“Look at you,” I growled, voice wrecked. “Dripping for your Alpha already.”
I dragged the thick head of my dick through her soaked folds, coating myself in her slick, then pushed in with one long, relentless stroke. Lila moaned loud, her pussy fluttering and gushing around every inch. I fucked her in deep, sensual rolls of my hips, letting her feel the stretch, the heat of my crimson skin against hers.
Her hands fisted in my horns, pulling me down as I drove into her. Slick squelched obscenely with every thrust, soaking my balls and the sheets beneath us. I wrapped one hand in her dark curls and tugged, arching her neck so I could lick and bite at her throat while I fucked her harder.
“So fucking wet,” I rasped against her skin. “This tight little omega pussy is sucking me in.”
Lila cried out, legs wrapping around my waist, heels digging into my back. “More… Azrael, please…”
I gave it to her, harder and deeper. The wet slap of our bodies filled the room alongside her broken moans and the filthysounds of her slick. I reached between us and rubbed her swollen clit until she came hard, screaming, walls clamping down like a vice as fresh slick flooded out around my dick.
I didn’t stop the, and flipped her onto her stomach, yanked her hips up, and slammed back in, mounting her like the demon I was. My hand fisted tight in her hair, pulling her head back so I could growl in her ear.
“Gonna knot this pussy. Fill you until you’re leaking me for days.”
“Yes… fuck, yes…” she rasped out.
My knot swelled huge, catching at her entrance. I rutted deeper, forcing it past her stretched rim. Lila wailed as it popped inside, locking us together. The bond snapped into place at the same moment, like a warm, golden, unbreakable feeling…while I ground my knot against her g-spot and came with a savage groan. Thick ropes of cum pumped into her, over and over, mixing with her endless slick until it was dripping down her thighs in messy rivulets.
She came again on my knot, shaking and sobbing my name, milking me with rhythmic pulses that dragged my orgasm out even longer. I stayed locked deep, grinding slow and filthy, one hand still fisted in her hair while the other reached around to rub her clit through aftershocks that left her whimpering and gushing.
We stayed tied like that for a long time, panting, sweating, my crimson body curled around hers, horns framing her face as I kissed her neck and whispered how perfect she felt, how she was mine, how I would never let her go.
When my knot finally went down, I pulled out slowly, watching a rush of mixed slick and cum spill from her swollen, well-fucked pussy. I gathered her into my arms and kissed her slow and deep, tasting the satisfaction on her tongue.
Sunlight was coming through the curtains when she stood in front of the bathroom mirror and brushed her fingers lightly over the fresh claim mark on her neck. I appeared in the doorway behind her and she caught my eyes in the reflection.
“This is never coming off, is it?” she said, voice husky.
“No.”
She studied it, then smiled,small, satisfied, and thoroughly fucked. She turned and wrapped her arms around my waist.
“Good,” she said.
I held her close, feeling a peace I hadn’t known in five centuries.
“One more question,” she murmured into my chest.
“I’m afraid,” I chuckled.
“You should be.” She pulled back with that mischievous sparkle. “Do the horns always stay out during sex?”
I closed my eyes and she burst out laughing, bright and wild, and I laughed with her.
For five hundred years, Blackthorn Ridge had been my sentence. Standing there with my mate in my arms, I finally understood it wasn’t anymore.
I was home.
9
ETHAN
The leather bound journals had been sitting under my grandfather's workshop for forty years before I found them. I was seventeen, clearing out space for a new water heater, when the floorboard came up wrong under my boot. I’d reached down into the gap and pulled out three leather-bound notebooks wrapped in oilcloth, their pages brown at the edges and dense with handwriting I had to hold up to the light to read. I sat on that workshop floor for two hours and read every word.
Three weeks later I drove to Asheville and walked into the memory care facility with one of the journals tucked under my arm.
My grandfather was sitting by the window when I came in, looking out at the parking lot with the unfocused patience of someone who had stopped expecting much from what he saw there.
