He was causing her pain.
Gods, could he really do this?
Storm crossed the clearing again, tossed him another black look that called him a fucking idiot and strode into the woods, heading back to the cabin he was repairing. Ivy wasn’t the only one giving him the cold shoulder. Storm had done his damnedest to convince him to keep Ivy around and take the leap by mating with her. His brother might live in one of the cities, but he clearly didn’t have a clue about humans and how they worked.
Ivy needed time to get her head straight, because the decision he was asking her to make was one that would impact her life, changing it irreversibly.
Forever.
He couldn’t rush her into it.
He couldn’t.
That sensation that a male was drawing closer went through him again and propelled him into action.
He stepped off the deck and strode to meet Ivy where she was now walking towards him, her camera put away in her pack.
Fuck, this was going to hurt.
But it had to be done.
He couldn’t have her around unmated males, would need to fight them, perceiving them as a threat that wanted to take his female from him even if they weren’t interested in her. He wouldn’t be able to stop himself from attacking them to drive them away and assert his dominance over them.
Ivy stopped as he neared her, lowered her pack and set it down on the grass, and straightened, facing him.
He sucked down a deep breath and prepared himself as he halted in front of her.
She twisted the front of his long-sleeved black t-shirt into her right fist, dragged him towards her and seized his lips in a kiss that seared him, set fire to his blood and had him forgetting the reason he had come to her, replacing it with a need that demanded he satisfy it.
Satisfy her.
She moaned into his mouth as her tongue tangled with his, stoking that need into an inferno that burned away his control, and he swallowed her sweet groan of pleasure as he banded his left arm around her, hauled her up against his chest and pinned her there as he kissed her.
Her hands skimmed over his shoulders and he shivered as she teased the nape of his neck, stroking her fingers over it, sending an achy hot wave of tingles down his spine that tore a growl from his lips and had him kissing her harder.
A need to dominate her flooded him.
He pushed back against it, set her down and stepped back, distancing himself before it overwhelmed him. “What are you doing?”
She grabbed him and kissed him again, stoking the flames that he had just convinced to go down, so they blazed through him again, threatening to rip all control from him.
Rath seized her arms and shoved her back.
Before she could kiss him again, he picked up her pack and grabbed her hand and tugged her towards the woods.
“It’s time for you to leave, just for a while.”
She twisted free of his grip. “No.”
He arched an eyebrow and looked over his shoulder at her. “No?”
She shook her head. “I’m not leaving.”
He sighed, prayed to his ancestors for the strength to do this, and reached for her hand again. “You need to leave. There are males coming.”
She smacked his hand away and stood her ground. “I’m not leaving. I’ve thought it over, and you know what? You don’t get to make decisions for me.”
Reckless female.
He growled as he came to face her, but she didn’t cower, just tipped her chin up and glared at him, resolve flashing in her hazel eyes.
“If you don’t leave, I won’t be able to stop myself from fighting every fucking male who comes,” he snarled and advanced on her, closing the gap between them until his chest bumped hers and she had to tilt her head back to keep her steely eyes locked on his. “I’ll fucking kill them all just for being near you, Ivy.”
“No, you won’t,” she whispered, and she sounded so sure of herself that he wanted to scoff, but her next words froze him in place. “Not if I’m your mate, bound to you.”
“What are you saying?” His eyes searched hers, darted between them so rapidly he got dizzy.
Or maybe that was just the shock of her telling him something that had to be fucking impossible, a mistake on his part, a misinterpretation of her words, although he wasn’t sure how he could misunderstand them.
She made herself clear by tiptoeing, wrapping her right hand around the nape of his neck and pulling him down for another searing kiss.
She breathed against his lips, “I’m saying I want to mate with you.”
Rath swept her up into his arms and kissed her, deeper this time, harder than before, unable to hold back as the thought of what she wanted rang through him, and he felt it in her blood, echoing in his veins, and found only certainty in her feelings.
Yet he still broke away from her lips and panted against them, “You’re sure?”
He had told her what it would mean, had spelled out every detail for her over the past couple of days, letting her know everything that would happen if she chose to mate with him—that he would need to bite her nape while he made love with her, and that bite would join them forever, increasing her lifespan in the process.
He had told her everything in the hope it would make her do as he wanted and leave so she could think it over.
He hadn’t expected her to hit him with an answer just two days later.
“I’m sure.” Her steady voice and feelings backed up those words.
Rath couldn’t stop himself from pulling her back against him and claiming her lips, kissing her so hard he feared he was going to end up hurting her. When she wrapped her arms around his neck, swept her tongue across his lips, and pressed inside, brushing his sensitive canines, he snapped.
She squeaked as he swept her up into his arms, cradling her against his chest, his right arm tucked beneath her knees and his left around her back.
“Your shoulder.” She pressed against him but he refused to release her, only growled as her palms scalded his chest through his t-shirt and made him ache to feel them on his bare flesh.
When he reached the cabin, he kicked the door shut and carried her up to his bedroom, into the dark.
He set her down on the bed and stared at her, his heart labouring, chest heaving, body and soul screaming to claim her.
He forced himself to say, “You’re sure that you’re sure?”
She hit him with a dazzling smile. “I’m very sure that I’m sure. I don’t want to go away, Rath… I don’t want to leave this place. It feels like home… because you’re here. I don’t want to leave you. I didn’t come here looking for this, but I’m damned glad that I found it… that I found you.”
Gods, he loved her.
He snaked his arm around her waist and kissed her hard, showing her that he felt the same way, that she had become his everything, was vital to him now, and he couldn’t bear the thought of being apart from her either.
Without her in it, his territory would feel empty, as hollow as his heart would be without her.
She was his home.
She was also a female possessed. He broke the kiss and looked down at her hands as they tugged his t-shirt up, wanted to grin as she hastily shoved it over his chest. A flicker of determination crossed her pretty face as she pulled it over his left arm and then her expression softened, gentling as she carefully eased it down and off his right one.
Her fingers fluttered over the bandage on his right shoulder, and he could feel she wanted to mention it, so he silenced her by pulling her fleece off quickly followed by her t-shirt. He tossed them aside and his boots followed them.
Ivy tugged her own boots off and stood, and he stilled and stared as she shimmied out of her dark charcoal hiking trousers, revealing her legs. She blushed when she caught him watching her, and then pulled down a deep breath and reached behind herself, and his own breath hitched as she unhooked her black bra and let it slide down her arms, freeing her breasts.
His
already hard length shot harder at the sight of her dusky tipped full breasts and the way her nipples beaded in the cooler air, calling to him.
He growled, grabbed her around the waist and fell onto the bed with her, landing between her thighs, his chest against her stomach. She moaned, the sound music to his ears as she pushed her fingers into his hair and twisted it into her fist as he swirled his tongue around one sweet bud and sucked.
She wriggled beneath him, her breaths coming faster, and he could sense her desire mounting as she tipped her head back into the mattress. A strained moan left her lips and she arched her chest up, pressing her breasts into his face. He groaned and moved to her other breast, teasing it with his tongue as he teased her other damp nipple with his fingers, aching with a need to hear her moan again, to hear the pleasure he gave to her.
“Rath,” she breathed and he shuddered, his body quaking against hers as fire swept through him, a thousand hot needles stabbing down his spine to his balls.
Gods, he wanted her.
He needed to claim her.
It pounded inside him, primal and fierce, a drumming need that he could only obey, one that hijacked control of him and had him seizing her hips and flipping her onto her front. He pulled her hips up off the mattress, tearing a delicious gasp from her, and licked her through her damp black underwear. The taste of her had him growing harder, that ache growing fiercer, and he pressed his tongue in deeper, needing more of her.
When she moved, bringing her hands to her hips, he growled and rose off her, grabbed her by the nape of her neck and pinned her to the bed. He groaned as her heat pressed against his aching shaft and he stared down at her, her submissive position stoking the inferno inside him.
She moaned as he rocked forwards, pressing his cock against her.
It wasn’t enough.
He released her neck and gripped her panties, pushed them down to her knees to expose her, and groaned as he stroked her, felt how wet she was and drank down her breathless groan as she trembled.
“Gods, I need you, Ivy,” he husked, and a blush climbed her cheeks as she turned her head to one side so she could see him.
He fumbled with his trousers, tore the fly open and released himself, and her eyes darkened with need as he stroked a hand down his cock, revealing the crown. That need ran in his veins, commanded him to satisfy it, to give her what she desired from the bottom of her heart.
A mating.
He had wanted to taste her, wanted to tease her to a climax before making love to her, but the passion that drenched her eyes and her feelings had him burning too hot for her, needing to be inside her now to satisfy her and himself.
He fisted his cock again, looked at it as he eased it down the seam of her backside and into her folds, and lifted his eyes to lock with hers as he edged inside her slick heat.
His heart thundered in time with hers as it filled his ears, as he sank deeper into her and saw in her eyes every drop of the pleasure he could feel flowing through her as he joined them. He looked down at his cock again and loosed the low feral snarl that rolled up his throat as he disappeared into her, filling her.
“Fuck,” he muttered, and swore that one day, they were going to do things gently, that it wasn’t always going to be frantic and fast between them.
One day.
The way she wriggled, pressing back against him to drive his cock deeper into her, her eyes dark with need, calling to him, said that day wasn’t today.
He grabbed her hips, pulled out of her and drove back in, a deep thrust that had her rocking forwards when their bodies met. He groaned and shuddered as his balls brushed her and she clenched around him, pushing him to the edge.
Rath leaned over her, reached beneath her with his left hand as he gripped her hip with his right, and fondled her breast as he pumped into her, each stroke of his cock sending a thrill shooting through him, a sweep of tingles that hit him from the blunt head to his balls, and back again.
She moaned and gripped the bedclothes, twisting them into her fists, and damn, the sight of her undid him, gave him that shove he needed to propel him over the edge.
He clutched her breast, pulled her up so her back was flush against his chest, and pinned her there as he angled his body lower and thrust into her, making her bounce in his arms with each powerful plunge of his cock into her heat. She moaned and tipped her head back, rubbed her hand over his hair and captured his cheek.
He groaned as she twisted her head and kissed him, lost himself in her as her tongue teased his and each breathless sigh she loosed drove him on, had him pumping deeper and harder, a slave to the primal need to satisfy her.
To mate and bind himself to her.
His canines elongated, and he shuddered as she teased them with her tongue, no trace of fear in her as she explored them.
He wasn’t sure he could take much more.
He dropped his left hand to her thighs, swallowed her gasp as he teased her flesh as he plunged into her, the need for her to find release warring with a need to find one of his own by sinking his fangs into her nape.
He growled and broke the kiss, twisted her chestnut hair into his right fist and dropped his lips to her neck. Her moan sent a shiver through him, one that lit up his blood and had him thrusting faster, deeper, stroking her harder between her thighs. She arched forwards and he shook as she tightened around him, and his fangs itched, the need to bite her, to claim her, overwhelming him.
He swept his tongue over the back of her neck.
Buried his fangs deep.
She cried out, her hoarse shout filling his ears as she jerked in his arms, quivered and trembled so violently he struggled to keep hold of her. He growled against her nape as her blood hit his tongue, had stars exploding across his vision and his head spinning as release blazed through him.
He grunted as his body kicked hard, cock throbbing wildly inside her, each jet of his seed tearing another animalistic sound from his throat, and an answering moan from her. Her bliss washed through him, mingled with his own to heighten it, and he clung to her as he spent himself inside her, sipped on her blood and felt the connection between them bloom.
Her feelings grew clearer, crystalizing in his mind and his heart, so he could pick out every emotion, right down to the love that burned in her heart as he held her on him and convinced himself to release her neck.
He swept his tongue across it to steal her pain away and offer a silent apology for hurting her.
When her trembling ceased, and he felt strong enough to move again, he twisted her in his arms so she was facing him and stretched out on the bed with her, holding her tucked against his chest. Her breathing slowed, her heart calming again, but the warmth and bliss he could feel in her lingered, seemed to grow stronger as she nestled closer to him.
She lifted her head and he gazed down at her, struggling to believe that she was his mate now.
His forever.
She tilted her head back and kissed him, and he held her closer, made a new vow as he clutched her to him and drifted with her in the haze of their shared happiness.
He would protect her, from now until the end of eternity. He would allow nothing to happen to her, would keep her safe and at his side. He would love her more every day, and would do all in his power to make her happy.
Because she had given him everything.
She had blessed him with her love.
She had accepted him and his world, and bravely stepped into it so they could be together.
She had made him believe in forever again.
And that forever started now.
The End
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Want more of the Cougar Creek Mates series?
Captured by her Cougar (Cougar Creek Mates series #2)
In the wake of an Archangel attack on Cougar Creek, Storm is seething with a need for revenge against the hunter organisation and the key to it might be the petite blonde mortal he’s locked in his cabin, one he’s determined to make sing for him. Only the beauty has a fiery temperament to match his own, and the more time he spends with her, the more she stokes a fire inside him. One that fills him with a startling and undeniable need to make her sing in another way—in his arms.
Gabriella isn’t going to take her captivity lying down. She’s going to give the pig-headed brute holding her against her will hell until he finally believes she’s innocent. He might be a cougar shifter, but she isn’t afraid of him. Or at least she isn’t afraid of what he is. The way he affects her, the flames that lick through her whenever they’re close, terrifies her though, because the longer she’s around the towering sexy-as-sin shifter, the hotter that fire blazes, and it’s only a matter of time before it burns away all her restraint.
With the mating heat and the attack bringing cougars back to the creek, Gabriella is a complication Storm doesn’t need, but she’s one that he wants… because she might just be his one true mate.
Available now in ebook, paperback and audiobook: order your copy now
About the Author
Felicity Heaton is a New York Times and USA Today best-selling author who writes passionate paranormal romance books. In her books, she creates detailed worlds, twisting plots, mind-blowing action, intense emotion and heart-stopping romances with leading men that vary from dark deadly vampires to sexy shape-shifters and wicked werewolves, to sinful angels and hot demons!
If you’re a fan of paranormal romance authors Lara Adrian, J R Ward, Sherrilyn Kenyon, Gena Showalter, Larissa Ione, Kresley Cole, Donna Grant and Christine Feehan then you will enjoy her books too.
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