Page 17 of Collared Mate

The voice stops me from punching the guy who grabbed me right in the face while simultaneously kneeing him in the balls.

“Henry?” I use his name as a question, quietly. Indoors, the band has stopped playing. Voices are raised. There is going to be scandal tonight and it is going to have nothing to do with me.

“The same,” he says, lifting his mask just enough to give me a rakish wink.

My stomach bursts into butterflies and the rest of me performs similarly intense internal contortions that I would feel very ashamed about if he knew of them. I really didn’t think I was going to see him again. I didn’t think I missed him. But if that were true, I wouldn’t have relief and excitement flowing through me in equal measure.

“You’re not supposed to be here,” I whisper. I don’t know if that is actually true, but I do know it feels true.

“How could I resist when I knew you’d be in attendance?”

I can’t believe he’s here. My heart is racing. The excitement and surprise of seeing him again is making my head spin. I don’t often get surprised by people. Usually I watch them do exactly what I thought they were going to do, in the most annoying way. Henry hasn’t done anything I thought he was going to do, not even once.

“You’d think we’d have security for an affair like this,” I say. “Someone to keep the strays out.”

He smirks at me. His mask is lowered again, but having seen his eyes, I cannot unsee the handsome lines of his face in my mind’s eye.

“Come here,” he says, taking a step back into the shadows. Inside, the quartet has started playing again. Rick and Sass are probably having tense words in a study somewhere. My absence hasn’t been noted because that little scene, short as it probably was, is going to live in infamy for a while. Everyone is going to be talking about it.

“You and Rick don’t talk anymore. Why?”

Henry smiles and runs his hand down my spine, letting his palm rest in the small of my back as he snugs me closer in the shadows. I can feel the thick line of his cock erect under his suit pants. His scent, rich and male, is filling my senses.

“Do you really want to talk about your brother right now?”

“No,” I whimper.

I don’t know what chemical hold this man has over me. Well, I do, but I am going to try very hard not to think about it. I don’t believe in Fated Mates. I think that’s a story we tell pups so they accept whoever they get assigned to when they’re older, or, worse, I think it’s how we erode their inner sense of danger by making them think that lots of chemistry feelings are a good thing when it’s really probably anxiety dressed up as attraction…

He kisses me and all the thoughts fly out of my head. I melt against his body as I feel myself surrendering to the power of what is between us. It’s crazy that I’m just letting this happen. I should be at least looking for a more private place. One of the dozens of guest rooms, or a more private corner. But there’s something about the way I feel when I’m with him, a softening of my body that makes me just want to give in to him. It feels right. It feels like I was made for… no, fuck that, I wasn’t made for…

“Oh, my god!” I let out a little squeal as Henry hitches up my dress, presses me up against the garden wall, and fucks me with my panties pushed to the side. The thrill of possibly being caught makes it all the more exciting as what would otherwise be completely vanilla sex turns into a daring escapade.

I am soaked with desire for him, made even more intense by the notion of what would happen if someone saw us. The Swale heiress being mated by a complete stranger in public in her garden? City society would never hear the end of it.

The way he uses his cock is godlike. He has so much range of motion in his hips, it feels like I am being filled, stretched, and even stirred on the inside every time he arches through his back making sure every bit of my body experiences his cock.

People are so close. There are voices, laughing, the light clinking of drinks, and his cock starting to form a knot because he’s going to fucking breed me out here.

I cling to him helplessly as I feel him slam home inside me, making my pussy tender with intense, rough thrusts that come with such carnal urgency I become very little other than the recipient of his cum.

This is what it feels like to be bred. The situation does not matter, the danger is irrelevant. All Henry cares about is being as deep inside me as he can be when he comes. I am the vessel of his need and of his seed, and he growls as he ejaculates, his knot swelling so fucking thick inside me I emit wails that he has to immediately kiss away.

“Shhh shhhh,” he murmurs. “Be good for me, take my cum nicely, good girl.”

He turns me around on his knot, which is not easy and requires a great deal of strength from him, but it means I am now facing away from him and that allows him to spend the next few minutes teasing my clit and pussy lips while I am trapped on his cock. He makes light little circles, then taps on my bud, then presses and rubs harder to force me to orgasm on his knot, my inner walls sucking at his cock, drawing his seed deep into my body.

His other hand covers my mouth, because I cannot stay quiet while I am being mated like this. The animal in me wants to acknowledge her breeding as I writhe and contract and the orgasm he’s made me have rushes through me like a shot of something more potent than I would have thought natural chemicals were capable of.

In the aftermath, he snuggles me from behind while his knot softens. Just as he slides free of me, leaving a hot gush running down my inner thighs, the lights start to go on. The party is over. People are leaving.

I know instinctively that Henry is going to depart with them. He can’t risk being caught here, though I still don’t know why. I find myself clinging to his jacket, my fingers curled in his lapel.

“Come up to my room,” I say.

“I can’t,” he says. “I’m sorry.”

“Then take me with you.”