Page 43 of The Alpha's Arranged Bride

“I don’t…” She gasped. “I don’t understand.”

“Are you unwilling?”

Her eyes widened. “No!” She flushed even brighter at the vehement denial. “No, of course I’m not unwilling.” She might have stuffed her desire down, but she hadn’t been able to control her dreams and her thoughts, and every day she ached more fiercely for her mate’s touch. She ached to be taken, marked, and claimed.

If he couldn’t love her, he could still fuck her.

But she’d been naïve once. She’d been down that road of heartbreak. She knew how much it hurt. The way he looked at her made everything in her body come alive so brightly that it felt like she was flying straight into the sun. She’d burn more than her wings with him.

She swallowed around the painful knot even as her body demanded that she forget all about words and claim her mate. “I know I promised to be your mate and I told you I would love you even if you considered yourself unlovable. I’m not giving up on any of that. But this…” She looked up at Agnar, his gray eyes were ablaze with lust. “I can’t do this unless you’re going to stay. I would never demand you feel something you don’t, and if this is just a fuck between two people who desire each other, then it would still be sacred to me. The thing that would break me is giving you my body and my pleasure, giving you my heart and soul, and being abandoned. But I still just… I can’t let this be some version of goodbye.”

Beneath that dark, potent want coiling in her belly and the desire that turned her thighs to jelly and made her tremble, that soaked her panties and seeped into her muscles, there was fear. The fear that she’d given him an opening. She’d made him a promise. She’d painted those words on the walls of her heart and that heart could be shattered so easily now.

Agnar’s eyes didn’t soften. He didn’t rush to her and offer her sweet words or tender caresses. He didn’t take her face in his hands and promise her that the darkness in him and in the world was over. They’d shared a beautiful night, and she thought that the spirit in him had returned, but she had to be certain. She needed to hear him say it, say something.

He didn’t physically falter, but she could sense his hesitation. Something flashed in his slate gray eyes.

“I need you to tell me that you’re here, as you are, because that is the only way I’ve ever wanted you. I need to hear you say that you choose this life. You choose a family. You choose us and this pack. You choose the wolf, and you choose the gift of life.”

They were still pressed close, she could feel his hard length against her, feel his heat, his nearness, his maleness. She hadn’t realized she’d been holding her breath until he spoke.

“I’m not leaving,” he said, his voice rough with emotion. “Last night I realized I’ve been a fucking fool. Whatever life has given me, I have endured. I will endure this as well. Going to Arizona to seek vengeance would change nothing. It would bring back no one. It would undo none of the years or the sorrows or the pain. I thought my destiny was to live as a warrior and die as a warrior. Life has decided otherwise. Life made me a father and life gave me a mate. I intend to make you mine. You want me to stay? I’ll stay. I’ll stay and I’ll be so deep inside you in every way that you’ll never be able to banish me.”

A shiver ran through her at his words. There was something dark and sensual in his vow. Something so erotic, that she felt a delicious tingle in her clit. Her thoughts went back to that day months earlier when they’d arrived in Arizona, and she’d attended their mating celebration. The couples fucking in the cavern, the animalistic and brutal way in which their bodies met. This man was a warrior, he was hewn from rock as much as his pack’s caves had been. For him there would be no making love or tenderness, it would be elemental and wild.

“You are staying,” she whispered, amazed she could speak at all. How the fuck was she still even standing as those images assaulted her, plowing into her like an army. She was soaked, as images of him driving his thick cock into her coursed through her mind like the swollen streams during the spring thaw,

“If you will have me,” his gray eyes met hers, as he waited for her answer.

Will I?

Before she had a chance to consider her answer, instinct took over and she turned her head to the side, exposing her neck. A gesture of submission, his response was to press his lips to her jugular, to feel her heartbeat thrum. She felt the heat of his mouth as his lips traveled to her jawbone. He shifted forward, pushing her into the table, his cock rigid, his body scotching hot. Finally, his lips found hers again, the kiss was violent, a tempest. She wasn’t a virgin, but it was clear that what she’d done in the past was nothing compared to what was going to happen with this proud warrior. There was no tenderness or sweetness, but instead brutal honesty. His body was his words of passion, and as his lips crushed hers and the roughness of his beard scratched her cheek, she found herself pressing up closer. Longing to feel him inside her.

“Here,” he gasped, as he pushed her further back against the table, so she was half lying on it with her legs over the side. His hands grasped the edge of the t-shirt she’d worn under her sweater, roughly pulling it over her head, and he made short work of her bra. He hissed as he took in the sight of her breasts.

She tried to reach out to pull off his shirt so she could see him, but he moved her hands away and instead bent down to capture a nipple in his mouth. His cock notched at her entrance and as he sucked her nipple deep into his mouth, she moaned. She wanted him desperately, her body craved him, she knew it wouldn’t be gentle, but the darkest parts of her responded to that call. She was all burning heat between her legs and a sick thrill trapped in her throat. She couldn’t express it. She was afraid to hear herself say those words out loud. The world thought she was meek and sweet, but what if there was something raw and dangerous inside her too? She’d responded immediately to the call of this man before she ever knew him. She’d made promises on faith in her destiny and in the knowledge that he wasn’t a gentle man. She knew his hands were steeped in blood. She knew he was a beast, a weapon, that he knew one language and those words were uttered in vengeance and brutal skill.

He put a hand in the waistband of her leggings and tore them away, followed by her panties, which he ripped from her body, tearing on both sides of the elastic and probably burning marks into her skin.

He cupped her entire pussy in his palm and then spread her wide with two fingers. He ran one along her slit, hissing out a breath. “I thought I’d have to warm you up, but you’re soaked already.” Her hips bucked, chasing the sensation, aching for more. She was so fucking empty, her walls clenching on nothing. His fingers were so close. So close to filling her. She thought about abandoning all dignity and begging him to fuck her. Not just with his fingers, but with his cock.

“Do I need to warm you up, Prairie Rose? Have you taken a cock before?”

She squirmed at his question, she’d told him about Sagen, well not about him as such, but that there’s been someone when she was younger. She nodded.

A dark glint flashed across Agnar’s face, and she caught a hint of dark spices. No that couldn’t be true, he’d insisted they weren’t proper mates so it couldn’t be the bonding scent. Was he jealous? She didn’t play games, but she was curious as to his response, “I had a lover years ago, but he left me.”

He took her thighs in his huge hands, and she shuddered as pleasure rolled through her when his fingers dug into her skin. He dragged her from where she was, towards the edge of the table. His breath was hot on her skin, “Tell me his name and I’ll find him and kill him for hurting you.”

“No!” She reached up and grasped Agnar’s face between her palms. His beard had grown longer since he’d left Arizona, and she liked it that way. Out-of-control and untamed, like him. His hair was neatly tied back into a tight knot at the top of his head. The sides had grown out too, but they’d been shaved so short before that they still weren’t longer than a soft fuzz. She longed to dig her hands into his hair, but she curled her fingers into his beard instead. “No, you won’t. And it doesn’t matter. He’s forgotten. Our paths were one from the day of our mating. You are the only man I will ever give my heart and body to. I need no justice and no vengeance. There is nothing to avenge. Nothing because it wasn’t real. This is real. You are real. You are mine and I am yours. You will have every part of me, like you said. I’ll give them all to you.”

He fell to his knees and looked so handsome down there. So cruel and brutal with the scars on his face and the severe set to his jaw and murder in his eyes.

“Roll over,” he commanded.

She had no idea what he meant until he flipped her over so fast that she felt scrambled. He allowed her toes to scrape the floor, just enough that they were barely touching. His large hands cupped her ass cheeks as she lay there, her heart was racing and her clit throbbing as she waited to see what he would do next. Her erect nipples ground painfully into the hard table and her clit was just along the lip of it, in perfect position to press into it.

She could feel his breath on her soaked pussy as he knelt behind her again, grasped her thighs to open her obscenely wide, and then his tongue traveled the full length of her slit all the way to her asshole. His fingers traveled along her ass crack, parting her and tracing that tight hole. She squirmed forward into the table, making a sound more animal than human, definitely one she’d never made before.

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