“Not yet.” His voice has dropped into something raw, something that makes my stomach clench. “I told you what happens next.”
The bark bites into my spine as he presses me against the tree. I should care. Should feel the scrape, the roughness, the forest closing in around us.
I don’t.
All I feel is him.
“Orion—”
“Quiet.” He drops to his knees.
The sight of him, this massive Wild Court guardian kneeling before me in the moss and the dark, his amber eyes blazing up at me like I’m something worth devouring, short-circuits whatever protest was forming in my throat.
His hands slide up my thighs. Slow. Deliberate. Memorizing every inch of skin.
“I’ve been thinking about this,” he says against my hip, his breath hot through the thin fabric still clinging to me. “For weeks. For months. Every time I closed my eyes in that fucking forest trying to find you.”
He hooks his fingers into my waistband but doesn’t pull. Just holds. Lets me feel the promise of what’s coming without delivering.
“Orion.” His name comes out strained.
“Patience.” He presses a kiss to my hip bone. Then the other. Then the soft skin just above where I need him most. “I spent a month starving for you. Hunted you through the borderlands until I bled. And now I’ve finally caught you.” His teeth graze my hip. “Let me savor my prey.”
He drags my pants down an inch. Just an inch. Presses his mouth to the newly exposed skin.
My hips buck toward him and his hands clamp down, holding me still against the bark.
“No.” The word vibrates against my skin, more growl than speech. “You don’t get to rush this. You made me chase you. Now I make you wait.”
“I didn’t?—”
“A month, Ash.” He looks up at me, and there’s something in his expression that steals my breath: not hunger. Starvation. “A month of bleeding through the borderlands. A month of feeling you through the bond and not being able to reach you. A month of your scent in my head and your taste on my tongue from that one night and nothing.” He presses his palm flat against my lower belly, right where the heat coils tightest. “Nothing but my own hand and your name in my mouth when I came.”
My brain whites out. Reboots. Fails to come back online.
He drags my pants down another inch. Kisses the new skin. Pulls back.
I’m going to lose my mind.
“So yes.” His voice has gone guttural. “I’m going to take my time, and you’re going to let me. Because you’re not prey that wants to escape, are you, Thorn?”
His tongue traces the crease where my thigh meets my hip before I can answer.
“You followed me out here. Felt how hard I was through the bond.” His breath against my center, hot and deliberate. “And it made you wet.”
I make a sound I’ve never made before. Something between a whimper and a growl.
He laughs against my skin. Low and dark and not remotely civilized.
“There she is.” He finally, finally pulls my pants down fully, dragging everything with them in one motion. The cool air hits me and I gasp, but his mouth is there before the cold can settle, pressing a kiss to my inner thigh.
Not where I need him. Close. So close. But not there.
“Orion, please?—”
“Please what?” He switches to the other thigh. Kisses the soft skin. Bites down hard enough to make me yelp. “Tell me what you want, prey.”
I hate begging. Hate the vulnerability of it. Spent twenty-five years learning to never ask for anything I couldn’t take for myself.
