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I pull her panties aside, licking a trail to her center. Her hips buck, and her fingers tighten, and I feel her wolf close to the surface, pressing at the edges of her control.

Good.

I want all of her. The controlled professional and the wild thing underneath. The strategist and the wolf. The woman who built walls out of necessity and the one who just said okay in the dark and let me take over.

She tastes better than my fantasies.

The sounds she makes are going to ruin me. Not just now. Forever. I’m going to be in a strategy meeting somewhere in six months, thinking about the way she says my name when my tongue is tasting her, and I know in that moment, I’m going to be useless.

And I find that I don’t mind at all.

She comes apart slowly, then all at once—a long shuddering exhale and her hand fisted in my hair and my name on her lips like something she didn’t mean to say out loud. I stay with her through all of it, through every aftershock, until she’s breathing again and her hand has loosened and she’s looking up at the canopy above us, slightly dazed.

I work my way back up her body, but when I don’t move fast enough, she pulls me up the rest of the way. Her eyes are dark emeralds, and she looks at me like she’s made a decision that I can only hope goes past tonight, even if she’s not ready to say so.

When I finally settle myself between her thighs, she wraps her legs around me like she’s been doing this with me her whole life and makes a sound that goes straight through every layer of composure I have left.

I go still for a moment. Just feeling. Just looking.

She makes an impatient sound.

“Give me a second,” I say, my voice already hoarse, and we haven’t even begun.

She smirks, full of awareness of the power she wields now.

“Take your time.” But her hands are moving against my back, and her hips are kneading mine in a way that contradicts the tone entirely.

I snort, then lean down and press my forehead to hers. “I'm trying to make this last.”

She pulls back enough to look at me. Something in her expression shifts—the impatience dissolving into something quieter. More real. She reaches up and touches my face with a gentleness she’d probably deny if I mentioned it, fingertips tracing my jaw like she’s memorizing something.

“Let’s make sure it does,” she says. Softly.

Like a promise.

And then there are no more words.

She’s responsive in a way that makes thought difficult. Present in a way that makes everything else irrelevant. The firelight moves across her skin, and her eyes are on mine, and I understand, with a clarity that bypasses analysis entirely, that I am completely done for.

Not because of tonight.

I was done for two years ago in a solarium at an alpha’s party. I knew it for sure the moment I walked out and left her there. I’ve known it every day since then; I just didn’t know how to get back to her. I’ve spent two years finding a way, and now I’m here at last, and I know with the certainty of something bedrock-deep that I will not walk away from this woman again.

Fated mate or no fated mate.

She’s mine in every way that matters, and I am categorically, irreversibly hers, and the mate bond can catch up when it’s ready.

I feel the moment the slow pace starts to break. The way her breathing changes. The way her hands stop being gentle and start being urgent, pulling rather than guiding. She arches into me and makes a sound that dissolves the last of my restraint, and I let the pace build the way it’s been building for two years—inevitable, unstoppable, irreversible.

Her fingers dig in. Her head tips back.

She comes with her arms around me and her face pressed into my neck and a sound that is completely unguarded. I feel her shudder through it. Feel her grip tighten and then go loose. Feel her exhale against my skin like something she’s been holding for a very long time finally let go.

I follow her over the edge, shuddering with the intensity of it.

And stay there for a long moment after—forehead against hers, both of us breathing, the fire popping softly beside us and the woods dark and quiet all around.

Her hands, which had been urgent and gripping, have gone soft. She’s tracing something against my back—slow, absent, like she’s not aware she’s doing it.