“Yes please.”
The room spins, and my eyes cross as he goes deeper still.
Belatedly I realize his arm, which he’s using to hold up his weight beside me, has grown furry. His hands are tipped with claws.
He’s made a partial shift into his beast form.
I have a moment’s panic as he draws back and fucks into me, and I feel for a second like he might split me in half. My musclesscream. Everything burns. Sweat pricks the back of my neck and my upper lip.
I talked a big game, though, and I refuse to back down. So I close my eyes and focus on relaxing my pussy. I can take him. I will.
Then his tip rubs against that secret place within and I moan. The tension relaxes, and he grunts as I take him all again—every inch of his shifted form, every fat, throbbing, bulging vein.
He grunts. Withdraws and slams into me again.
This time I breathe through it. I open myself to him and feel only pleasure.
Liquid gushes between my thighs. I push back, wanting him to see that I’m strong, that I can be what he needs. Of course, I can’t be. Not the way it really counts; but my pride won’t let that stop me being the best fuck he’s ever going to have in his life.
At the back of my mind, where I function on instinct alone, there’s a very hungry animal barking,mine, mine, mine, over and over like some kind of possessive mantra, a drumbeat that pounds in time with my pulse in my temples as he pumps into me with growing speed.
I hold back my orgasm for as long as I can. After all, this could be the last time we do this together. I’m not ready for this night to end.
Bas pounds into me, his claws digging into my skin and adding another mark to my body, and that thought only makes me tighten around him.
“You want it, Vera? Take it all. I’m going to drown you in it. You’ll be so full of me there won’t be room for anyone else.”
When he finally cums with a roar, I cum too with his name on my lips. I bite my fist, but I’m sure he heard it. I know how sensitive shifter hearing is. I know his heated words are just the pheromones and he doesn’t mean them. They’re sweet in my ears though, even as it’s ending.
As his knot swells again and we’re locked together, he gathers me up and rolls us to our sides without mentioning it, and I’m grateful.
I’m also grateful he’s locked behind me and I’m facing away into the darkness so he can’t see the way my cheeks flame and I don’t have to worry about not being able to meet his eyes.
Despite my awkwardness, I must fall asleep like that because when I come to, he’s slipping from me and crawling from the makeshift nest. He hands me water and food, getting up to pull on his clothes and check the conditions outside.
When he returns, he stands outside the nest rather than crawling inside with me, and my heart drops.
“Get some sleep while you can, Ver. It’s still looking pretty grim out there. I’ll check again in the morning and we’ll make an assessment.”
I want to ask him to come back—to hold me—but I don’t dare in case he makes another offer and I accept in a moment of weakness.
It’s better this way.
I tell myself that as I drift into a restless dream of soft growls and a warm furry body, of bourbon-honeyed kisses and deep brown soulful eyes.
TWELVE
Bastien
The worst of Vera’s heat passes during the night. I can scent the change, and it guts me. The spring floral note drops from the perfect orange-and-lemon scent of her.
I should be pleased. No more need to rut her—to hold her in my arms and dream of finally having a mate who could take everything I have to give and ask for more, who would challenge me, make me laugh, make me want to tell her my deepest, darkest secrets.
I never even thought of Vera that way until circumstances forced me to see it. What I’ve longed for all along was right under my nose.
But she doesn’t want me. Despite my mark on her neck and the way she took my cock so perfectly—took my knot! My beast!
I need to do some reading on that. Up until tonight I’ve always thought it was impossible for a beta to knot an omega. Clearly it’s not.
