Page 102 of Bookish Girl’s Emergency Contact Is a Lycan King

“Yes.”

The word leaves me as a plea, because suddenly I know what he’s asking. What he’s been building toward. What this whole night has been leading to.

“I want the bite,” I say.

He goes still.

“Are you…”

“I’m sure.” My voice is steady even as my heart races. “I’m ready. I want to feel you… all of you. Forever.”

“This should be… we should discuss…”

“We’ve discussed. We’ve planned. You said when I asked knowing exactly what it means.” I cup his face in my hands, force him to look at me. “I’m asking. I know what it means.”

“Forever,” he says.

“Yes.”

“No taking it back.”

“I don’t want to take it back.”

His eyes are wet. Tears tracking down his face in the moonlight, this ancient powerful creature undone by a single word.

“I love you,” he whispers.

“I love you too. Now stop stalling and claim me.”

He laughs, a surprised, choked sound, and then his mouth is on my neck, his breath warm against my pulse point. I feel the scrape of teeth, the moment of hesitation, the way he’s holding himself back even now, even when I’ve told him yes, because he wants to be absolutely certain…

“Orion.”

“Yes?”

“Bite me.”

He bites.

Teeth pierce skin.

The pain is a bright, brief sting, one sharp second of it, a needle of heat at my pulse point, and then it transmutes. Warmth detonates outward from the bite, rolling down my throat, flooding across my chest, pouring through my belly and lower, gathering everywhere at once until my entire body is a single held breath. He drives deep and locks there, groaning against my neck as he comes, and the combination undoes me completely: his teeth in my skin, his cock pulsing inside me, something ancient and molten spilling into my blood.

I come so hard my vision whites out.

This one isn’t a wave. It’s an event. Every nerve ending fires at once, ecstasy rolling through me in long, pulling spasms that start at the bite and end at my toes and refuse to stop, wringing sounds out of me that echo off the trees. His mouth stays sealed to my throat through all of it, holding the claim while I convulse around him, and each pull of his lips against the mark sends another spasm chasing the last, pleasure stacked on pleasure until I can’t tell where the bite ends and the orgasm begins. They’re the same thing now. They’ll always be the same thing.

The bond snaps into place, a tether pulled taut, and everything changes.

I feel him.

Not just the physical presence, the weight of his body, the sting of the bite, the warmth of his breath, but something deeper, a claim that goes all the way down to the core of who he is.

His love hits me first. It’s vast. Ancient. Like standing at the edge of an ocean and trying to comprehend its depth. Three hundred years of loneliness, three hundred years of waiting, and all of it focused on me now with an intensity that should be terrifying but isn’t. It’s warm. Safe. The kind of love that doesn’t ask anything in return because it’s already complete just by existing.

Beneath that, his fear. The small, persistent worry that this is a dream he’ll wake from. That he’ll do something wrong. That I’ll realize what I’ve bound myself to and regret it. The fear is old, older than I am, older than anyone I’ve ever known, and it lives in him, a shadow he can’t quite escape.

And beneath even that, his joy. Bright and overwhelming, expanding to fill every empty space in both of us. The joy of someone who has finally, finally found the thing they’ve been searching for. The joy of completion.