Page 35 of Alpha’s Wife

Her breath shudders, and for a second, I think she’s going to turn and run, but then she stands and reaches down to pull her shirt off over her head, and the sight of her knocks whatever’s left of my sense clean out of me. My wolf is right there at the surface, no longer interested in the bloodthirst of the evening or the war, only her. And the word he keeps pressing against the inside of my skull. Mine.

I get my hands on her and drag a thumb across her nipple. She arches into it, and I lean in and take the other in my mouth, sucking until she whimpers and her hips jerk against me. She straddles me, and I feel her core against my jeans, chasing the friction, and I let her ruin us both like that for a while, my mouth moving from one breast to the other, her hands fisted in my hair, until she’s shaking in my arms.

I could probably come just like this, with the weight of her on my lap and the pressure against my cock, but I’m going to make sure I’m buried deep inside her. I move to her throat, my hand wrapping gently but firmly against her flickering pulse and holding her there. “You’re mine,” I say against her skin, low. She rocks down harder in answer, and I feel pure lightning shoot down my spine.

“Off,” she says, pulling at my waistband. “We need these off.”

I lift her up onto the island, strip what’s left off her, and kick off my jeans. She reaches for me, and I catch her wrist and ease her back instead, spreading her open on the edge of the island.

“Slowly,” I tell her, even though slow might be the death of me. “Let me get you ready first. You’re still not ready for everything I can give you.”

She starts to argue until I slide two fingers through her folds, and she seems to forget the words as her head tips back. She’s soaked, slick, and almost ready, and the noise she makes when I push into her is filthy enough to make my cock jerk, and I have to grip the end to slow my own burn. I work her open slowly, curling my fingers up into the spot that makes her hips buck, dragging my thumb over her clit in tight circles until her thighs are shaking on either side of me and she begins to ride my hand without even realizing what she’s doing. It’s the hottest thing I’ve ever seen.

“There she is,” I murmur. “Take it all, Selene.”

She’s close already. I can feel it in the way her tight channel flutters around my fingers and the way her whole body’s gone tight. I ease off just before she tips over the edge, because I’m a selfish bastard and I want her coming on my cock instead.

“R-Ronan…please.” My name is pulled from her lips, and I grin as she begs. “Please…I need…”

“I know what you need,” I tell her, pulling my fingers out and hauling her against me. She wraps her legs around my hips, but then pauses, pushing me back down into the chair and straddling me again.

“You’re supposed to be careful,” she says, looking right at me. “Remember.”

She sinks down onto me one agonizing inch at a time, and I groan as I grip her hips to guide her down. She’s so tight and wet, so hot around me that my vision goes white at the edges, and I grip the chair hard enough to crack it to stop myself from driving up into her before she’s ready. She braces her hands on my shoulders, being careful of my injury even now, and works herself down slowly until she’s taken all of me, until I’m buried to the hilt, and she buries her head against my neck.

“Selene.” Her name comes out raw. “Look at me.”

She does. And she holds my eyes as she starts to move, tentatively at first with a slow roll of her hips that drags me almost all the way out of her and takes me back in deep, and there’s nothing guarded in her face. None of the careful calculation she usually wears. This is all us, and the genuineness of the moment hits me hard.

She builds the pace agonizingly slowly, and I feel every inch of her innocence, which only makes it sexier. Eventually, she finds a rhythm that I respond to as I flex my own hips, forcing my cock deeper. She shudders in my arms but maintains the pace, chasing her own pleasure as though she has every right to wring it from my own body. And I span her hips with my hands, guiding her deeper, giving her more and more, watching her the whole time and knowing I’ll never tire of seeing her come apart like this.

I reach my hand between us and find her clit, and she cries out as I run firm circles on the swollen bundle of nerves and grinds down harder, riding my fingers and my cock at once until I feel her channel tighten impossibly around me.

“That’s it,” I growl against her throat. “Let me feel you. Come on my cock.”

And she does. She breaks apart on top of me with my name in her mouth, clenching around me so hard it punches the air clean out of my chest, and that’s all it takes. I follow her over the edge, gripping her hips, spilling into her with a growl as my canines burn with the desire to mark her, but I hold back. Just.

I pull her against me hard because I don’t trust myself to look at her yet. My wolf is so close to the surface. I know that’s all she’d see in my eyes. She doesn’t protest; she curls into me, her heart slamming against mine, and for a long while, neither of us says a word.

Surprisingly, she presses a kiss to the bandage on my shoulder, soft, like she’s sorry for whatever put it there. “You should’ve gone to the clinic,” she murmurs.

“Came home instead.” The word home is out before I think about it, and I feel her go still against me when she hears it. Home. I’ve never once called this place that out loud.

And that’s when I feel it.

She’s gone soft and heavy against my chest, her breathing has evened out, and as she settles, I feel it move through me—it’s her magic, threading into me. It feels warm and locked in tight. It worked. The whole reason I took her, the reason I started this, is mine now, and I feel stronger already.

I should be triumphant. I should be lying here planning the crossing, the meeting I’m going to call tomorrow, and the three alphas I can finally put down now that I have what I came for.

Instead, that’s not what I’m thinking. I’m too consumed by her warmth, the feeling of her still wrapped around my cock, the sweet smell of her hair, and the softness of her skin. And that scares me more than the new, powerful surge of magic running through my veins.

My wolf is smug and sated. Ours, he says, like it’s already settled.

It isn’t settled. Nothing about this is settled, because I haven’t let myself want anything this badly, with this little say in keeping it, since I was a boy.

I tighten my arms around her and don’t let go, telling myself it doesn’t matter and it’s only for tonight.

Chapter 17 - Selene