by Maia Dylan
“I could feel it, and I knew the land needed water.” Neve cast a nervous look around the group before she continued. “So I brought the rain.”
“And we felt the magical energy you used to do that when we were about to walk away,” Casey surmised, and it made perfect sense to Liam. But what didn’t make sense was what he had felt as he made his way up the path that led to the Pagan Stone.
His entire body had throbbed. The closer he got to the Pagan Stone, the stronger the feeling became. Hell, even his bear had been affected. Liam was an adult black bear shifter, and he hadn’t been forced into changing since he was a young cub, but today it had been close.
When he got to the top, he caught a scent that had him reeling, but then it disappeared. If he hadn’t known it was impossible, Liam might have thought he had encountered the scent of his mate. When he had first searched the ridge, he hadn’t seen anything out of the ordinary. But his gaze kept returning to one corner of the field where there seemed to be a watery shimmer to the air. It was from there that Neve had emerged and walked in their direction.
“Yeah, I guess you did.” Neve smiled a cute half smile that had Liam tensing.
“And now you are here,” Maggie Rika said as she reached out and placed a hand on Neve’s arm. “And you are family. We will not have a member of our family staying at an impersonal bed-and-breakfast. Certainly not one that is here to help us in the battle to save our way of life. So, Micah, Casey, I want you two to go with Neve to get her belongings and bring her back here.”
“Oh, I couldn’t possible intrude.” Neve started to decline, but Liam figured she needn’t have bothered. “I will be more than—”
“Nonsense. I will not be able to sleep knowing that one of my girls is out there on her own. Anything could happen!”
Liam frowned at Maggie’s words. He hadn’t thought about that. From the look of shock on Neve’s face, he thought she hadn’t either. Her words, however, clarified her look of shock and had his heart aching for her at the same time.
“You think of me as one of your girls?” Neve’s blue eyes glimmered with a mixture of confusion and longing. “Why would you do that? I-I’ve never been accepted or claimed as being someone’s anything before.”
Well, damn.
“Honey girl,” Kingi said gently as he, too, reached out and placed a hand on Neve’s shoulder. “My Maggie and I lay claim to you because you fight with the rest of our whanau, our family. You have come here to stand beside our girls, and the men who have claimed them as theirs, to protect our way of life. You are ours. Consider yourself accepted and claimed.”
Liam had to look away from the look of joy on Neve’s face, and the gentle fall of tears down her cheeks. The thought of this woman being claimed by someone had his bear on edge, and that just pissed Liam off no end. He stood up, muttered some lame excuse, and wandered out of the room. He didn’t belong with that group. He was not an Elemental, and he sure as hell couldn’t be the mate to any of them, so he figured it was time for him to leave.
Despite the fact that his bear roared to him to stay, and the beguiling blue eyes of a beautiful blonde stranger that had his heart pounding like a teenager begged the same thing of him, he walked out and closed the door gently behind him.
Chapter 4
“Finally!” Ryan growled against the sensitive skin of her neck as he pressed her against the front door to his house. They had just stepped through the door after their mad dash from her parents’ place, and he finally had his arms wrapped around her. “Fuck, Ariana, I thought we would never get the hell out of there. But now I have you exactly where I need you: right here in my arms, in my home, soon to be naked and in my bed.”
Ariana moaned her agreement to those words before she gasped as Ryan leaned down quickly, slid his hands beneath the curve of her ass, and lifted her up against him. Her legs parted and lifted to wrap around his hips. Both of them moaned at the feel of her pussy being nudged against the hard line of his cock behind the zipper of his jeans. Each step he took had her breath rate increasing..
“I’m exactly where I want to be, too, baby,” Ariana breathed in Ryan’s ear, then pressed her teeth against his earlobe. His reaction was more than she could have hoped for.
“Fuck!” Ryan roared as he turned swiftly and pressed her up against the wall. He rolled his hips between her thighs, making her moan at the feel of him pressing against the neediest part of her. “Jesus. H. Christ. Ariana, have mercy on me, sweetness. Just give me thirty seconds to get you into my bedroom. Then I will strip these clothes off you, worship your body the way I have been fucking dreaming about, and then make us both really happy when I get balls deep inside you.”
Ariana shivered at his words and then cried out as he dragged his teeth over the sensitive skin at the side of her neck. “Oh, damn, Ryan. You have ten seconds. Then all bets are off.”
Ryan leaned back, his eyes dancing with arousal, his grin so wicked it had her pussy clenching with need. “You have yourself a deal.”
Ariana squealed then giggled as Ryan sprinted for the other side of the house. She got the impression the house was large, but as they hadn’t stopped to turn the lights on, she had no idea what the rooms themselves looked like. She was interested in only one room right now, and that was the nearest one with a bed in it.
“That was around five seconds,” Ryan claimed triumphantly as he stood at the foot of his bed. Ariana cast a quick look around the room, loving the masculine colors and large cedar furniture that lined the walls, before she focused back on the man who held her. “And I think I should get a reward.”
“Hmmm,” Ariana purred as she lowered her legs from his hips and he helped her gently find her feet. “Let me think. What would a grown man want as a prize? Would he like me to kneel down before him, place my hands behind my back, and allow him to fuck my mouth until he comes?” She loved the shocked pleasure that filled his face, and when he closed his eyes on a groan at the picture she painted, she leaned in and whispered, “I would swallow everything you had to give me, lover. Every. Sweet. Drop.”
Ryan’s eyes flew open, and he stared at her, his eyes flashing the blue she knew was his wolf, and Ariana knew he loved what she was saying. Ryan suddenly reached for the zip on her jacket and swiftly drew it down. Then he had her out of her jacket, sweater, T-shirt and jeans in what felt like seconds, until she stood before him in a matching bra-and-panty set.
“Holy Mother of God,” Ryan breathed shakily as he ran the backs of his fingers across the tops of her breasts. The touch of his fingers had her nipples tightening and her body temperature rising. “I have to admit, over the past few months, I have spent a lot of time imagining you naked. I have probably undressed you with my eyes more than a thousand times.”
Ariana smiled at his admission. She figured that they were probably even on that score, as she had doing the exact same thing.
“But my imagination was never good enough.” He reached behind her and undid her bra before sliding the straps down her arms and freeing her breasts. “Fuck. Me.…My imagination was nowhere near good enough.”
Stripping off his jacket, he reached behind him to remove his sweater in a one-handed, hot-as-hell move. Ariana ran her gaze down his chest, loving the ripple and flex of muscle there. His chest was dusted with a light sprinkling of dark hair, and she couldn’t stop herself from leaning in and rubbing her nipples in the crisp hair.
“Oh God, that feels good,” she moaned as she swayed from side to side, loving his growl of appreciation.
“Well, hold on, my love. It is about to feel a whole shitload better,” Ryan rasped as he pressed a kiss to the side of her neck. Dropping to his knees, he slowly kissed his way to her breasts. Ariana cried out as he opened his mouth over as much of her breast as he could and drew on her strongly. She felt her pussy clench and a gush of her cream slide down her inner thigh.
Her body pulsed with the small orgasm, his mouth never moving from her breast, and when he flicked his tong
ue over her distended nipple, it stoked her arousal again. Not to the point of another orgasm, but pretty damn close.
“Jesus, you are so damn sensitive and responsive. I felt your pleasure when you came down our link, and I can sure as fuck can smell your arousal. Damn, Ariana, your beautiful pussy is dripping for me, isn’t it?”
Ariana could feel Ryan’s hot breath on her tummy as he spoke, lowering himself to rest on his haunches. The move brought him level with her pussy.
“Yes, Ryan,” she panted, “I am so very wet for you. Only you.”
“Damn right only for me,” Ryan snarled. When his eyes fell to her naked pussy, he groaned, and she saw the red flush of arousal sweep across his cheeks. “Holy fuck, would you look at how beautiful your pussy is. It’s the most beautiful thing I have ever fucking seen in my life. So beautiful and bare. I can see your cream glistening on the lips of your pussy. Begging me. Your pussy is begging me to claim it with my mouth and swallow down everything it has to give me, and baby, there is nothing I want more than that!”
He lifted his left leg and pushed his knee between her legs, gently nudging her legs apart. Then he lifted her right leg and placed it on his knee. He shuffled his leg slightly more to the left and then swiveled his leg out further so that her legs were now spread, and he had an unobstructed view of all of her tingly, wet girly bits.
He groaned—to her, the sound was the perfect blend of need and appreciation—and then dove right in. Ariana screamed as he sucked on the lips of her pussy, swirling his tongue around her soft folds. She started rolling her hips against him, trying to rub her clit against his mouth in a desperate attempt to come. God, she needed to come. But Ryan, the sadistic bastard, was having none of it.
With a purely smug laugh, he reached up, placed his large hands against the gentle curve of her waist, and held her still with his hands tight on her hips. Then he tortured her with pleasure. At first he flicked his extended tongue against her clit, driving her to the edge of coming, then pulled away to push his tongue as far inside her as he could. Not nearly damn far enough as far as Ariana was concerned. Then he would go back to flicking her clit.
In no time at all, he had her sobbing with pleasure, her entire body shaking as the tsunami of an orgasm began to build to frightening proportions within her.
“Please! Ryan, please!” she screamed. At her words, he slammed his entire mouth over her clit, sucking it into his mouth, and pressed hard against the swollen nub with his tongue.
And then she flew. Closing her eyes and throwing her head back, Ariana screamed her release to the room. Her eyes flew open when she felt Ryan plunge a finger deep inside her, fucking swiftly in and out of her, and that triggered another orgasm right on the heels of her second.
Goddamn it! The man was going to kill her with pleasure. When her body could simply take it no more, she collapsed against him, and he stood up to wrap his arms around her. She slid her own arms around his neck and gasped shakily against his skin.
“That was the most beautiful damn thing I have ever witnessed,” Ryan murmured as he swept her into his arms and carried her to his bed. “Feeling you quiver on my tongue, and then watching you as you came so damn hard for me, nearly had me coming in my jeans. And if you repeat that to anyone, I will have to punish you.”
Ariana laughed breathlessly. That ended abruptly when she squealed as Ryan dropped her onto the mattress. “I think that now would be a great time for you to get rid of those jeans, lover.” Ariana almost didn’t recognize her own voice!
Ryan stood at the side of the bed, wearing the smile of a confident, potentially bordering on cocky, wolf shifter who knew he was sex on two legs. And Ariana couldn’t very well argue. Not when watching him remove his jeans had her biting her lip. Then, when his cock came into view as he stood back up after dropping his jeans to the floor, her mouth dried up. Literally all the moisture in her mouth evaporated, and she was in very real danger of swallowing her tongue.
Moving quickly to sit on the edge of the bed, she wrapped her hands around his thighs and pulled him toward her. Ryan groaned as her tongue swept out of her mouth and across the top of his swollen cock. She hummed her appreciation of his flavor as she pulled her tongue into her mouth.
“Take me, Ariana.” Ryan’s voice was raw and filled with need.
With a quick grin at the man before her, she leaned down, lifted his heavy dick up to her mouth, and swallowed him down.
“Fffucckk!” Ryan groaned as he placed his hands on her shoulders. True to her word, she dropped her hands behind her back and let him control the depth and speed of his thrusts.
Ryan gently pushed into her mouth, and Ariana sucked gently as he pulled back out. She established a rhythm that allowed her to use her tongue along the underside of his dick, which had him shuddering against her.
“Holy fuck,” Ryan groaned. “Your mouth is hot, wet sin, baby…Yeah, suck me. Take me a little deeper…ahhh shit! Yeah, that feels so fucking good, Ariana!”
Just as Ariana began to sense the tiny pulses that signaled he was close to exploding, he pulled back.
“I think”—Ryan’s voice was raspy, filled with a heat that matched her own, and she moaned as she watched his hand stroke his dick from tip to root—“that it’s time for the portion of our evening where I get to bury myself balls deep within you.”
Ariana began to tremble at the very thought of him inside her, her eyes transfixed by the steady push and pull of his hand along his cock.
“But before I climb up onto that bed, settle myself between your beautiful legs, and pound us both into a vegetative state of sexual euphoria, I have one question for you, baby.”
She licked her lips as a drop of pre-cum leaked from the tip of his dick, making him moan. The deep guttural sound of his desire for her had her gaze leaping to his. The blue white of his wolf shone brightly in the darkened room, and Ariana gasped at how beautiful he looked.
“Ariana, you are the fated mate of my heart. You are the key to my future happiness, and everything within me is screaming out, demanding that I claim you tonight. Now.”
Ariana’s heart ached at pain in Ryan’s voice. She knew it was difficult for him to fight his very nature, and hell, she was fighting the need to belong to this man in every way possible herself! But, until the rest of her autumn played itself out to its natural conclusion, she knew that delaying the moment he made his full claim on her was the right thing to do.
“But I’m not going to do that, Ariana. I made you a promise, and I am determined to keep it. But I need the same from you, baby.” Ryan knelt on the bed and began to crawl his way up and over her. Ariana could not tear her gaze from his, reading every emotion, every want, need, and desire he had clear on his gorgeous face. “Promise me, Ariana. Promise me that when we are up at the Pagan Stone, and we are standing shoulder to shoulder facing that bastard for the third time, that you will do everything within your power to stay with me.”
Ariana’s resolve in the matter of delaying their claiming almost melted beneath the strength of his words. But she held strong. This was something she could give him. She could and would fight until there was no breath left in her body to stay with this man. He talked about her being the fated mate of his heart. Well, he was just as much hers, and she was his. Taking a deep breath and lifting her hands to cradle his face, she took a moment to find the right words.
* * * *
Ryan looked down into the face of his mate, and he felt his heart swell. He didn’t think she knew just how beautiful she was. She definitely didn’t know that, claiming bite or not, losing her at any stage in the future would end all life for him. But he figured she was starting to get the idea that he was in love with her.
He nuzzled his cheek against the palm of her hands as he waited for her to speak. He was nervous. He wouldn’t admit to it out loud because, well, because he was a dominant wolf shifter and had been told by more than one person in his life that he was a stubborn son of a bitch.
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�Ryan, I give you my word.” Ariana leaned up so that her lips where a hairsbreadth from his, her eyes staring into his until all he could see was her. “I will fight for us. I will do everything within my power to stay. With you. Forever, my love.” Ariana whispered those last three words and then pressed her lips to his in the sweetest, most poignant kiss of his life.
Ryan sank into the kiss, letting her lead for a moment as he reveled in the promise she had made. He lowered himself until his hips were nestled between hers and his body lay pressed to hers. He dropped to his elbows on either side of her head and took over the kiss, devouring her mouth and using his hands in her hair to tilt her head to the exact angle he needed. He pulled back slightly, giving them both a chance to draw breath.
Looking into her eyes, he flexed his hips and felt the head of his cock slide within the soft, moist heat of her pussy. Then, giving them what they both wanted, he slammed his hips forward, groaning at the tight feel of her closing around him, and reveling in Ariana’s pleasure-filled scream.
He held still for a few moments. His head swam with the heady feeling of finally being buried to the hilt within his mate. Then he began to move within her. Pulling out until he almost slipped free of her hold on him, he groaned as he felt her pussy clench as if trying to drawn him back within her, and then he slammed home again.
“Goddamn, baby,” he growled against her neck as he found a faster rhythm. “You feel so fucking hot and slick wrapped around me.” He leaned in and kissed her, a strong openmouthed kiss that had them sharing the very air they breathed as well as their mutual sounds of pleasure. He felt her quiver slightly around him and knew that she was close to coming for him again.
Pushing up until he knelt between her legs, he pushed his arms under her thighs so that he could lift her up onto his. He began to thrust into her harder, knowing that from this angle, he was sure to be rubbing against the sweet spot within her.