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“My friends…”

“Can wait.” He drops to his knees, and my protest dies in my throat.

He’s not gentle. Of course he’s fucking not. He hooks my knees over his shoulders and licks me slow, from my entrance all the way up to my clit, and I’m still so sensitive from the heat that I almost come from that alone.

“Nik…”

“Hands in my hair,” he orders.

I grab his hair with both hands. He sucks my clit into his mouth, and I come so fast it’s embarrassing, sobbing his name with my heels digging into his back. He doesn’t stop. He pushes two fingers inside me and keeps going.

“Slower this time,” he murmurs against me. “Just to prove I can.”

He licks me so slow it’s cruel, his fingers curling inside me, his eyes glowing up at me from between my thighs. My thighs start to shake around his head. I’m right there…

And he pulls his mouth away.

“Nik!”

“Slower, I said.” He blows a cool breath over my clit, and I whimper. “You don’t get to rush me, sweetheart.”

He puts his mouth back on me and sucks my clit so softly I can barely feel it, then harder, then softly again, until I’m crying and yanking his hair with both hands.

“Please.”

He hums against me, and I come apart on his tongue.

An hour later, I’m back in bed in one of his T-shirts with a tray of real food: a stack of pancakes, a mountain of fruit, and coffee in a mug the size of my head. I’m starving. Three days of heat will do that to a girl.

I pick up my phone while he watches me eat like he’s personally offended by how slow I’m going.

Me: I’m alive

It rings in two seconds. Jessie. I don’t even get to say hello.

“BITCH. Where are you?!”

“At his place.” I glance at Nik. “I think I’m mated.”

The scream is so loud I have to hold the phone away from my ear. In the background, I hear Kaylie yelling something I can’t make out, then Jessie’s back.

“MATED? Like, MATED mated? With the bite and everything?”

“With the bite and everything.”

“Oh my GOD. Okay. Okay, we need to see you. We need to debrief. We need…”

“What happened to you?” I cut in. “Why can’t you sit down?”

There’s a long pause. “Girl,” she finally says, and her voice gets real quiet. “I can’t talk about that on the phone.”

Nik plucks my phone out of my hand.

“Hey!”

“She’ll call you back,” he says into it, his voice dropping into that deep, layered rumble that makes my thighs press together. “When she can walk.”

He hangs up and tosses my phone on the nightstand.