Page 41 of Warded By His Wolf

We went inside.

I don’t know which of us moved first.

I found him in my room an hour later, checking the window locks. The lamp on the nightstand was the only light, throwing warm shadows across his face. When he heard me in the doorway, he turned.

I closed the door.

Neither of us pretended he was there for the window.

I crossed to him and his hands came to my face: possessive and unhurried, the touch of a man who had claimed and meant it and intended to leave nothing undone before a dangerous night. His mouth found the mark at my shoulder first, the silver curve of his bite, and he lingered there with a patience that cost him his composure before I was fully in his arms.

I had my hands in his hair and I said his name like a directive, and then like something softer, and when I said mine he made a sound low in his chest that was not entirely human and did not try to be.

Through the bond, something reached for more, and waited. There was a word beyond mine, and we both knew it was there, and I wasn’t going to say it for the first time while the night had teeth. He didn’t ask. He never asked. He just let me feel, through the mark under his mouth, how patiently he could want it.

His hands moved over me like he’d been memorizing this: every place that made me shiver, every touch that pulled sound from my throat. He stripped my shirt over my head and his mouth followed his hands, the line of my collarbone, the curve of my ribs, the soft skin below.

“Maddox.” Breathless.

“I have you.” His voice had dropped an octave. His eyes burned red-gold when he looked up at me, the wolf close to the surface, not frightening. Watching me with an attention that was purely, unmistakably his.

I pulled him up and kissed him hard, working the buttons of his flannel until I could push it off his shoulders. The breadth of him never stopped being overwhelming, but I wasn’t afraid. I was done being afraid of things that wanted to protect me.

He lifted me onto the bed like I weighed nothing and followed me down, weight braced on his forearms, mouth moving from my lips to my throat to the mark. Every time his lips touched the silver curve, the bond flared, warm, present, undeniable.

His hand slid down my body to the waistband of my leggings, and I lifted my hips for him. His fingers traced the inside of my thigh with a slowness that had me arching, seeking.

“Please. I need⁠⁠⁠—”

“I know what you need.” His mouth at my ear, breath warm. “I can feel it.”

He could. Through the bond he could feel what I wanted and how much, and when his fingers found me ready, the sound he made was somewhere between a growl and a prayer.

He learned me slowly (the rhythm that moved my hips against his hand, the pressure that drew sounds I didn’t recognize as mine) and when I came apart around his fingers it was with his mouth on my throat and his palm pressed flat against the mark, the pleasure moving through the bond in both directions until I couldn’t tell where mine ended and his began.

He gave me no time to come down. He stripped the rest of his clothes away and settled between my thighs, the thick heat of him against me, asking without words.

I pulled him closer. “Yes. Now.”

He pushed inside me slowly, letting me take the size of him, and the sound I made wasn’t something I could have controlled. Full. Complete. The bond blazed, not new anymore. Settled. A frequency that hummed like something that had always been true.

He began to move and I moved with him, meeting every thrust, and his eyes flickered red-gold at the moments the control slipped, and I met every one of those moments without flinching, because I knew exactly what I was looking at.

Mine. He was mine and I was his, and the claiming had made it physical, but I had chosen it long before the bite.

“Ivy.” My name rough and reverent in his mouth. “You feel⁠⁠⁠—”

“I know.” I pulled him down and kissed him. “I feel it too.”

We moved together in the narrow bed while the house held its breath around us, the pleasure coiling tighter until I was shaking with it, and when I came the second time I took him with me: felt him spill inside me with a groan more wolf than man, felt the bond blaze like something that had been holding its breath for five days and was finally, finally exhaling.

Afterward we lay tangled in the dark. His arm solid across my waist. His heartbeat slow and enormous under my ear, and beneath it, through the bond, the word he wasn’t saying, banked and patient, waiting for me to come to it in my own time. I pressed my palm flat over his sternum, over all of it, and held it there.

“Whatever happens tonight—” I started.

“Don’t.” Quiet, but final. Not because he couldn’t bear to hear it. Because he’d already made the promise on the porch, and he didn’t need it conditional.

I was quiet for a long time. I listened to his heart. I did not sleep, and neither did he, and neither of us pretended otherwise.