Page 68 of Final Drive

“Aren’t you?”

He stands to get the rest of his clothes off and I watch him do it. He isn’t self-conscious, which surprises me from a man who lives that far inside his own head. When he catches me looking he wraps a hand around himself and strokes once. Not performing. Taking the edge off so he can think.

That small practical thing undoes me more than any amount of Alpha display could.

“Come here.”

He settles over me, and when I reach between us to guide him in he stops my hand.

“Wait.”

“Eli, if you’re overthinking this⁠—”

“I’m not.” He threads his fingers through mine and pins our hands beside my head. “I need to look at you first. I want to remember what your face looks like before it changes.”

The claiming. He means the claiming.

“You don’t have to,” I whisper. “Not tonight. Not for the paperwork or the deadline. I need you to know I’d have you either way.”

“I know.” He shifts forward and presses against my entrance without pushing in, and the tease of it drags a sound out of me. “That’s why I’m going to. Because you’d have me without the bite.”

He pushes in slowly, watching my face the whole way.

“This isn’t strategy.”

The stretch of him fills me completely. He isn’t the biggest of them, but the angle he takes is devastating, dragging against my front wall on every small movement. He starts with controlled, deep strokes and doesn’t look away from me once.

“Talk to me,” he says. “Tell me what works.”

“That. Right there.” He’s found the angle and I wrap my legs around his waist to keep him at it. “Just keep doing that.”

“Got it.”

He holds the same pace, the same depth, the same angle, and it builds in a way it hasn’t with anybody else. Not a sprint at the edge. A tide coming in.

“Eli, I’m close.”

“I know. I can feel it.”

He puts his forehead against mine and keeps that relentless rhythm, never faster, never losing the angle. When it crests it rolls through me in waves instead of breaking over me. I moan into his mouth and he takes the sound and keeps moving.

“Two,” he says against my lips.

“Shut up.”

He grins, then lifts one of my legs over his shoulder. The new angle makes me gasp. Deeper. He picks up the pace for the first time, his control starting to fray, and I can feel his knot beginning to swell at the base.

“I can feel you tightening every time I bottom out,” he says, rougher now. “You’re pulling me in.”

“Because I need you deeper.”

The sound that comes out of him is nothing like his usual register. He lowers my leg, pulls out and turns me onto my stomach. His hand runs down my spine before he takes my hip and pushes back in. From behind it’s overwhelming, and he drapes himself over my back with his mouth at my ear.

“Tell me when,” he breathes. “You decide when the bond happens. Not biology. Not my knot. You.”

Even now, even inside me with his knot starting to stretch me open, he’s handing it to me.

I turn my head to find his mouth. “Keep going. I’ll tell you.”