Page 27

"You're not dying," I growl against her throat. "You're coming into heat fully, and I'll spend the next three days fucking you through it. But this first time—" I settle between her thighs, the blunt head of my cock sliding through her slick, and we both stop breathing. "This first time, I need you to look at me. Know who's inside you."

Her eyes find mine. Fevered. Certain.

"My mate," she breathes.

I push into her, scalding friction gripping me like a clenched fist, forcing myself slow, an inch at a time, sweat sliding down my spine while my tiger clamors inside my skull. Drive. Take. Breed.

I meet resistance.

She cries out, sharp, pained, her body flinching beneath me, fear cutting through the sweetness of her slick.

I freeze.

My mate. My beautiful, impossible mate. She's trusted me with something she's never given another man, and I was so consumed with claiming her that I didn't believe it possible. Fuck.

Everything freezes. My heart. My lungs. Time itself.

"You're—" The words won't come. My brain won't form them. "Cienna? You've never, have you?"

"Virgin," she gasps, eyes wet, legs locked around my hips like a trap. "Yes. Past tense. Don't you dare stop. "

"Am I hurting you?"

"Doesn't matter. If you pull out now, I'll murder you and have my cougar drag your carcass down to the lake." She yanks my head down to hers, eyes blazing through the tears. "Ivan. I stopped believing I'd ever find a mate. But then there you were in my office. It's you. It's you. And you're already inside me, and it already hurts, so you'd better make it worth it. Make it better, mate."

Yes, mate. She said it again. She doesn't know what those words do to me.

Or maybe she does.

I take her mouth, drowning out the ache with heavy, grinding weight, and press forward until she takes the rest of me.

I move slowly at first, rocking into her, letting her body learn me, the pain lines fading from her face. I rotate two of my fingers around her clit, orbiting in a gentle circle until her lips part wide. Her mouth falls open. Her hips start to rise to meet mine, tentative, then greedy.

"Oh," she breathes. "Oh. Oh my God, Ivan—"

"Yes, Omega," I drive deeper, and she takes all of me, the sound ripping from her throat nearly unseating me. "Cienna," her name draws out of me in a low croon.

She gasps when she sees the change in my mouth, my fangs punching down, aching, needing. But she doesn't retreat. Instead, her head falls back, baring her throat, long and dark, slick with sweat. "Do it," she gasps. "Do it. Mark me."

She doesn't ask twice. She doesn't have to. There was no fucking way that I wouldn't.

My knot swells at the base, stretching her, locking into her as I drive deeper. She moans, but she takes it, nails raking my back, legs shaking around my hips.

"Take it, my good girl," I growl. "Take all of my knot."

Only then do I sink my fangs into her neck. Her blood fills my mouth, hot, sweet, copper and honey, and her pussy vices down hard enough to make me see stars, her scream ringing off the rafters as she comes, ripping my release out like a bullet. I roar against her throat, pumping into her, come flooding her, my cock swelling, knotting, locking us together deep enough she'll feel me for days, and she comes again, just from being tied to me, her body wracked with it, her pussy milking me in pulses.

The bond snaps into place.

I feel it, a click deep in my chest, and suddenly there's a second heartbeat in my body. Hers. Her scent changes mid-breath, weaving through mine, cedar and snow and her, her and tiger… us. Her pleasure brushes through me, not as words or images but as a warm pulse answering my own. Full. Claimed.

I drag my tongue over the wound, long, slow strokes, sealing and healing it, marking it as mine, and she shudders with every pass, her voice breaking into small, helpless noises against my shoulder.

"Mine," I say against her skin. I will say it ten thousand times. It will never be enough. "Mine, mine, mine."

"Yours," she agrees, wrecked, and turns her head, sinking her teeth, blunt, human, perfect, into my shoulder, and I come again, a fresh pulse of release jerks out with her bite, and I roar loud enough to announce our mating to the compound.

Cienna, my tiger sighs, sprawling in satisfaction.