She moves.
Not fast. Rolling, her hips finding a rhythm that’s different from anything before. Not the brutal collision of the clearing, not the frantic urgency of the heat. A deep, grinding roll that takes me to the root on every downstroke and drags the head of my cock against something inside her that makes her gasp each time. She’s using me. Taking what she needs. Her hands bracedon my shoulders, her head tipped back, her body working mine with a precision that tells me she knows exactly what she wants and she’s going to take it.
Fuck.
I want to say her name, but I feel like I’d have to ask permission first. She’s fierce and determined, and I don’t want to ruin it.
My hands slide up her sides and find her breasts. She presses into my palms, and the roll of her hips gets faster, harder. I’m watching her — her face, her throat, the way her stomach flexes with each stroke. The swell where our child is growing, moving between us. My hand finds it and rests there. Palm flat.
Her eyes find mine. The gray goes darker. She doesn’t push my hand away.
She rides me harder. Her nails digging into my shoulders, the rhythm breaking, getting ragged. She’s close. I can feel it in the way her body tightens around me, the grip of her getting fiercer, and through the bond her pleasure is bleeding into me and mine into her, and the doubled sensation is—
“Garrett.” My name. Not flat. Not controlled. My name, the way it sounds when she’s breaking apart. “I need—”
“I know what you need.”
I grip her hips and take over the rhythm. Driving up into her from below, hard, deep, meeting her roll with thrust. She cries out — sharp, surprised — and her nails break skin on my shoulders. The sting mixes with the pleasure, and everything is building.
“Don’t hold back,” she pants. “The knot… I want—”
“All of it?”
“Yes! Give me everything.”
I let go. The restraint I’ve been holding — the alpha’s control, the discipline of keeping that part of me leashed — I let it go. The swelling starts, and she feels it, and her rhythm stutters. Shegrinds down, taking the growing thickness deeper. The sound she makes is greedy and raw, and it breaks whatever was left of my composure.
The knot expands. Locking us. Her body stretching around the base of me, the pressure enormous. She gasps, and her hands fly to my face and hold it, her eyes burning into mine.
“Don’t look away,” she says. “Stay with me.”
I stay with her. My eyes on hers while the knot seals and the pressure builds, and I feel myself tipping toward the edge. She’s right there with me, I can feel her through the connection between us, both of us climbing the same wave—
She comes first. Her body clenching around the knot, the internal muscles gripping me with a force that triggers my own release. I spill into her with a groan that I bury against her throat. The pleasure is blinding, doubled through the bond, hers and mine braided together, and the knot holds us locked in it, the waves rolling through both of us.
And in the peak of it — at the crest, where the pleasure is widest, and our bodies are as joined as two bodies can be — she bites me.
I feel her teeth change against my neck. The sharpening. The extension. Wolf canines emerging, the same transformation I felt in my own mouth in the clearing when my wolf bit her. Her teeth find the junction of my neck and shoulder — the mirror of her mark, the exact placement — and she bites down.
The pain is sharp. Clean. Her teeth puncturing skin, breaking through to muscle. The shock of it rides the tail of the orgasm, and the two sensations merge into something I have no reference for. My body jerks. My arms lock around her. The sound I make is not human.
The bond opens.
Not the one-way channel I’ve been living with. Something else. Something that floods both directions simultaneously, pouringthrough the puncture wounds the way water pours through a broken dam. Her — entering me. Not just her emotions, or her presence, or the awareness I’ve carried since the clearing.
Her.
The full force of who she is, rushing into me through the bite. Her wolf — fierce, loyal, the animal that chose me and has been fighting her human ever since. Her fury — still there, banked but present. Her fear — of this, of us, of the vulnerability of loving someone who’s capable of catastrophic mistakes.
And the love. Under everything. The thing she’s been refusing to admit, running from, fighting with every weapon she has. It hits me, and my eyes burn. My arms tighten around her, and I bury my face in her hair because the force of it is more than I can take with my eyes open.
She holds the bite. Her jaw locked, her teeth deep, her slick channel still clamped around the knot. I can feel her wolf meeting mine, and the meeting is recognition. Two animals that have been circling each other for weeks finally touching.
There you are. There you are.
Her jaw loosens. Her teeth withdraw. The blood is warm, running down my neck. She lifts her head and looks at me, and her mouth is red with it. My blood on her lips.
I bring my mouth to her neck. To the scar I left in the clearing. The ragged tissue where my wolf’s teeth tore through her skin while she screamed, and the bond was born. I press my lips against it. Gently. The gentlest thing I’ve ever done, my mouth on the wound I made. Not a wound, a claiming. I feel her breath catch, and her hand comes up to the back of my head, and she holds me there.