Page 42 of Reaper's Pack

Mine—her mouth yielding to me, her body responding to me, her heart open to me.

My name on her lips would be my undoing.

I was so wrapped up in her that I barely noticed the slight shift in our positions—and suddenly I was rolling, my back colliding hard with the sand, the tide crawling up the beach within an inch of me. Hazel situated herself on top, her hands to my chest, riding me with her head thrown back and her full lips slightly parted. Backlit by lightning, glistening with rain, she was a vision.

Until she stopped. Until her hips stilled and her hands retreated, slithering down my body, and then up to cross over her chest. She nibbled her lower lip, brows crinkled, and shivered.

“Declan, I still think—”

“No, you still feel,” I growled, propping up on one elbow as my other hand went for her swanlike neck. I’d learned that word recently—swanlike. While Knox and Gunnar watched yet another awful reality program a few nights back, I had sat with a dictionary and a thesaurus, rooting out words that fit Hazel in my mind’s eye. Swanlike had been one of them. Divine another. Now, I needed additional words—for she was a wild thing, a goddess, and she deserved a whole book dedicated to her beauty.

I bucked up hard, driving into her, making every delectable bit wobble and bounce. Her hands snapped around my wrist in an attempt to loosen my hold on her, but I simply held tighter, anchoring myself along her throat as I pumped into her, relentless and hungry for her pleasure. Slowly, those grasping hands slid down my arm and found my chest again, then my thighs when she leaned back, rolling her hips to match my thrusts, both of us finding a familiar rhythm in the storm.

My free hand explored her, ripped her dress aside, revealed her to me as lightning struck and thunder clapped. It soon settled where we met, stroking her little button, swiping over it, circling around it, bearing down hard when she started to shake, my hips bucking harder, faster…

Until she lurched forward, stiff and shuddering for but a moment, her porcelain flesh aflame as she choked out my name. “Declan…”

Again and again and again. Her sex tightened around me, danced along my cock, and watching her come undone was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. The sight alone sent me sailing into the black. I thrust into her one last time and spilled myself inside her, a pleasure so sharp erupting through me that I felt it in my teeth. The world went completely dark for a moment, every cell in my body tensed and then not, a languid, lazy heat rolling out from my core.

When she pulled at my hand this time, it fell away from her throat. But rather than throwing it aside as I’d expected, Hazel pressed my hand to her heart, flat to her breastbone, where a ragged drumbeat stuttered beneath my palm. A weary smile crossed my lips, one that brightened to match hers. Even as the rain pelted our bodies, warmth swirling between us, I barely felt any of it; lovemaking had put us in a bubble, one I wasn’t looking forward to leaving.

But we would have to go sometime. Knox and Gunnar were waiting on us, trapped inside the ward, eager to learn about the outing—eager to pick and prod and find a way to use it to their advantage in the future. I closed my eyes and gulped down a few deep breaths, the thought of sharing any of this with them making my heart sink.

This shouldn’t be used against her.

Not only that, but during, I had thought of Hazel as mine—I had felt that possessive claim in my marrow. But she wasn’t mine. The whole pack desired her; we all felt it in the bond, no matter how the others denied it or acted out to mask their interest in her.

In that moment, as Hazel climbed off me and settled at my side, her head on my chest, she was mine.

But she wasn’t only mine.

And while that didn’t frighten me, not an inkling of jealousy in my heart, I feared that the others may not give in to fate as easily as I had. That they would fight it, drag their feet—and in the process, hurt her.

Lose her.

That was a thought for another time though, when my mind was more functional and less interested in the way her soft breasts pressed to my sides, over my scars, how her supple figure molded so perfectly to mine…

How anyone could think with a naked Hazel at their side was beyond me, so why bother trying?

When she glanced at me, her smile faltering, I sat up and pressed a lingering kiss to her forehead. Her worries seemed to wash away with the rain, and she nuzzled back into my chest with a sigh, an arm wrapped almost possessively around my scarred torso.

And there on the beach, basking in a moment that would eventually expire, we held each other as the lightning struck and the thunder cracked, as the storm moved inland and softened, as evening became night…

Two hearts, beating as one.

14

Hazel

Last night shouldn’t have happened.

I shouldered my scythe with a sigh, striding across the busiest intersection of downtown Lunadell along the celestial plane, walking through people and the odd leashed dog like a ghost. Try as I might, I hadn’t been able to stop my mind from drifting back to it—to the hammering rain, the booming thunder, Declan’s teeth down my neck, his tongue between my thighs, his hand in my hair. Every fleeting image, flashing through my mind’s eye like a flicker of lightning, set my body on fire at the memory alone. Seeing him this morning had been torture—seeing but not able to touch, forcing myself to be a proper reaper, a woman in control of the situation and not driven by lust.

But it wasn’t just lust, was it?

Emotion had played a part in last night. Even in life, I hadn’t been one to take a man to bed unless I truly felt something, and with Declan—with all of them, actually—I felt a little too much these days.

Still. Regardless of my body’s needs, my heart’s desires—it shouldn’t have happened.

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