Page 53

She slid her hand inside his jeans and wrapped her fingers around him, and the sound that left his mouth was not dignified. He was already hard, had been since she'd said yes with that certainty in her voice, and her grip was firm and knowing, stroking him with confidence, knowing she made him like this.

Steph sank to her knees on the cabin floor, pulling his jeans down as she went. The moonlight caught the curve of her shoulders and the dark spill of her curls as she freed him, her breath hot against his skin, and when she took him into her mouth he grabbed the doorframe hard enough to hear the wood creak.

She was thorough. The same focused precision she brought to excavation, she brought to this, her tongue working the underside of his shaft while her hand gripped the base, her cheeks hollowing as she took him deeper. He watched her in the pale light, her lashes dark against her cheeks, her lips stretched around him, and the sight alone nearly finished him.

She pulled back, swirled her tongue over the head, took him deep again. He could feel the pressure building fast, coiling tight at the base of his spine, his thighs tensing, his breath coming ragged. She hummed against him and the vibration sent a jolt through his entire body.

"Steph." His voice came out wrecked. He needed her to stop but he couldn’t bring himself to move.

And she didn't stop. She only smirked around his cock and took him deeper.

He fisted his hand in her hair and pulled her up. Not rough enough to hurt. Firm enough that she felt the urgency, and the smile she gave him when she rose to her feet was the most dangerous thing he'd ever seen. Wicked and knowing and entirely in control despite being the one on her knees.

"Impatient," she said.

"You have no idea."

She peeled her shirt over her head, unhooked her bra and let it fall. Her skin was golden in the moonlight, the lean muscles of her stomach flexing as she worked her jeans down and kicked them aside. She stood in front of him in nothing, eyes dark with want.

He had her against the cabin wall in two steps. Her legs wrapped around his waist, her back pressed to the wood, his hands gripping her thighs, and the heat of her against him made his vision blur. She was wet. He could feel it where their bodies pressed together, slick and hot, and when she shifted her hips, grinding against the length of him, they both groaned.

"Inside me," she said against his mouth. "Now."

He adjusted his grip, one arm braced against the wall, the other holding her hip, and pushed into her in a single stroke. Her head fell back against the wood, her mouth open on a sound that started as a gasp and ended as his name, broken in the middle. She was tight around him, hot, her body gripping him as he bottomed out, and the sensation was so overwhelming he had to hold still for a moment, forehead against her collarbone, every muscle shaking.

"Move," she breathed, her nails biting into his shoulders. "Criss, move."

He moved. Long, deep strokes that pinned her to the wall with each thrust, her body rocking against his, her breasts pressed against his chest. She wrapped her arms around his neck and held on, meeting him stroke for stroke, her hips rolling to find the angle that made her clench around him. When she found it, the sound she made was raw and uninhibited, loud in the small cabin, and he chased it, hitting the same spot again, again, again until her breathing fractured into something close to sobbing.

"Don't stop," she gasped. "Right there, don't stop."

He shifted his grip, both hands under her thighs now, spreading her wider, driving deeper. The new angle made her back arch off the wall, her nails raking lines down his back that stung and burned. He could feel her getting close, the way her body tightened incrementally with each thrust, her inner walls fluttering around him, the tension building in her thighs where they gripped his waist.

"Look at me," he said.

She lifted her head. Her eyes were blown dark, the gold almost gone, and her lips were swollen and parted and she was the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen in his life.

"I want to feel you come," he told her, his voice low, raw. "And when you do, I'm going to claim you. If you want me to stop, say it now."

"If you stop," she said, "I will kill you."

He drove into her harder. Faster. His thumb found the space between them, pressing against her clit in tight circles that matched the rhythm of his hips. She cried out, her body bowing, and he felt the orgasm hit her all at once, a full-body seizure that clenched around him so hard his vision whited at the edges. Her nails dug into his shoulders, her legs locked around his waist, and the sound she made was his name, repeated, breaking apart on each wave.

He followed her over. The climax tore through him with a force that started at the base and detonated outward, and at the peak of it, with her body convulsing around his and her throat bared as her pulse hammered under the skin where her neck met her shoulder, he bit down.

Not savage. Nor careless. His teeth broke skin with the precision of something practiced over centuries by instinct he'd never used before, and the taste of her blood was copper and the green, botanical scent. The bite carried everything he was, his tiger, his magic, his essence, through the wound and into her bloodstream, and the bond locked into place with a sensation that defied every word he'd ever learned.

It was like the world developed a second pulse. Hers. He could feel her heartbeat alongside his own, synced and steady. Her pleasure still rippling through her body registered in his chest as warmth, as rightness. The exhaustion in her muscles echoed in his. Every emotion she carried, the fierce satisfaction, the lingering grief from the chamber, the stubborn, brilliant love she'd fought so hard to deny, flowed through the new channel between them with a clarity that stole his breath.

She gasped against his neck. Her hand flew to the bite mark, fingers pressing against the broken skin, and he felt her feel it. The bond. His heartbeat in her blood. His presence settling into her awareness like a frequency she'd always been tuned to but never had a name for.

"Oh," she whispered. Just that. The researcher reduced to a single syllable by something no textbook could have prepared her for.

He carried her to the bed because her legs had given out and his weren't far behind. They collapsed onto the mattress in a tangle of damp skin and heavy breathing, her face pressed against his chest, his arms wrapped around her, the bond thrumming between them with a warmth that felt like sunlight through closed eyes.

"That's what a claiming feels like," she said after a long silence, her voice muffled against his skin.

"Yeah."