Page 21 of His Runaway Mate

She smirks, sassy, rude, and so fucking full of herself. I should be irritated by her nerve, but if anything I am pleased by the fact our mating has made her feel so confident with me as to dare challenge me so directly.

I consider what to do next. I feel rather languid and relaxed, not to mention supremely confident in our mate bond. She felt so perfect around me. She took me so beautifully. We joined at an animal level, and soon the beast inside her will emerge for me.

I should keep her around for that, but the fact she doesn’t seem inclined to shift at this precise moment makes me think she is not about to. Sometimes it takes several matings to trigger the first full shift.

I could sweep her up in my arms right now and carry her off to the reserve. Part of me thinks that is the only correct thing to do. She needs to be taught to behave. She needs to be shown what true submission means, not just when she is so aroused she can barely think.

I can see a glint in her eye, and I suspect that is what she wants me to do. She wants to be forced to obey, over and over again, never offering any obedience of her own accord.

I know one thing for certain. Her hunger has been woken, and she is going to want to be bred again and again. She can play this little game if she likes. She will be crawling back to me before she knows it, and the shame of having to beg for her next mating will teach her a lesson that forcing her to go to the reserve will not.

“I’ll call you a car,” I say.

The look of shock on her face tells me I just made exactly the right choice. She wants to be able to fight me and have me rip away all the fundamental parts of her so she can cast herself as my victim. But I like who she is, and I want to preserve as much of it as I can.

“Really?”

“Yes, really. You’re my mate. Not my prisoner.”

She almost looks disappointed. I reconsider. I could perhaps call her a car and have that car deliver her to the reserve. That would amuse her on some level, I think.

But I know if I were to kidnap her, I would have no end of trouble. Constant escape attempts, the illusion that she does not need me as badly as I need her reinforced over and over again. It would be messy, the pack would be party to it, and I want to bring her in with a certain level of decorum that does not seem to come naturally to her, and used to not come naturally to me.

“Is that not what you want?” I lower my voice and my chin, so I am looking at her with the eyes of a predator. “Do you want something else, my little mate? Do you want to be captured and owned? Do you want to be imprisoned against your will? I can give you that, if that’s what you want.”

“No,” she starts to stammer, even as the blush on her cheeks tells me that’s precisely what she was hoping to hear. This little monster wants an even bigger monster to hold her.

I get out of bed and walk toward her. Her eyes widen in that adorable way they do when she thinks she might be in trouble. I don’t think my mate truly understands any of her internal impulses yet. I think she follows them like the little animal she is, but she needs time to really understand who she is.

I grip her by the wrist and pull her close to me.

“Don’t you dare leave my side,” I growl in her ear, feeling the shiver that runs through her as she enjoys the intensity of my displeasure. “You impudent little whelp. Don’t you understand your place with me? You will do as you are told. You will obey me willingly. And you will present yourself for mating when I desire you.”

Her eyes widen, her face pales and then flushes almost immediately as fear turns to arousal. It’s the animal in her; it needs this intensity. The same way she wanted to be grabbed by the scruff of the neck, her life in my jaws, she wants to be held by me now in this more human form. She is mating with my beast just as much as she is mating with me.

I smack her ass hard. I feel myself get harder at both her yelp and the way her ass feels underneath my hand, soft and pliable and punishable. She is awakening the darkest parts of me. Perhaps I am not merely playing along with her desire to be ruthlessly dominated. Perhaps she is bringing out in me the very things that she needs from me, changing me as I change her.

I like the way it feels being the bad guy she wants.

I have spent years making myself conform to a more civilized standard. I have pushed rougher, darker, more controlling impulses down, replaced conquest of the flesh with conquering board rooms. I have become incomparably wealthy as a result. But I have not felt this alive.

I have one of her wrists in my grasp. She takes hold of my arm with the other. I do not know if she wants mercy, or if she wants to feel me.

Before I know what I am doing, I have hoisted her up in my arms, ripped her clothing off her curvy little body, and I have her wrapped around my cock again. Her weight is nothing to me.

One of my arms is wrapped under her thighs, her other leg is curled around my waist. She is at my mercy entirely, spread lewdly open. I am making savage sounds as I pound her already ravaged pussy with my thick cock. She is locked in on me, her eyes on mine, her mouth open in a near constant moan. She is tender and she is probably sore, but she arches for me anyway because her breeding deprived body needs this.

Another knot. Another deposit of seed right where it needs to be, deep inside her clenching, writhing body. She grinds against me, rutting her clit against my pubic bone as my knot keeps her stretched around me.

These post-orgasmic moments are sacred. I can feel the connection being knit between us, the physical closeness of our bodies, the way the fluids of our intimacy are mingling all goes to create the foundation of the rest of our lives. I wish we could stay like this rather than return to mundane sanity, but we cannot. As my knot softens, I feel the real world returning. I can sense her resistance flooding back. I can see the rebellion and the panic and the what am I doing in her eyes.

I let her slide down my body, already knowing what is about to happen.

“Don’t you go anywhere,” I growl in her ear, patting her ass.

I go and take a shower. I can hear her rustling around next door. She is trying to be quiet, but I have the kind of hearing that can pick up a mouse under a plant a hundred or more feet away.

She’s getting herself together, ready to make an escape.