She nodded. “Forever, Ki’aro… forever.”
He swirled his tongue around her, his gut tightening as his need spiralled, almost slipping beyond his control.
“Forever isn’t enough for me,” he murmured between each stroke and swirl, each moan she gave to him. “It isn’t enough with you. I want more.”
She chuckled and it ended on a moan. Her fingers ploughed through his wet hair, danced down his cheek, and slipped under his jaw. She lured him up to her with nothing more than a gentle touch and smiled at him as he braced himself above her, breathing hard, straining as he resisted the urge to ease himself into her.
“It is not enough for me either.” She slipped her hand around the nape of his neck and drew him down for a soft kiss, one that flooded him with warmth and light, and he felt all of her love for him as she whispered against his lips, “Forever and a day. We will have forever and a day.”
He nodded and pressed his forehead against hers. “Forever and a day.”
It was a promise.
He dipped his head and kissed her, and she wrapped her legs around him, pressing her heat against his rigid length. He groaned and slid his hand between them, grasped himself and lowered the crown to her entrance. He swallowed her moan as he eased into her and then grasped her hands in his and pinned them to the rock above her head as he began to thrust, driving deep into her, long strokes that had her panting against his lips as they kissed.
Kyter poured his love for her into that kiss, wanting her to feel it as he could feel hers and know that this moment meant everything to him.
She meant everything to him.
He slowly quickened his pace, his softer thoughts giving way to ones that filled him with a need he had been denying for what felt like too long now. A need to claim her. His fangs lengthened and she moaned as she stroked them with her tongue, sending hot shivers blasting down his spine and up his cock.
“Iolanthe,” he husked, clutching her hands and fighting to control himself as his deepest instincts awakened, demanding he take the female beneath him and bind them as mates.
“Kyter.” Her soft tone, the gentleness and understanding in it, and the unspoken permission, tore a moan from him.
His beautiful mate. He would cherish her forever.
From this night forwards, they would belong to each other. They would stand by each other. They would fight for each other. They would be one.
He growled as he surrendered to his need and pulled out of her, flipped her onto her front and entered her again. He grasped her hip, raising it away from the rock, and plunged deep into her. Her moan echoed around him, the hunger and arousal behind it driving him on as it coursed through him.
He bared his fangs and clutched both of her hips as he thrust into her, as deep as he could, and she grasped the rock in front of her, bracing herself. She moaned with each meeting of their bodies as he pumped her, his guttural grunts mingling with the softer sounds of her pleasure.
She raised her backside higher and he groaned, his fangs lengthening as he slid into her, feeling every inch of her wet hot core as it clenched him.
“Kyter.” Her breathless moan teased him, goaded him into taking her harder.
He pushed her against the rock, so her breasts pressed against it, and planted his left hand against it near her shoulder. His left knee raised her leg and he braced it on the boulder, spreading her thighs as he rose over her, his right hand holding her hip in place. She arched forwards, her head raised and mouth open as she moaned, taking each deep thrust of his cock.
Her braid fell away from her nape as she looked over her shoulder at him, her fangs long between her lips. He growled and couldn’t hold back any longer. The need was too strong. It crushed the last of his control. He grabbed her right arm and pulled her up so her back was against his front as he thrust into her from below, her left leg still raised up by his.
He snarled, angled his head as his balls drew up, the tightness of her sheath bringing him right to the edge, and sank his fangs into the nape of her neck. She cried out and he grunted against her as he thrust harder, deeper, claiming every inch of her as her blood flowed down his throat.
She twisted her arm free of his grip, latched her hand around his wrist, yanked it up to her mouth and sank her fangs into it.
Kyter growled and grunted against her nape as heat blasted through him and she cried out, her body arching away from his as her sheath quivered with her climax, milking his cock. He managed another thrust before the pleasure that had detonated within her rocked him, multiplied one hundredfold by their bond as it completed itself, twining them together.
He breathed hard as he spilled himself inside her, his knees weakening beneath him, trembling as he struggled to bring himself down from his high, from the bliss of mating with her.
She took another slow pull on his blood that had him jerking inside her in response, quivering in time with her, and then released his wrist and licked it.
Kyter had more difficulty convincing himself to release her.
He wanted to stay like this forever.
His body made the decision for him when his knees gave out, sending him crashing into the water. Iolanthe gasped and spun to face him, her lips painted red with his blood. He had never seen a more glorious sight.
She stifled a smile, caught his arm and pulled him up to her, so his backside rested on the boulder. He waited for her to tease him as she settled against him, between his legs, her hip nestled against his thigh and her breasts against his chest.
She kissed him instead, another tender one that touched him right down to his soul.
“I love you, Kyter,” she murmured against his lips.
He sighed, gathered her against him, and held her. “I love you too.”
He stroked her back, running his fingers up and down her spine, before turning her so her back pressed to his front. He licked the nape of her neck, sealing the marks he had placed on her. Marks of their mating.
She was his now. He was hers.
He wrapped his arms around her and held her, absorbing her warmth and the love he could feel in her, and how it felt to be mated and loved.
He had meant every word he had said to the elder. He wouldn’t regret leaving this place behind because he had a new pride now. The sort he had always wanted.
Iolanthe wasn’t the only other member. He could see now that his eyes were open that he had made himself a new pride a long time ago, welcoming people like himself into it, under the banner of Underworld. Cavanaugh and the others were his pride. Iolanthe was his pride. All the people who had accepted him, cared about him, and had stuck with him.
He pressed a kiss to Iolanthe’s shoulder and closed his eyes, all of his focus on her and how much he loved her. His mate.
She meant everything to him and he would keep his promise.
They would always be together, side by side, partners in the deepest sense of the word.
Their love would last forever.
And a day.
The End
Read on for a preview of the next story in the highly addictive Eternal Mates paranormal romance series, Craved by an Alpha, available January 27th 2015
Craved by an Alpha - Chapter 1
Cavanaugh checked his watch. The coloured lights above the bar of Underworld flashed across the glass face in time with the thumping music, but didn’t stop him from seeing what he wanted. It was gone midnight. Four years and three hundred and fifty seven days had passed. In eight days, with the rising of the full moon, he would be a man without status.
He couldn’t wait.
It felt as if this moment had been too long coming, as if he had been waiting an eternity for it to pass. Pride politics and all the bullshit that came with the territory would cease to exist.
He would be free.
Cavanaugh leaned his backside against the corner of the black bar, tucking himself away from the lighted area off to his left where Sherry was flirting with another group of young fae as
she served them their drinks, twirling her blonde ponytail around her fingers, and Kyter was stomping around looking as if he was chewing a wasp. Hard. The big sandy-haired jaguar shifter had been in a foul mood since his new mate, Iolanthe, had returned to her homeland of the elf kingdom to break the news to her parents. Apparently, Kyter had wanted to go with her, and Iolanthe had wisely decided to go alone. Cavanaugh had overheard her mentioning something about how he had threatened to kill her parents.
He sighed and rolled his shoulders to ease the ache building in them, born of a punishing workout session that had lasted over half a day. The closer he came to the day he had been waiting for, the tenser he became and the only release he had found was unleashing hell on the gym Kyter had set up in the back of the nightclub Cavanaugh called home.
His boss had suggested finding a female to slake his needs, but Cavanaugh wasn’t interested in the women who frequented the club, or their attention. He could probably have his pick, but there was only one woman he wanted in this world.
His fated mate.
He palmed the right pocket of his black trousers, feeling the wallet there, his thoughts with the faded photograph it contained. The image was seared on his memory, burned there by countless hours spent lying on his bed in his small apartment in the back of Underworld, holding the old picture above him and staring at it.
Countless hours filled with regret.
Countless hours in which he had wondered how different things might have been.
He was trying to make that difference happen. He was trying to change the paths they had somehow ended up treading and bring them back together.
The methods he had chosen hadn’t been the best, but he couldn’t change things now. He had made his choice and he had lived with it, through the fight that had almost claimed his life to the pain of realising the mistake he had made to the close to five years of separation that had broken part of him.
That part of him had been fractured before he had set in motion the series of events that had brought him to Underworld.
It had been a constant source of pain since that fateful night back at his pride’s village and he had been doing his best to stem the flow of it, feeling as if he was trying to hold back a tsunami with his bare hands. Every night since then, he had patched up his heart as best he could and fought for the strength to keep walking forwards, his eyes fixed on the future he wanted, determined to make it happen.
Determined to turn all the mistakes he had made, and the pain and the loneliness he had endured, into something glorious.
Having his mate in his arms.
A commotion near the entrance of the nightclub off to his left caught his attention and Kyter’s too. Cavanaugh stared beyond the sandy-haired male, trying to catch a glimpse of what was happening. The crowd was too thick, the club jumping tonight, making it impossible to catch anything other than a flash of a tattered grey coat hood and a backpack. It looked as if someone had rolled into the wrong place.
They were dressed for a damned expedition, not a nightclub where most of the patrons wore little and worked up a sweat on the dance floor, and in the shadowy alcoves.
A female flagged him, waving her hand as if he was a slave and she could order him around. Cavanaugh shot her a black look but she persisted, flashing him a come-get-me smile that made him cold inside.
No one could smile as she could.
Her smile lit up the world.
It made even the coldest reaches of his heart warm.
The smile she wore in the picture in his wallet, her arms wrapped around his neck and her rosy cheek pressed against his. She had hurled herself into his arms when her mother had offered to take a photograph of them to test out the camera he had bought for her as a present from his latest trip down the mountain to the nearest big town. He had been gone for a week and gods he had missed Eloise in that time.
Gods he had missed her since fleeing the village five years ago, his pride in tatters but resolve burning in his heart.
Hope that he might be able to carve out the future he wanted, escaping the one he had been born into and forced to accept.
He was about to give up and serve the female still frantically trying to get his attention when the hooded trekker moved closer. His gaze zeroed in on them over the heads of the patrons lining the busy bar.
It was a woman. Average height. A little too thin even with the thick coat. She stumbled into a group of five male demons near the edge of the dance floor off to his left and waved her small hands around, flashing scars that circled her wrists.
When one of the burly demon males lightly pushed her shoulder, barely touching her, she staggered back and almost fell but recovered herself. What was wrong with her?
Was she a homeless person, on drugs, or maybe drunk?
She was unsteady on her feet as she backed away from the demons, heading in Cavanaugh’s direction, towards one group of the thick black columns that rose up on either side of the dance floor to support the high ceiling of the club. The demons followed her, exchanging glances and wicked smiles that made Cavanaugh wonder what the female looked like. Her hood obscured her face, hiding it from him, but he guessed she was pretty because the demons looked as if they wanted to party with her.
She waved her hands again as she moved directly in front of Cavanaugh, clearly trying to deter the males, and he sensed the fatigue rolling off her. Not drunk or on drugs. She had stumbled because she was weak.
His dark grey eyes began to widen.
He could sense her fatigue?
Her scent hit him hard, knocking him back a step, and he had to grab the edge of the black bar top in front of him to steady himself. He stared at her, unable to take his eyes off her, his head and heart reeling.
It couldn’t be.
The demons tossed her black scowls when she flashed them something. A small square of paper.
The tallest of the group pointed towards the bar.
She turned.
Cavanaugh’s heart stopped.
Wavy dark hair spilled from beneath the hood, the lights from the club playing over the lower half of her face, turning her pale skin different colours as she searched the length of the bar.
He dug his emerging claws into the wooden bar top to anchor himself, holding himself back as a fierce need to go to her swept through him and battling the waves of disbelief that crashed over him.
His heart said that she was nothing more than a fantasy. She was a figment of his overwrought imagination brought about by thinking of her too much, planning how he was going to make things up to her once he was free of his status and returned to the village, and how he was going to break it to her that she was his fated female. She couldn’t be here. It wasn’t possible.
His head and every instinct he possessed said that she was. She was real.
And she was as beautiful as he remembered, with her soft heart-shaped lips that made him yearn to kiss her, her impish button nose and her striking eyes framed by long dark lashes.
Looking at her now, he couldn’t believe he had managed to live so long without seeing her or smelling her scent, but the sight of her made the short time they had been apart feel more like an eternity than ever.
He breathed hard, clutching the bar top as he waited for her, his heart labouring as he silently willed her to notice him, even as he feared it at the same time. He knew she would be angry with him for leaving the pride and leaving her, and that making her understand his reasons was going to be difficult. He didn’t expect her to forgive him straight away, but he was willing to work to win her back.
She was all that mattered to him.
He didn’t give a damn about his position or the pride. There was only one reason he regretted leaving the village. There was only one reason it had killed him to leave.
It had killed him to leave her.
But she was here now. She was standing only metres from him, back within his grasp but still beyond it at the same time.
He cursed the gods.
They had given him both his wildest dream and his worst nightmare. Eight days. Why couldn’t they have brought Eloise to him in eight days, when he was free to be with her?
Waiting those eight days was going to be torture, but he would endure it. He would fight every instinct that demanded he claimed his mate, because she deserved to be cherished and treasured. She deserved to know that he loved her and what they had was real.
She deserved to have a choice and not feel obliged to be with him because he was her alpha and pride rules dictated she should give herself to him if he expressed an interest in her.
It wasn’t the relationship he wanted for them. He needed to know that she was with him out of choice, not because of his position.
He needed her to know that he respected her, loved her, and that she was the only female for him.
He wanted no other.
In eight days, that would be possible. He would be free to be her mate.
Right now, the laws of their kind dictated she could only be his mistress.
He would never do such a thing to his Eloise. He would never dishonour her in such a way or treat her as if she was his inferior. As much as it killed him, he would wait for her.
He would wait forever if that was what it took.
Another of the demons, a handsome dark-haired male, clapped a hand down on her shoulder and pulled her back around to face him, a seductive smile curving his lips.
The acrid tang of fear tainted her sweet scent.
Cavanaugh snarled and reacted on instinct. He pressed one hand into the bar top and easily vaulted it. The patrons on the other side gasped and rushed out of his path, and he landed silently on his booted feet. He shoved through the crowd, not caring how many fae or demons he pissed off as he made a beeline for her and the male who had dared to frighten her.
He pushed the last of the patrons out of his way and had his hand on her arm a heartbeat later. A thunderbolt zinged along his bones, setting him on fire and detonating the ticking bomb that was his temper. He growled through his emerging fangs as he yanked her behind him, tearing a gasp from her, and placed himself between her and the demons.
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