Page 30 of Claimed By The Tracker

I worked her with my tongue while my hand dealt with the button of her jeans, dragging denim and the cotton beneath it down her thighs. She was already slick when my fingers found her, hot and ready in a way that pulled another growl out of me before I could think to swallow it.

"You're soaked." The words came out barely shaped, more wolf than man. "How long?"

"Since the porch." She rocked into my hand, chasing it. "Since before the porch. Since you looked at me like—" Her breath broke. "Do that again."

I did. Two fingers pressing in, my thumb circling, and I watched her come apart by the gold light spilling off her own hands. It crackled along the dresser's edge and she didn't try to smother it.

"More," she said.

I gave her more. Three now, curled to the place that made her breath snag, my thumb steady while her nails bit into my shoulders.

"I'm going to⁠—"

"Do it."

She came with my name caught in her throat, gold pouring from her palms and running up my forearms like warm water—not pain, just presence, her magic reaching into me the way it had been reaching toward me for days. The wolf went wild under my skin at the feel of it, at her scent thickening with it, and the urge rose hard and sudden: to set his teeth again to the mark already on her shoulder, to seal it deeper, to make it permanent instead of new. He strained toward it. I held him. She hadn't asked for that yet, and I wasn't going to take what she hadn't named.

Before she'd stopped shaking I had my jeans open and myself in hand, lining up against her. I paused there—just the press of me against her heat—because some part of me needed to hear it once more, not out of doubt but because she deserved to be the one who said it.

"Lena."

Her eyes opened. Gold still flickered at the edges of her irises, her own magic looking back at me.

"Yes," she said. "I already said yes."

I pushed inside her in one long stroke.

The sound she made wasn't quite a moan—deeper, rougher—and her legs locked around my hips and pulled me closer. I held still a moment, buried to the hilt, my forehead against hers while we both remembered how to breathe.

"Move," she whispered.

I moved.

The dresser knocked the wall with every thrust and neither of us cared. Her nails raked down my back and I felt them break skin, and the bright sting of it only drove me harder—chasing something that had been building since a roadside diner, a parking lot, gold magic crackling between her palms.

"Jace." Her voice broke on it. "I can feel—the bond⁠—"

I felt it too. Not just the heat of her around me but something deeper—a warmth spreading behind my sternum, into the space where the wolf lived. Like a door coming open. Like the end of a long track, the moment the scent becomes the thing itself.

"Let it in," I said against her throat, angling deeper. "Let me in."

She came again—harder, her whole body clenching around me, gold light pouring off her hands and sinking into my skin. It took me with her. I buried myself to the hilt and let go, the sound that tore out of me nothing a human throat could make, and the wolf surged once more toward her shoulder before I dragged him back from it, shaking with the want and the holding both.

After, we stayed tangled in the narrow bed, her back to my chest, my hand splayed across her stomach—possessive and careful at once. The bond hummed between us, not loud, not demanding. Just there. Warm. Real.

"I can feel you," she murmured. "In my chest. Like a second heartbeat."

"I know." I pressed my mouth to the mark already on her shoulder, still faintly tender under my lips, and felt the wolf settle deeper into it. "I've been feeling you for days."

She turned in my arms, laid her palm flat over my heart, and looked up at me with nothing guarded left in her face.

"This changes things."

"Yes."

"I'm not sorry."

"Neither am I."