I dumped the material on top of Justus’s bloody pants, then grabbed the clean fitted sheet he’d set on top of the top of the dresser.
“You don’t need to make the bed.” He tried to take the sheet from me, but I pulled it out of reach.
“I want to.”
“I’d rather you didn’t,” he said.
“Why?” I studied his face, confused by his insistence. “If you’re trying to prove you don’t think only women are suited to domestic work, you can relax. I’ve already seen you wash dishes, prepare food, and help strip the bed. You’re scoring points for feminism left and right.”
Titus smiled. “It’s because you’re my guest. I’m supposed to protect you and show you hospitality, yet I’ve dragged you out of my home, rather than making you comfortable in it, and I let some strange stray pounce on you in the woods. I’ve failed in every duty a host has, and if I let you make your own bed, that’ll be one more failure.”
I stared at him for a moment. Then I burst into laughter.
“Why is that funny?”
“Because you didn’t drag me out of your house. You didn’t even invite me into it. I broke into your car. I slammed into your life like a fucking missile, throwing up shrapnel. But you fed me and gave me somewhere to sleep. Hell, you gave me your clothes. If that’s not proper hospitality, I don’t know what is.”
Titus’s gaze strayed to my shirt—to his shirt—and stuck there. Heat flared behind his gaze. “You smell like me,” he growled, but his tone wasn’t angry. It was the floodgate holding back some primal need churning behind his eyes.
“Yeah.” I ran one hand over the front of the shirt, holding his gaze. “It’s distracting, honestly. I can smell you all over me.”
Titus dropped the sheet and pulled me closer by a handful of the borrowed shirt. I laughed and wrapped my arms around his neck, as his hands found my hips, over the bunched waist of the drawstring pants. He kissed me. And his scent swallowed me whole.
“Wait, I thought we weren’t supposed to do this,” I said when his mouth trailed down my neck.
His deep chuckle sent a thrill through me. “I thought this was what you wanted.”
“It is,” I groaned, fighting the urge to abandon words entirely as his mouth traveled over my shoulder, pushing the broad neck of the borrowed shirt out of the way. “But I need to know it’s what you want. In spite of the consequences.” I’d made my point—it was none of anyone else’s business if I wanted to kiss Titus, Alpha or not. But I couldn’t cause him any more trouble, especially considering everything else he was already dealing with.
Titus stood straight, and the heat in his eyes nearly roasted me alive. He pressed the length of his body against mine, and I could feel how badly he wanted me. “Any more questions?” The gravely quality of his voice resonated deep inside me, and I wanted to roll around in that sound. I wanted to hear it in the dark, in the middle of the night.
I wanted to hear it in my dreams.
But…
I put one hand on his chest and took a step back. “Wanting this right now isn’t enough, Titus. I don’t want to be what keeps you from leading your Pride. From getting it officially recognized. From helping all the people who need you.”
“You aren’t the problem,” he said. “The council is the problem. Their rules don’t allow for the fact that strays face a different reality than natural-born shifters. For the reality of mistakes made before we even know they’re mistakes. But at some point, they’re going to realize that their world is changing. That a political power structure that doesn’t support the majority of its citizens—whether or not they’re acknowledged as citizens—can’t stay in power for long. I believe that time is coming, with or without me. With or without you. And I’m no longer willing to pretend I don’t want to touch you just so they might consider acknowledging a populace they have no right to reject in the first place.”
I smiled up at him, my pulse racing in response to his. “You’re hot when you get political.”
His arms slid around me, and the stubble on his chin caught in my hair. “I can recite the US presidents in chronological order,” he whispered.
“That’s a shame,” I whispered back. “You might get laid if you could do it alphabetically…”
“John Adams. John Quincy Adams.” He pulled his shirt off and dropped it on the floor, his heated gaze challenging me to make good on my word. “Chester A. Arthur. James—”
SIXTEEN
Robyn
“—Buchanan.”
I laughed as I pushed him onto the bed, suddenly glad we hadn’t made it past the fitted sheet.
Titus looked up at me, and his grin kindled a fire in low and sensitive places. “Do you need to hear more, or are you convinced?”
I settled onto the bed over him, straddling his hips, and the position gave me a tantalizing sense of control. And another intimate brush with the very warm, very hard evidence of his arousal. “I’m convinced of your alphabetical proficiency, Mr. Alexander. But I might need you to demonstrate a few other critical skills…” I rocked forward, pressing myself into him.
Titus groaned beneath me, and that sense of control swelled into a provocative sense of power. What other noises could I get out of him?
Intrigued, I leaned forward slowly, holding his gaze as long as I could, until my cheek brushed the stubbly length of his jaw. I bit his ear with just enough pressure to draw a little gasp from his throat. Pleased with the sound, I rolled my hips again and sucked his earlobe into my mouth, grazing it with my teeth.
Titus moaned softly. His hands found my hips, and he guided them back, then rocked me forward again, pulling me firmer against him. Tearing a groan from me.
Eager now, I shimmied down the length of his body, dragging my tongue along his neck. His hands slid over my waist and beneath my shirt, skimming my ribs, then circling to my spine. Leaving chills in their wake.
“Mmmm…” I mumbled against his chest, between nibbling kisses. I inched my way lower, trailing my tongue over the peak of his left nipple, then down the hard planes of his chest. Every inch of his skin was stretched taut over well-defined muscle. He was pure power, draped in human flesh and held in check by an iron will I suddenly had the desperate urge to test.
I nibbled and licked my way down his chest, delighting in every groan and inhalation, and the lower I went, the higher Titus’s hands pulled my shirt. By the time I dipped my tongue into the well of his navel, he was breathing in short pants, his hands fisted around the hem of the shirt caught beneath my breasts.
“Robyn…” he moaned, and the throaty sound of my name sent a lick of heat south of my own navel.
Titus sat up, pushing me back, but his hands steadied me as I stood. He pulled the borrowed shirt over my head with agonizing slowness, his fingers skimming my arms as they went. Finally, the shirt hit the floor
He let his hands glide down my sides, warm against my skin, but his gaze was the more intimate touch as it slid over my breasts, then found its way to my face. “God, you’re beautiful.” He pulled me into a deep, hungry kiss, as my hands explored his chest.
Titus groaned again and picked me up as he stood. I wrapped my legs around him, then he turned and placed me on the bed. “Pants,” I gasped.
Titus unbuttoned his jeans and pushed them to the floor. He stepped out of his pants and socks and stood in front of me wearing nothing but a pair of black boxer briefs straining against the demands of his erection.
I started to untie my borrowed sweats, but he pushed my hands away with a growl, and I laughed as more chills slid down my spine. Titus lowered himself onto one elbow next to me. His mouth found my left breast, hot against my sensitive skin, and I buried one hand in his hair, arching into his touch.
His tongue flicked over my nipple, and my eyes fell closed. His hand glided over my stomach, and I caught my breath. His fingers slid between my thighs over my sweats, and when he began to stroke me through the cloth, my hand tightened around a handful of his hair.
The bed rocked as he stood, and I opened my eyes when he tugged impatiently at the waist of my pants.
“Drawstring,” I murmured, too lost in desire to be more articulate.
Titus tugged the drawstring until the bow slid loose, and I lifted for him so he could drag the material over my hips. He pulled the sweats down slowly, in spite of the impatience clear in the hungry way he watched me. Chills followed his fingers as the material skimmed over my legs, then disappeared. The sweats landed across the room, then he appeared over me again, need burning in his eyes.
Titus put one knee on the mattress, but I sat up, my hand on the flat plane of his lower stomach. “Wait.” He stood and I slid my hands beneath the last bit of material separating us. I pulled his boxer briefs down, freeing that last bit of him, proud and thick, straining toward me even as the rest of him clung to a thin thread of restraint.
I looked up at Titus as I wrapped one hand around him. His groan was almost too low to be human. Encouraged, I slid my hand down his firm length, then grasped him at the base. An inarticulate sound of pleasure rumbled up from his throat, and he gasped as my mouth closed over him.
“Robyn…” His hands slid into my hair, encouraging, but not demanding.
When I felt him at the back of my throat, I pulled away, sucking a little harder, until I could trace a circle around his head with my tongue. Then I took him in again, as deep as I could.
He groaned again and again as I stroked and sucked, his hands tightening in my hair until—
“Robyn.” Titus pushed me back gently. I looked up to find desperate need firing like sparks behind his eyes. “I have to slow down. I was infected three years ago, and since then, I haven’t…”
“You haven’t had sex in three years?” I frowned up at him. “Why not?” I hadn’t slept with anyone since I was infected either, but for me, that was a matter of months.
“Because of Faythe.”
“What?” I leaned back on both hands, staring at him in shock and confusion. “You and Faythe?” The married, pregnant Alpha of another Pride?
“No!” Titus sat next to me. “Faythe’s a legend, even to us out here in the former free zone. She’s the reason we all know about the partial shift, and she discovered that during a very intimate moment.”
My confusion must have shown.
“She infected her boyfriend during sex, when her teeth started to shift, and I couldn’t take the chance that that might happen to some poor human girl. Because of me. Especially considering that women don’t survive infection. Well, until you.”
“So you were going to, what? Take cold showers for the rest of your life?” Because there were no tabbies in the free zone, other than Abby. And until me, there’d been no real prospects. “Am I just…convenient?”
“No.” Titus pulled me closer, and his lips skimmed my temple as he spoke. “You are anything but convenient.”
“Ha, ha.”
“I’m serious. You are beautiful, and brave, and bold, and…uninhibited. And I love all of those things. But you’re the least convenient prospect I’ve ever had—and I mean that in the best way. You’re not just a sudden opportunity to be grasped, and I don’t want you to feel like one. If you don’t want this, we can stop right now.”
I looked into his gray eyes. Assessing.
He meant it. He hadn’t had sex in three years, but he’d rather go without than let me believe I was scratching an itch any female shifter could have scratched.
“So then, if I’m not convenient…what am I?”
“You’re unforgettable. Irresistible,” he said, and suddenly I felt like I was in freefall on a swing set, waiting for my stomach to catch up with the rest of me. “I’ve hardly been able to think about anything else since the moment you popped up in my rearview mirror.” He shrugged. “Since the moment I saw you in the Di Carlo’s dining room, actually. And every time I think you can’t get any more incredible, you come up with some possibility I haven’t thought of, or you shut down some bullshit I don’t even realize I’m spouting, and you do it all with this sexy little smile.” Titus took my hand. “I don’t want to give you up, Robyn. I want you here with me, even if I never get the Pride back. If you’re willing to stay.”
My heart pounded so hard I felt dizzy. “But you told the council…”
“When Blum had you pinned, I thought I was about to lose you, and I realized I could not let that happen. Not to him. Not to the council. Not to anyone. We’ll figure something out. If you want to stay.”
Looking up into his eyes, I believed him. Titus was a different kind of Alpha, and not just because he wasn’t natural-born. “I want to stay with you,” I said, and he looked so relieved I almost laughed. I wanted to help him guide and support new strays, whether or not he ever got his Pride back. I wanted to see him looking at me with that hunger in his gaze every day. Every night…
I smiled and ran my hand over his side, to the lateral bulge of muscle at his hip. “So, you stopped me so I’d know I’m…inconvenient?”
“No.” His face flushed a little. “I stopped you because it’s been a while for me, and…” He brushed hair from his forehead. “Your turn.”
Titus knelt in front of me at the side of the bed, his gaze burning into me. He put a hand on each of my knees and pushed them open, and anticipation gathered low in my stomach. Then he pulled me forward as I lay back on the bed and closed my eyes.
His hands disappeared, leaving me cold and exposed for a moment. Then his fingers skimmed from my knees up my inner thighs. Parting them wider.
I moaned at the first touch of his tongue, wet and blisteringly hot against my most sensitive parts. He started off with long, slow caresses, the tip of his tongue teasing me at the end of each stroke. Then my hands found his hair, and he licked faster, harder. He stroked deeper, longer, until a blissful pressure began to build up, tightening with each touch of his tongue. Each breath came short and fast. My hands clenched around his hair, and I arched up, aching for more from each little bit of contact.
“Titus. Please…” I begged, each word a throaty whisper.
“Not yet.” He rose, and I let go of his hair reluctantly. “Wait for me, Robyn.” I propped myself on one elbow, watching as he fumbled in his brother’s nightstand, then tore open a condom. A moment later, he settled over me, supporting his weight on his elbows. His tongue trailed up my neck, pushing my head to one side as he sucked my earlobe into his mouth. “Almost…” he whispered, as he positioned himself between my thighs. Then he slid inside me in one long, smooth stroke.
For a moment, neither of us moved. I tightened around him, enjoying the pressure and friction, and he groaned softly in my ear. Then I rocked beneath him, and he groaned louder.
Titus pulled back, then sank into me again. And again. We found our rhythm, and I rose to meet him over and over. Soon that pressure built again, an ache made of promise.
When I couldn’t wait any longer, I wrapped one leg around Titus’s thigh and pushed on his shoulder. He slid one arm around me and rolled us over.
Pleased, I sat up, both hands braced on his sweat-damp chest, and took control of the rhythm. Driving us faster and faster as I chased that swelling, spiraling release.
“That’s it,” he moaned as I rode him. “Show me what you like.” Titus’s hands slid down my waist to grip my hips, pinning me to him, increasing the friction as I set the pace.
“Robyn,” he groaned, his fingers digging into my hips. He was close.
“Almost,” I panted. I sat upright, my hands in my own hair, grinding into him at a new angle, and suddenly everything tightened.
Pleasure erupted through me, tearing a cry from my throat as I rode him frantically, and for a moment I was aware of nothing but the release washing over me with every rock of my hips. Every new jolt of friction.
“Robyn!” he cried as he came, thrus
ting into me, pinning me against him as he bucked up from the mattress.
I rode my release until it ebbed into an aching satisfaction. Until finally, I collapsed against his shoulder, my hair spread over his arm. We breathed in sync, his heart pounding frantically beneath my ear.
Still buried inside me, he throbbed, and little aftershocks of pleasure fired through me as I tightened involuntarily around him.
“Three years, huh?” I teased, running one hand down his side. “That was some pretty impressive control.”
“It was an effort,” he admitted. “But it can only get better, right?”
I groaned. “I’m not sure I can handle anything better than that.”
He laughed, one hand wrapped around my back, holding me to him. “I have confidence that you’re up to the challenge.” Then he rolled us over and withdrew as he stood. “Be right back.”
I got up to find the pillows, and Titus returned as I was spreading the flat sheet over the bed. “Oh good. I was afraid you’d be dressed.”
“Nope.” I crawled onto the bed, beneath the top sheet, and he curled up next to me. Around me. One arm draped over my side. “I like naked.”
“So I recall.” He chuckled. “I like you naked too.”
“Is it weird that we’re in your brother’s bed? Do you think he’d mind?”
“I know for a fact that he would not. He’s always been generous with his things.”
I huffed. “Probably because you always had the money to buy more things.” Then a new thought occurred to me. “Do you think that’s changed, now that he’s been infected? Some shifters are highly territorial.”
“Yeah, maybe.” Titus brushed my hair up over the pillow and away from his face. “But if anyone is likely to recognize me as an Alpha, it’s my baby brother. I was the only authority figure in his life long before either of us were shifters.”
“What’s Justus like?” I asked, snuggling against him. “I mean, before he was infected?”
“He’s a normal nineteen-year-old. Young and stupid, in a lot of ways. But he’s a good guy. Generous, like I said. Funny. He likes video games and movies, but he also watches the news, if you can believe that.”
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