Page 82 of Alpha’s Divine Claim

“Because I’m done deciding what you get to know. Not just tonight, not just about this. I’ve done it all my life. I did it to you for months, I’m finished with it.”

He takes a long time with it.

“Standing in your doorway, that would have gutted me,” he says.

“I know.”

“It doesn’t now.” His hand comes up to the side of my face. “Faelan’s dead, Ana. You could have kept that for the rest of your life. You told me anyway.”

Both arms come around me and pull me in against him. His chin comes down on the top of my head and he holds on. That’s all of it. He has every piece of it now. Behind us the fire is going, and somebody is still playing that guitar. Two people start in on each other about a horse. He pulls back far enough to look at me, pushes my hair off my face and keeps his hand there.

“Come on,” he says.

I take his hand. Neither of the two at the fire looks up when we pass.

Chapter 49

Valen

We walk to my cabin together. Her hand’s been in mine since the treeline, wings are still out behind her, folded loose against her back like she’s forgotten they’re there. She walks through her own compound with them showing and nobody looks twice.

The woodpile by my door is stacked, higher than I left it, a good deal higher, split clean, and some of it is green enough to still smell like it came off the round today. I split what I burn. Somebody else did this. I can’t tell you who. There are fifty people in this valley, half of them would have done it without mentioning it. The other half would have done it, mentioned it once, and never brought it up again. Somebody stood at my door with an armload and stacked it against my wall for me to burn later. I stand in front of it longer than a stack of wood is worth.

In six packs I was the one who stocked. For the longhouse, the elders, whoever asked. A man who’s useful is kept through the winter. Nobody ever stacked mine. I get the door open and step through. My eyes find the two windows and the door I came in by. I’ve known what all three of them do since my first week in this cabin. I check them anyway. My bag is by the bed. Packed. I stop one step past the threshold with my hand still on the frame. Nyxiana is already three steps ahead of me. She turns around.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong.”

She stands where she is in the middle of my floor and looks at me. “You’re still waiting for the catch.”

“Yeah.”

“There isn’t one. Not here.”

I take my hand off the frame. Then I close the door, all the way, with the latch, which I haven’t done once since the day I moved in. It’s the loudest sound in this cabin. I cross the room to her, put my arms around her, pull her to me, and kiss her. She tastes so good I groan into her mouth.

Her hands find the hem of my shirt and pull it up over my head. I lift my arms for her. I take hers off the same way. Her bra comes open under my hands. I drop it somewhere behind me, I stop and look at her.

“Valen.”

“Let me.”

She stands in the middle of my floor and lets me. Her skin is white from her throat to the waistband of her jeans, not a freckle anywhere, nothing the sun has ever put there. Her hair is silver over one shoulder, nipples tight in the cool of the room, wings folded behind her, the low light runring along the top edge of them. For a long time I simply look at her.

I walk her back to the bed and take her down onto it. I take a nipple into my mouth and suck hard enough that she says my name. My hand opens her jeans. I push them down her legs with her underwear inside them. She kicks both off the end of the bed. I put my hand on her and take my time with it. Down her belly. Over one hipbone and across to the other. Down the inside of her thigh and back up again, slowly, until she opens her legs for me. God, she’s so fucking beautiful.

Her pussy is soaked before I ever put a hand on it. Two fingers slide into her with nothing in the way. She’s tight and hot around them. “Fuck.” I say it against her breast. “Is this for me?”

“You know it is.”

I curl my fingers up and find the place that lifts her hips off the mattress. I stay there. My thumb on her clit, my fingers working that spot inside her, the same pace over and over while her breathing turns short. She says my name again and her voice cracks on it. Gold comes up faint under her skin at the hip. She can’t hold it in, isn’t trying to. I suck on her nipple until she comes around my fingers with one hand fisted in my hair. I keep going, slower, until she stops moving. She puts a hand on my chest and pushes me down onto my back. Then she kisses her way down me. Slowly.

Her mouth closes around my cock. I groan. My hand settles into her hair and stays there. She takes me slow at first, wraps a hand around the base of me and works it in time with her mouth. I look down at her. She’s watching me. Her eyes stay on my face while she takes me, and they don’t move when she catches me looking. Watching her take my cock is going to finish me faster than her mouth will.

“Fuck. Ana.”

She hums around me. I feel it all the way up my spine. She sinks lower. All the way down, slowly, until her mouth meets her hand. I feel the head hit the back of her throat. Back up. Down again. She keeps that up until my fist closes in her hair and s he stays right where she is. I start thrusting up into her mouth every time she comes down. She takes all of it. Gold comes up faint under the skin of her throat.