Page 9 of Owning His Mate

I can’t resist lowering my head into the crook between her neck and shoulder. Her sweet smell fills my nose, a heady mix that makes me want to sink my teeth in.

I don’t want to rush anything, so I settle for running the tip of my nose along the column of her throat. Her body is wound tight, her shoulders pulled up to her ears as she freezes like a doe caught in headlights.

“What are you doing?” She pants the words, arching her back and letting out a needy-sounding moan.

She isn’t immune to my touch, and that gives me hope.

My wolf reacts instantly, howling and pawing at the ground.

Ours.

Our mate.

She is ours to protect, to comfort, toown.

“I’m tasting what’s mine,” I tell her as I flatten my tongue against her fluttering pulse. She tries to melt into the fence, clinging to it as if it can save her even as her hips rise to meet mine.

I know she can feel my heat and my hardness as I press into her core. I can’t resist licking every inch of her throat.

“I don’t want you to taste me.” The protest falls flat when she lets out a high-pitched moan.

Fuck.Yes.

I ignore her, my hand cupping her between her legs, rubbing her hard enough to drag another sound from her. She’s wet. I can smell her arousal, and it is divine. I want to taste it on my tongue. I want to own every inch of her body?—

An invisible force unexpectedly shoves me hard, and I go back on a foot.

Magic.

I can smell it now, the air filled with the acerbic scent of it. She used her power on me, and from the look on her face, she’s not a little bit sorry about it.

Hands held up in a defensive stance, she moves around me, putting my spine to the fence and the open compound behindhers. It won’t make any difference, but if it gives her a sense of control, I’ll allow it.

“Are you crazy?” she snaps. “You can’t just go around touching people like that!”

“You’re not people. You’re my?—”

I smell the magic as she draws upon it. “If you finish that sentence, I’ll blast you into the next century, buddy.”

None of this makes sense. Mates are supposed to be inexplicably drawn to each other, but she looks like she wants to strangle me. “Are all females this frustrating, or just you?” I demand, irritation making my words sharp.

Her eyes narrow, her mouth becoming an angry line slashed across her face. “If I’m that annoying, then you won’t have an issue leaving me alone, will you?”

“You know it doesn’t work that way. We’re bonded.”

“Yeah, well, we don’t have to be.”

I grind my teeth, my patience close to snapping. “Then we both fade away, probably die too.”

The way her expression falls tells me she didn’t consider anything beyond getting away from me.

Her eyes squeeze shut as she wraps her arms around her waist. Littering her pale skin are dark purple bruises, and the moment I see them, my rage erupts like an inferno.

I grab her wrist, dragging her to me as I twist it to get a better look. Fury is sloshing in my belly, a liquid hot rage threatening to explode.

“Who did this to you?” I grind each word through gritted teeth.

Alarm ripples over her face as she tries, and fails, to pull her arm away. “No one. Let go of me!”

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