I pull my shirt off. She puts her hands on my chest and pushes. I go back against the wall. She climbs onto the cot, onto me, her knees on either side of my hips, and the weight of her in my lap sends blood south so fast my head swims.
“Briar—”
“Still talking.”
She kisses me, her hands on either side of my face, holding me still, her mouth on mine. The kiss is slow. Deliberate. She’s in charge, and she’s making sure I know it. Her tongue finds mine, and the taste of her floods my mouth. My hands go to her waist, and she catches my wrists and pins them against the wall behind my head.
“Hands stay,” she says against my mouth.
“You’re joking.”
“Do I look like I’m joking?”
She doesn’t look like she’s joking. She looks like a woman who’s been letting me lead for every encounter we’ve had andhas decided that’s over. Her fingers tighten on my wrists. The grip is strong. She’s smaller than me, but she’s a fighter, and her hands know how to hold. The fact that I’m pinned, that the alpha is pinned beneath a woman half his weight, should trigger every dominance instinct I have.
It doesn’t. My wolf doesn’t fight it. My wolf rolls over and shows his belly, and the submission is so total, so unexpected, that my breath catches audibly.
“There it is,” she murmurs. “That’s what I wanted.” She releases my wrists. “Keep them there.”
I keep them there. My hands against the wall, my fingers spread, every muscle in my arms straining to reach for her while I hold them still because she told me to.
She undoes my jeans. Works them down my hips while I lift to help her. Then she’s stripping her own off. It’s awkward in the confined space, but I don’t care because she’s settling back into my lap and the wet heat of her pussy against my cock makes my vision blur.
“Look at me,” she says.
I look. Her face is close. Gray eyes. Dark hair falling forward, brushing my shoulders. The mate mark on her neck. My mark, the scar from the clearing, the raised tissue where my wolf’s teeth punctured skin and changed everything.
I’ve kissed that scar. Traced it with my tongue. Pressed my mouth to it while she slept. But I’ve never looked at it the way I’m looking at it now, with her in my lap and her eyes on mine. The gravity of what she’s about to do is sitting in the air around us.
She reaches between us and takes me in her hand. Her grip is firm and sure, and my hips jerk involuntarily.
“Patience,” she says.
“I have no patience left. You used it all.”
“Then find more.”
She positions me against her entrance. The blunt pressure, the slick heat. She holds my eyes.
“I’m choosing this,” she says. “Not my wolf. Not the bond. Not the heat. Me.”
“I know.”
“This is mine to give. You don’t take it.”
“I know.”
She sinks down.
The sound I make is not the sound of an alpha. It’s the sound of a man being undone, low, broken, torn from somewhere deep in my chest. She takes me in slowly, inch by inch, her eyes on mine the whole time. The intimacy of watching her face while she opens around me is more naked than anything we’ve done.
I can see what I do to her. The way her lips part. The flutter of her eyelids. The tiny furrow between her brows when the stretch hits its deepest point. I see all of it because she’s letting me see it, and the letting is the gift.
She bottoms out. My full length inside her. Her thighs gripping my hips. Her hands on my shoulders. Both of us breathing hard.
“Hands,” she says, exhaling the word. “You can use them now.”
I bring them down from the wall and set them on her hips. The permission in the word undoes something. My fingers dig into her skin, and she inhales sharply, and the sound shoots through me.