hollowed as she sucks me down. “Touch yourself, I need to see you coming for me. You want to make me happy, don’t you?”
Maya groans as she slides her hand down her stomach and inside her sweatpants. My balls tingle when she moans around me, the vibrations adding to the pleasure she’s giving me. The wet sound as she pumps two fingers inside her sodden pussy is nearly my undoing. But I don’t want to empty in her mouth, not this time.
I bury my hand in her silky tresses and drag Maya off my cock. “I want to come in your pussy.”
Maya smiles up at me before pushing to a stand, stripping off her clothes, and then straddling my hips. Reaching for my cock, she guides it to her entrance and slides down onto me. Her eyes squeeze shut, and she throws her head back as she impales herself on my cock, rocking herself up and down. I marvel at her beauty. Her strength. She’s everything.
Her movements speed up, and she lets out low breathy moans, lost in the pleasure she’s giving us both. I bring my fingers to herclit and circle her nub until she clamps down on me, moaning my name.
I follow close behind, emptying my balls inside my mate’s perfect pussy. I hold her close to me, my cock still inside her as I move up the bed until my head rests on the pillow. Maya climbs off me, and I pull her into a spooning position, then push back inside her.
“No, baby, you need to sleep,” Maya protests, and I smile against her neck at the term of endearment. She’s never called me that before. But then she’s never said she loved anything about me before either.
“I’m not going to fuck you again, Kitten. You’re just going to keep my cock nice and warm for me while I rest.”
Maya wiggles her hips, sliding me deeper inside her, then pulls my arm over her. “I can do that, Sir.”
“Good girl.”
Darkness encroaches on my vision as the exhaustion I’ve been fighting takes hold, but I don’t want to resist it anymore. My arms are wrapped around my mate, my cock is buried in her pussy, and the knowledge that she is falling for me wraps around me, filling me with a warmth I didn’t think was possible.
Chapter Forty-Seven
Maya
Four weeks later
I’m exhausted driving back to Lunar Eclipse after my day of in-person private practice. It’s a four-hour drive each way on top of eight back-to-back sessions. I should have just stayed in my house in the city, but I’m still working through the trauma of what happened with Brett and Michael, and I’m not ready to spend a night alone. Between moving most of my patients online and continuing to drive back and forth to the city to see some of my old patients, this week has been intense.
I tell myself it’ll settle down as I phase out the in-person patients when they are ready. But I also want to start working with the survivors of the Keepers trafficking organization as soon as possible, and Iron Fang is even further away.
Ryan has traveled with me on every other trip, but he needed to stay behind today for a meeting with the pack elders regarding the wolf council. We spend the night at my old place when he comes along, but now that I’ve settled in at Lunar Eclipse, it doesn’t feel like home anymore. Home is lush forests and clean air. It’s my dogs being able to run free, and it’s the removal of my fear of beingdiscovered for what I am. It’s the pack that has welcomed me with open arms.
And of course, it’s Ryan.
He’s spent the past two weeks since we moved here learning to balance being a loving and attentive partner with settling back into the pack and finding his own place. The latter proving much more difficult than the former. Because being my partner—my mate—comes easily to him. He knows what I need sometimes before I realize it myself.
