Page 35 of Monster Queen Rising

"We did."

The tears hit before I can stop them.

He closes the distance without another word.

One arm wraps around my shoulders, solid and warm, and I fold into him.

He smells like cedar, gun oil, and the cold night air still clinging to his clothes. Safe.

I press my face against his chest, listening to the steady beat of his heart.

"I needed that to be different," I whisper.

"I know."

"No." I lift my head enough to meet his eyes. "I neededyou, Daron."

His breath catches.

Then his mouth is on mine and there's no gap — his hands already up under my shirt, already learning me again like it's been years and not days, walking me back toward the bed and talking into my mouth the whole way.

"Every drive," he says. "Every patrol. You walk past me in that kitchen and I have to go find something to fix with my hands." He gets my shirt over my head and drops it. "I'm the worst liar in this pack and everybody knows my eyes are on you at all times. Thaw laughs at me. Said I'd crack first. Told me I’d run out of patience." A grin. "Told me to quit pretending."

"He was right."

"He'salwaysright, it's insufferable —" and then he stops talking because he's got my jeans open and his hand between my legs and whatever he was going to say leaves him.

His forehead drops to mine. "Thereyou are. So damn wet for me."

He strips the rest off me fast, no ceremony, laughing once when the belt catches and swearing at it and just getting us bare, and lays me back on the bed and looks at me for one second like he can't believe it — and then he's going down my body, mouth at my throat, my breast, my stomach, not slow, greedy, and when he gets his mouth on me his whole body goes loose with it, a sound coming out of him against me that's half groan and half laugh, like he can't believe he's finally allowed.

He eats like he talks — all in, nothing held, telling me with his hands what his mouth can't get to. Two fingers curl into me and find the place that arches my back off the bed and he stays there, relentless, until I've got a fist in his hair and I'm coming on his tongue with his name breaking out of me, and he works me through it and doesn't stop until I'm shaking and pulling him up.

He comes up grinning, mouth wet, ice-blue eyes blown.

"Loud," he says, delighted. "Knew you'd be loud."

"Daron —"

"Roll over."

I do.

He gets a hand around my waist and pulls me up onto my knees and fits himself against my back, and when he pushes into me from behind, I feel him stretch me, we both go still for a second, and I hear the breath go out of him like it's the answer to something he's been asking for weeks.

He can't hold slow. He tries, for me, four strokes maybe, and then the wanting takes it and he's driving into me with everything he's got, one arm banded across my chest to hold me back against him, his mouth at my ear, and he does not stop narrating any of it.

"Finally — God,finally— you feel like heaven and home. God damn you take me so sweet —"

Because Daron says his whole heart out loud whether he means to or not.

I break around him with my forehead down on the mattress, and it takes his control with it — there was never much — his rhythm snaps and he's coming before he means to, my name coming apart in his mouth, both arms hauling me back into him like he's scared I'll be somewhere else when it stops.

I'm not. I'm right there.

He turns us so we come down on our sides, still wrapped, his chest to my back, his heart going hard against me.

"That was —" he starts.