“Of course I’m worried. As impetuous as you are, you’ll probably find yourself in trouble before they even get here.”
Lips twitching, she shifted closer, rubbing against him. “You really do care, don’t you? Why is that?”
He narrowed his eyes suspiciously even as he stepped back, putting an inch of space between them. “Why do you care if I care? You don’t even remember me.”
“Ah, but I think I do. Except I think it hurt so much to lose you, I had to block it.”
He dropped her hand and started to turn away with a disbelieving snort. “You don’t remember.”
She reached for him, brushing her hand across his scalp, just behind his ear. “You like to be scratched here whenever you’re in your cat form. I remember that.”
He sliced her a sharp look. “I hate to be touched when I’m in my animal.”
She merely grinned. “Really? Is that why I remembering petting this huge, speckled cat for hours and hours upon end? Is that why I remember how you would purr louder than any kitten I’d ever heard?”
He scowled, his lips tightening. “Only you were allowed to do that.”
“Why?” Her eyes glazed with approval.
His glower grew darker. “Because I thought you were special to me, okay? I thought…Christ! Why do you keep asking me these questions? What are you trying to wheedle me into saying?”
“I want you to confess I’m still special to you.”
“Well, maybe you’re not.”
“And maybe I am.”
He gritted his teeth and fisted his hands. “Goddamn stubborn-headed she-wolf.”
Just a little more prodding and she’d get him right where she wanted him. She could sense it in her blood.
“Yes, I honestly thought you were something special to me,” he hissed. “From the first moment I heard your fetus inside Jaycee speaking to me, I thought you were mine. You want me to confess that? Fine, I’m confessing it.
“But listen to this ironic little twist. Jaycee was simply the first pregnant woman I ever encountered. Turns out, I can hear the voice of every unborn child. It’s one of my shifter gifts. I ended up becoming an OB-GYN because of it. I midwife for shifter families and deliver their young.”
Ari drew in a sharp breath, bitterly disappointed to learn she hadn’t been a rare case for him after all. Licking her lips to gain a semblance of control over the rioting heart pounding madly in her chest, she murmured. “You’re a doctor?”
He shuddered out a breath, then nodded, refusing to make eye contact with her.
She crossed her arms over her chest and rubbed her elbows, feeling bereft, abandoned. “So, uh, I guess if you’d met some other pregnant woman before my mother, then you would’ve assumed that baby was your destined mate then. You…you probably would’ve bonded to her.”
Shoving his hands into his pockets, he shrugged. “I don’t know.”
A part of her shriveled and died. “Oh,” she murmured. “I see.” Utterly disheartened, she started to turn away, but he grasped her wrist, stopping her, and growled. “Don’t.”
Confused, she frowned at him. “Don’t what?”
“Don’t…don’t feel disappointed.”
Stiffening her spine with righteous indignation, she lied. “I don’t.”
His gaze merely probed hers as he reached out to place his hand over her thudding heart. “Don’t you?”
Her chin trembled. Damn it. Maybe sharing his emotions wasn’t so cool after all.
He closed his eyes and swayed toward her. “I hate it when you ache like this. I hated it even more when I didn’t know where you were, when I couldn’t be there for you.” He let out a moan of misery and pressed his forehead against hers. “You’re special to me, okay? You’re fucking special. Is that what you want to hear?”
Hurt by his regretful tone, Ari tried to pull her arm from his grasp, but he tightened his grip. Hauling her close, he pressed his hard, aroused body against hers, molding perfectly to her.
“Forget the bond and this fucking mating business, forget that I could talk to you before anyone else, forget even the fact I named you because you told me from the womb Ari was the name you liked best. Forget all that, and I still love you. You’re my Ari.”
His words echoed through her head. Dazed, Ari gazed at him, unable to believe what she’d heard. “If…if you love me so much, then why do you want to break the bond?”
“Because it’s too much.” He shook his head, looking lost and unable to explain himself. “I love you. I always have. I always will. But being away from you shattered me. Broke something inside me. I won’t be that vulnerable again. I can’t.”
The emotion in his features snared her. She wanted to know this all-encompassing love. And yet, even as she ached for it, she felt a memory of it, saw the glimpse of a young boy grinning at her as he picked her up to swing her in a circle. The memory was the embodiment of happiness. She wanted to feel that way again, and only this jaguar could give her that bliss.
“But what if we weren’t separated from each other ever again?” she had to know.
He winced. “What’s your guarantee we wouldn’t be?”
She grinned, then gave a careless shrug. “I don’t know. I’m older now. I won’t let my father carry me away in the middle of the night.”
“And what about death?” he pressed, looking almost feral as he demanded an answer. “What if the absolute purebloods take you away? Kill you.”
Again, she gave a nonchalant lift of the shoulders as her gaze trailed over his taut body. “Nothing’s permanent, of course, but I know I’d like to have as much time with you as possible.” She lifted eyes as she reached out to caress his chest. “I think I want to keep our bond just as it is. I don’t want to break it.”
He made a strained, tortured sound that seemed to come from deep within his chest. “Ari—” he started as if he wanted to argue.
But she cupped him through his jeans. His warm cock jerked under her fingers. “Can’t we just make the best of the time we could have together?”
His eyes look glazed, unfocused, as he nodded. A sheen of sweat coated his brow. “Okay,” he whispered. “Okay…okay. Let’s—”
She wasn’t sure who moved first, maybe they surged together in tandem. But in one breath, they stared at each other. In the next, they were together, as one, their mouths fused and fingers tangled.
They inhaled each other, bodies meshing, limbs intertwining, breaths whooshing.
“You’re mine,” he panted between kisses. “My heart. My soul. My mate.” With each noun, his mouth returned to her flesh, claiming his territory.
Ari closed her eyes and bowed toward him, clinging as he ravaged her with pleasure.
“Then take me,” she commanded.
“Yes.” His mouth continued to plunder, skimming up her neck and to her ear. “The purebloods are still coming,” he managed to pant, trying to reason a way to stop even as he peeled her pants down her legs and ripped her panties from her body, snapping the band in half.
“We can be fast,” she argued, heeling off her boots so she could kick the BDUs away from her ankles. Unable to stop touching him, she planed her hands down his hard, able body until she came across his fly.
When she unzipped him, he growled. “I don’t want to be fast. I want to linger over you, worship you, take my time and spend an entire hour just sinking into your body.”
“God, I love your sex talk.” Clawing her hands into the back of his jeans to clutch his ass with both hands, she climbed his body and crawled into his lap. “Now, hurry!”
He did, as frenzied to get inside her as she was to get him there.
“Free me.” He choked out the command as he grasped her hips and lifted her long enough for her to reach between their bodies and draw his cock from the opening of his jeans. She barely had a moment to pump his warm, thick length twice before he tightened his grip on her hips and shoved her down, impaling her with the tip of his prick.
; Her nipples throbbed. She let go of his shaft so he could thrust up and spike the rest of his cock between her slick folds. Her body caught and captured him, squeezing tight, contracting around the heavy column. Seated fully, he pulsed inside her.
She’d had sex before, taken all form of shifter and human, but no one had ever made her feel so full, so complete. Dazed, she fluttered her lashes, trying to focus on his face.
His features looked white, drained of color as he gaped. “Jesus.” When his dick throbbed inside her again, she choked out a started cry. Her body took over, began to spasm and milk him. Vision blanking out, she clasped his shoulders hard as his fingers bit into her waist. Neither moved as the orgasm consumed them both, his hot seed jetting inside her, her pussy sucking him dry.
A chaotic storm, it swept her up and she could merely hold on, squeezing her thighs around his hips and their bodies clenched in harmony. Mating. Bonding.
When the world settled and her eyesight returned, she opened her lashes to regard him with a bit of awe and a bit of mistrust.
“You lied to me.”
He opened his eyes and a pair of stunned blue orbs regarded her with a dazed kind of confusion. “About what?”
She shook her head, a bit confused herself. “That was no half bonding. It felt too complete. I had to have bitten you at some point.”
He gave a slight wince but otherwise didn’t look overtly guilty. “You went through a biting stage during your terrible twos.”
Her brow crinkled. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I didn’t want you to worry, to think resisting the mating urge was completely impossible.”
She sighed and closed her eyes. Still embedded inside her, his flesh jerked as if reawakening.
“It seems the urge was impossible to resist. We’re well and truly mated now. No going back.”
Licking his lips, he glanced down at their connection. There was no mistake about it now; he was most definitely hardening once more. She closed her eyes and bit her lips, then answered his cock with her cunt, squeezing her muscles and clamping around him briefly.
He caught his breath, then grasped the hem of her shirt and peeled it off her. “No. There’s no going back now.”
Lifting her arms to assist, she watched him as he tossed her shirt over his shoulder and then attacked her bra, peeling the straps down her arms. “Do you regret it?”
Her bra landed across the room as his blue gaze seared into her. “Do you?” he asked, heaving up deep inside her to scrape the walls of her inflamed sex with his shaft.
She clamped her bottom lip between her teeth, relishing the intoxicating sensation, rolling her hips as he rubbed her stimulated glands.
“Not…” She groaned and writhed in his lap as he loved her slowly, pressing and releasing in lulling waves of pleasure. “Not at the moment.”
“I’ll never regret it.” He bent his head to tug a hard nipple into his mouth. She arched out her back to press her breast closer. His tongue laved the beaded point as his cock swelled larger in her channel, filling her tight. “Never.”
“But…” She clutched his hair, her nails grazing his scalp. “You came here to sever our ties.”
“Stupidest thing I ever attempted.”
Her chuckle was husky. “Well, aren’t you a fickle male. Changing your mind at the drop of a hat.”
“I changed it the moment I walked into your yard and saw you hanging from that tree. I was just in a state of serious denial until you kissed me.”
He rolled her onto her back, pinning her to the mattress with the weight of his hips. Even as he continued to pump her with long, bold strokes, he struggled to tug his jeans the rest of the way down his legs until he was as naked as she.
Once they were both bared to the flesh, he returned his attention to her face. He was still inside her, moving, growing larger, his buttocks flexing with each plunge. But his face was peaceful and satisfied as he smiled.
“Hi.”
Ari grinned and a part of her tumbled headlong in love with him. She touched his hair. “Hi, yourself.”
Then, just to torture him a little, she tightened her pelvic muscles, hugging his length and making it more difficult for him to slide in and out, making it tighter.
His expression lost its passive edge. The muscles in his jaw tensed and his cock convulsed, jerking inside her. Hissing out a breath, he began to thrust faster, harder, his face taking on serious intent.
“So I guess we’re going to fuck until the purebloods get here,” he said, the words hissing from between clenched teeth.
She grinned and stretched under him, making him growl out his pleasure. “You have a better idea?”
“No. God, no.”
He jerked from her body, leaving her barren. “Wha—” Eyes flashing open, she panted and reached for him.
“You’re in too much control of yourself,” he said, looking irritable. “I’m supposed to be making you lose it, not have a freaking conversation while I’m stroking you.”
“But—” He cut off her protest by rolling her onto her belly. Then, before she could ask what he was about, he wrapped his arm around her waist and hiked her ass up a foot off the bed. Then he climbed on top of her from behind.
“If I have to mount you and do it like our animals to get your head completely into this, I will.”
“I was into it,” she cried in objection. He’d been the one asking her questions. But he felt good back there, his heat covering her, protecting her, dominating her. She forgot all about her argument. Both her wolf and her deer purred in response. She couldn’t help it; she tried to buck him off—a natural animal instinct, to force him to show just how dominant he could be.
His body tightened around her, his muscles straining to keep her under his control. She heaved up again to unseat him. In retaliation, he impaled her from behind, slamming his hips into her ass and stroking her pussy with a forceful plunge that made her throw her head back and keen out her acceptance.
He bit the back of her shoulder where her claiming mark tingled. When his teeth sank deep, he cupped her womanhood, catching her clit and squeezing. A shockwave of pleasure rocked through her so fast and hard, she bucked again, the waves uncontrolled as her body trembled violently from the release.
But her lover, her mate, was ready for the fallout. Pumping her from behind, he massaged her mound with brutal, delicious power, all the while imitating the bonding bite he’d given her twenty-five years before.
It was unlike anything she’d ever experienced. She threw her head back and screamed, accepting everything he had to give. When she drained out her orgasm, she slumped face first into her sheets. On top of her, Dane released his hold, unlatched his teeth from her nape, let go of her swollen, slick clit and slid from her pussy.
When he rolled her onto her back, she was limp and compliant, could barely manage to open her eyes. His smile was soft, devoted. “Does that answer your question?”
She frowned, licked her lips and tried to remember what she’d asked him.
His grin turned smug. “No, my love, I do not regret completing the bond. I do not regret searching you out for twenty years until I finally found you. I do not regret marking you again. You’re mine. I lost you once, but I’ll be damned if I ever lose you again.”
She smiled. In return, he opened her legs, rolled on top of her, and thrust into her, hard and long. She gasped, realizing he hadn’t come when she had. His thickness wedged tight between her swollen folds. She arched up, relishing the slide of him searching deeper inside her.
“Yes,” she hissed, heaving up to meet the next slam of his body against hers. “Take me, Dane. Stake your claim.”
His eyes blazed with savage intent. Feeling empowered, a single small female able to bring such a large, dominant male to this point of helpless passion, she wrapped her legs around his hips and dug the heels of her feet into his taut ass. She liked it this way, chest to chest, facing him, watching his eyes fight for focus as he watched her.
Wanting to return a sign of similar pledge to him that he’d given her, she slid her hand around his neck and drew him down over her. Once his chest met her aching breasts, she licked up the side of his throat, then nibbled on his ear. Before he could do much more than groan, she bit him right behind the ear where she instinctively knew she’d marked him during her terrible twos.
He howled out his pleasure. His cock palpitated, growing bigger and bigger until he held himself inside her and released his seed. She clutched him tight, holding him through his crisis as he buried his face in her shoulder.
Chapter Seven
Dane felt boneless and so freaking satisfied, he grinned like an idiot up at Ari’s ceiling. But God damn. He’d had plenty of sex in his life, even enjoyed it. But this…this blew him away. Being with his mate, with Ari, made him wonder how he’d ever managed to ejaculate inside any other tasteless female before.
Unable to help himself, he rolled toward her, and cuddled like his animal was always inclined to do whenever he was so content. When he purred, a wave of emotion rose from her, echoing into him. Her undiluted joy washed over him until he experienced it with her. Linked to her in every way possible, Dane rubbed against her, needing the physical contact to complete the mental and emotional.
A pleasured sigh seeped from her. “We should…move,” she finally said.
He groaned, burrowing himself closer. “Why?”
After a moment, she murmured, “I don’t know. But I’m sure there’s a reason.” Her confusion flickered through him. “I’m sure there’s a good reason.”
Wanting to help her solve her dilemma, Dane tried to muddle through his own pleasure-drenched brain until he remembered. His body tightened. “The purebloods.”
She groaned. “Ugh. Yeah. Forgot about them.”
He grinned, smug he’d made her forget. But even as he stroked her soft skin in reassurance, he sat up. “We should dress. I want to be prepared by the time they show up.”
Ari sat up too, sending him a strange look. “So you’re no longer against me staying?”
Mates Since Birth (Half-breed Shifter Series) Page 7