Page 50 of The Alpha's Arranged Bride

Kieran intercepted Agnar and said something, then he put a hand on Blake’s and Levi’s shoulders and started leading them along with her brothers, her father, and the other men. Agnar glanced back at her, frowning, until he saw she clearly had arranged something different for them.

He stalked towards her, a small smile on his lips that made him look like altogether a different man. He’d been doing that more, cautiously and carefully, over the past week. It might take him years or even a lifetime to be able to laugh and love openly, but she was willing to wait. He was trying and she knew how hard it was for him to do that, so even the effort mattered all the more.

She took his hand. He’d always see it as imperfect, but he’d been talking about going and getting a set of braces for his human hands as well so that he could hold an axe to chop wood or more easily close his hands around something as simple as a broom, cooking utensils, or simple gardening tools.

“I didn’t give your braces to my dad.”

His expression didn’t change, and his small smile didn’t fade. “That’s alright. If you forgot them, I’ll just run back to the house and—”

“I didn’t forget. I have somewhere I want to take you. It’s been a special spot for me ever since I discovered it when I was six years old. I wanted to show you.”

His brows slanted down. “Now?”

“It’s out of the main path of the run and Kieran knows about it. We’ll have plenty of time to join them. We can shift from there. I’ll help you with the braces. The boys are going with my dad and Kieran. They also know about that. They’ll be fine, I promise.”

He looked over his shoulder once, at the retreating forms of the other men, but then he turned back to her and smoothed his hand over her hair. He didn’t stop there. He traced her forehead, her cheek, all the angles of her face until he tipped her jaw up and kissed her lips with a quick, hard stamp.

She was still floored, because public anything wasn’t this man’s style, and they were very much still right there in the open.

“Is that a yes?” she asked breathlessly.

“Yes.”

They had a way to walk, so still holding his hands, they set off. Earlier that morning, she’d taken Agnar’s braces and a change of clothes for each of them just in case, placed carefully in a large backpack, and she’d stashed them in the woods.

The spot truly was a special one for her. It was a place where she’d always gone when she needed to be alone, or when she wanted to think and dream. Sometimes she just went to read. There were even a few times in the warmth of summer, when she’d fallen asleep there for hours.

The small cave was almost impossible to find in the winter, when the snow loped over the rocky outcrops that burst in jagged peaks in the heart of their woods. She’d cleared it out that morning and set a blanket inside.

It took them a while to reach the spot, but when they did, Agnar knew what it was from a distance. His hand tightened in hers.

“We had our first mating celebration in a cave,” she explained. “I thought it would be fitting that we celebrate you joining my pack officially in one as well. There’s only one that I know of on our land. It’s barely big enough for us to be in it together, but that’s okay. We’ll warm it up faster that way.”

She stopped, almost waiting for him to tell her that she was being ridiculous, and he wasn’t going to jam himself into that tiny, dark space with her, but when she stopped on the nearly completely snowed over path she’d tread earlier and faced him, his face was pinched, but not with distaste. It was so much sharper. Desire. His eyes burned with something more than that. A new tenderness that he allowed to be there because he gave himself permission to feel it.

He took the lead and led her the remainder of the way. Outside the cave’s entrance, he stripped down, unzipping his jacket, peeling off his t-shirt, and stepping out of his fatigues and boots.

He was the most marvelous creation that had ever been hewn from nature. He was still a man, but he looked every bit as untamed and wild as his wolf with his eyes glowing. They never left her face.

When she shimmied out of her clothes, peeling off her own jacket and the flowing dress, the leggings she’d worn underneath, and shivering in the stiff wind, he held out his hand and waited until she placed her palm in his and he led her inside. She had to crouch down, but Agnar basically had to fold himself in half.

She eased him down, her body humming with anticipation as he flattened out on the blanket for her. She took his hard, thick cock in her hand, stroking him from his head all the way to the base of his shaft. She’d taken him into her mouth countless times already, but there was something she hadn’t done.

She closed her mouth around his head, humming in appreciation as the salty musk of him coated her tongue. He grunted, fisting her hair.

“I thought I was finished with living,” he groaned huskily, his voice reverberating through the low cave. The heat coming off his body warmed her, and they were sheltered away from the wind. The blanket kept the snow and the cold and wet away from them. “Now here I am, joining a new pack, becoming something greater than myself.”

She let his cock pop out of her mouth, satisfied at the wet noise. She used her hand, smearing her saliva and his wetness down his shaft. She kissed her way down, from the tip all the way to his balls. She didn’t take them in her hand like he probably expected she would. Instead, she took his balls into her mouth.

He gave a startled growl, but didn’t move an inch. She kept working his cock with a tight fist, loving the way he got wetter with each pass.

“Fuck, Prairie Rose,” he grunted. “Fuck.”

She worked him for a long time, sucking and licking his balls, teasing him with kisses to his shaft before she replaced her lips with her hand again. She finally took him back into her mouth, trying to get him as near the back of her throat as he would go. He filled her mouth because he was massive, but she worked him, worked herself over him until her jaw ached. He half sat up and took her hair, working her face up and down his hard length.

She tried to breathe. Tried to swallow when he hit the back of her throat. She grasped his muscled thighs, digging her fingers in like she could hold on that way. It shouldn’t be possible that he was so powerful when he was the one on the ground, the one beneath her, but of course he was.

He stopped fucking her face a few minutes later. Stopped to let her catch her breath. She set the pace, a much slower, softer one where she used her tongue. She traced his shaft, all the veins and the silk skin over that hardness. She breathed the musk of him in, swallowed when she needed to. It was a vulnerable position to be in, but he allowed it.

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