Mate (Bride, #2) (84)

“Koen. Where is the line?”

“The line is everywhere, Serena.” A hollow laugh. His hand travels up my spine. Cups my nape. Our lips are closer than ever, but never meet. “My entire life is made of fucking lines. And you’re blowing past all of them.”

It doesn’t feel like it. It feels like I’m the one standing still in a storm.

“What about this?” More grinding, and my clit catches against something that has my thighs shaking. “What if I’m doing all the work? What if you’re just my . . . Mine.”

“Stop,” he says.

I do. Inhale deeply. “Want me to move away— ”

“No,” he orders before I’m done talking. “You’re so— I just need a fucking second.” He squeezes his eyes shut. His head falls back. “I cannot come, Serena.”

“Why?”

He takes slow, long breaths. Collects himself.

“Is it because if you don’t come, we can pretend that this is not sexual?

That it’s a favor you’re doing for a . . . friend?”

He snorts. Opens his eyes. They are pitch black. “It’s been sexual since the second I saw you, and . . . I have friends, Serena, and you’re not one of them. But yes. It’s easier to forgive myself if we make this about you.”

I bite my lip, ready to protest how unfair this is, but stop, mortified. I don’t want him to have to forgive himself. He doesn’t owe me anything.

“I’m sorry. I— ”

He shakes his head. Twists his hand so that it curves around my cheek.

“Hush,” he croons into my ear. “You’re all worked up. And wet. Just a handful of days from your first Heat.” His teeth scrape against my jaw. “It’s okay. I know how hard this is. I’m going to take care of you, okay?”

I agree with a mindless nod. The need in my blood is rising. I will die without this.

“I’m going to make you come, however many times you need. And then I’m going elsewhere to make myself come.”

“I can— ”

“No, Serena. You can’t. But I can. I want you to tell me what you need, and I want the privilege of giving it to you. I want you to use me.” A kiss on my collarbone. “If you think there is anything I would like more than seeing my mate through her Heat, you are fucking wrong. If this is all I get, I’m going to make the most of it. Okay?”

I nod again, which gives him a path to my throat. His mouth closes around my gland and it’s so sudden, so shocking, I scream. “Koen,” I gasp, moving my hips again. The pleasure is white-hot. “Feels so good.”

The curve of a smile. “Feels better for me than for you.”

“Impossible.” My breath tumbles out. “I . . . I tried.”

“Hmm?”

“Touching my glands. But it didn’t really— not like when you touch me.”

“Sweetheart.” He nips at it.

I shudder, full-bodied. “It has to be you, Koen. We’re like . . . lock and key? It has to be us.” I rock in his lap, demanding release. Closer and closer, clumsier and clumsier.

“You’re my mate, but I’m not yours. There will be other keys for you.”

A flat-tongued, broad lick. When he bites me again, it feels a little more violent. Like he could easily break my skin, and he wants me to know.

“And I’ll do my best not to kill them. No promises.”

“I don’t want them.” I sob in pure frustration, pressing harder, all soaked, sticky underwear and hard ridges, marks sucked into tender skin, deep inhales. “I don’t want anyone but— ”

The first orgasm hits me so hard, I dig my nails into his shoulders. Koen drags it even longer, wrings as much out of it as he possibly can without even touching me, just little slides of his hips where I need them the most. I tremble in his arms and let him take me apart as he tells me how beautiful I am, how good, how lost he is.

It ends too soon. It’s not enough.

“Okay?” he asks, and I shake my head.

“I’ll never be okay again.”

“Yeah.” He is hoarse. Desperate but amused. “We’re both fucked.”

Pleasure inches down my spine. I close my fingers around Koen’s palm, which is work-rough and large, and I try to pull it down to my inner thigh.

He stops me halfway there. “Why?”

“I can’t, Serena. If I touch you there, it’s over.” His kiss on my cheek is light. “There’s this voice in my head, screaming at me that I should hold you down and knot you and shred your gland until it’ll scar in the shape of my teeth, and I’m trying very hard to muffle it.”

“So, I can touch you. But you can’t touch me.”

“Correct. Serena— ” he warns when I take his other hand, but falls quiet as I splay his fingers open. “What are you doing?”

I grip his wrist and bring his open palm up to my left breast.

“Fuck,” he bites out through gritted teeth.

“Technically,” I point out through the hitch in my breath, rubbing myself against his rough hand. “You’re not touching me. I’m doing all the work, but if it’s too much— ”

“No.” He shakes his head and adjusts his posture, like he needs to see this, how I’m moving. It’s undignified. Wild. Frenzied in a way I’ll be ashamed of later. But he orders, “Do not fucking stop,” and I can taste how much he wants me, feel it ricochet against my bones. His desire is so thick, all-encompassing, I don’t know how he can stop himself. But when I lean forward and nip at his gland, he simply lets out a deep, rumbly grunt and talks to me like I’m the only person in the universe. “The first time I saw you, I thought that of course the universe would deliver someone with the most perfect pair of tits I’d ever seen and then yank her away from me.” I press harder against his palm. He groans. “It’s hard to keep my hands off you, killer. And you never wear anything under my shirts— ”