I’m done.
I stand, throwing her over my shoulder.
She yelps, and her ice cream plops into the grass. She whacks my back.
“Hey!”
“You’ve had enough.”
“I wasn’t even to the cone!”
I smack her ass, and it jiggles so sweet. I’m not making it back to camp. It’s gonna be close getting to the boundary of Quarry Pack territory.
I want her first time to be in her nest, but it’s so damn far away. The dens are closer. The dens are right.
“See you in a few days, Alpha,” Tye calls, chuckling. He’s sitting between a scowling Kennedy and a blushing Annie, crowding them into the corners, his legs sprawled wide, arms resting along the back of the bench. “I’ll see the girls home.”
Kennedy’s wolf grumbles.
I grunt my thanks and place Una into the Jeep, careful of her leg.
“Did I hurt you? Carrying you that way?” I grab her chin and search her face for traces of pain. I tried to keep her leg free and not jostle it too much, but I’m a rough guy. I don’t always know my strength.
Her eyelashes flutter against her pink cheeks. “I’m okay.”
“You’d tell me if you weren’t?” It’s an order, not a question. I know she wouldn’t, and her leg’s a pretty constant bother, the ache is always there in the bond, so I don’t know if it’s worse or not.
She ignores me, straightening her skirt and buckling up. “Why are you in such a hurry to leave?”
I’m already in the driver’s seat, turning the key in the ignition.
“You know.”
I expect more protests, but she grows quiet. I make it out of town in record time. Our connection is alive, coursing with energy. It’s undeniable. Is that why she’s speechless?
Because she knows she can’t deny it anymore?
I don’t want her to surrender.
It would relieve, but it wouldn’t satisfy. What do I want?
I guess what should have been. I want to go back to the moment she claimed me in the lodge, and I want to accept her then. What would it have cost me to hear her out? Take her aside and talk?
My soul would have recognized her. With the way I feel now, there’s no way it wouldn’t have.
But that’s rewriting history.
Maybe the way this is unfolding is what Fate intended. Me pulling my head out of my ass. Her giving me a chance. What if screwing up was necessary so that I could truly recognize the grace I’ve been given?
We’ve waited for each other our whole lives. And despite my epic fuck up, we’re still here together now.
I’ll be gentle. I’ll make it good for her.
My cock strains, the urge to chase rising, even in this human contraption.
I force the rut down, call on my wolf to restrain the lust in my blood. My mate will want her nest, not the dens. I can hold out a little longer, take her to the cabin, not some cave in the woods.
I obey the speed limit. I won’t jostle her leg more than I have to in my haste. I won’t hurt her ever again.
I park right in front of my cabin, and I scoop her from her seat. She’s hot to the touch, eyelids at half -mast. She wasn’t feeling the heat back in town, but she is now. Her eyes are hazy, and she’s fiddling with the buttons on her top before I get her to the front door.
Her need beckons to me.
“I can’t stop,” I tell her.
“I don’t want you to,” she says, breathless.
I carry her across the threshold like a human bride, and she wriggles in my arms, trying to get closer, to press her swollen breasts to my chest. I kick open the bedroom door and place her reverently in her nest. Her hands fumble at her waistband, and she shimmies her skirt down. I rip off my own clothes, feasting my eyes on the skin she reveals, inch by inch, the curves and swells, every perfect line of her.
Her fingers are already stuffed between her legs, her eyes screwed shut. There’s a sheen of sweat on her chest and forehead.
My heart thuds. There’s no more dance. No courtship. This is happening now. I wipe my palms on my thighs. I can do this. You put part A in slot B. Simple.
She glances up at me through hazy brown eyes and moans low in the back of her throat. It’s a command.
She climbs to all fours, sticking a pillow haphazardly under her bad knee. Her braid dangles over her shoulder, sweeping the mattress as she stretches her neck and arches her back. Then she folds, resting her forehead on her arms, and she lifts her hips, angling her pussy so it’s open to me, pink and slick and plump with her arousal.