Page 56 of The Alpha's Reclaimed Mate

“No, don’t,”I told him.“You have a duty to your pack and the subsidiary packs. Lucas, it’s good enough just knowing how you feel now.”

“The moment I first saw you those few months ago, I wanted to make you mine.”

The intensity of his words made my heart hammer, my chest tightening like all of a sudden, and my blood was too hot. His candidness made my brain short-circuit. Lucas didn’t even wait for me to fumble through a response. When he stopped walking, his body immediately underwent the change, buckling, and bending, and losing all his fur until it began to take its human shape. I had to stop gawking so I could follow suit, knowing that he was transforming for a reason.

As soon as he stood on two feet, Lucas clutched my arms, waiting for me to finish shifting too. I panted, fighting back the pain of my freshly opened wounds to stare up at him.

“You have to know how serious I am about you,” said Lucas. In human form, all his emotions manifested more clearly than ever before. His eyebrows pinched together, his dark eyes transfixed on mine. His firm lips pursed into a deliberate line. Lucas pulled me closer until I felt the heat glowing off his body, his hands sliding down my arms, touching my bare hips. We were both naked after the transformation, and while I wanted to feel shy and shield myself from his eyes, he made me feel so safe that instead, I hungered for contact. He took one of my hands and brought it to his chest, satiating that desire.

“How does it feel?” he asked, his voice barely above a whisper, achieving such softness that I melted inside.

It was hard to keep my breathing steady. “It’s nice, Lucas.”

“Do you like it? Do you want it?”

“I...” I would be stupid to say no. The only reason I hesitated was that ever-present fear of rejection, but he knew that existed in me.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” said Lucas. “I never ever want to hurt you. I want to give you everything, Aria. I promise. Whatever conflicts we have, we can talk them out. I’ll listen to you. I’ll compromise. I’ll try my hardest to understand you, and I hope you’ll do the same. Please trust me enough to tell me how you feel.”

He pulled me close enough that our bodies were pressed together. My chest against his, the skin of my stomach lost in the forest of hair on his abdomen. His groin tickled my thigh and scattered my thoughts. “I want this, Lucas,” I managed to say. “Whatever you want to give me, I want it.”

Lucas smiled. “I want to give you all of me.” His hands wandered up my spine, his chin tilting to plant a kiss on my cheek. But where I expected him to pull away, instead, he kept kissing along my jaw, then down my neck, eliciting a tingle everywhere his lips touched. He clutched me tightly against himself and breathed in with drunken reverie. “Let me claim you.”

The satisfaction of his touch was so addicting I would let him do anything he wanted. “Okay, Lucas.”

His breath caught in his throat. Lucas crouched, picking me up under my butt and lifting me in his arms. The sudden rise made me laugh, or maybe it was the series of kisses he gave my neck, gradually lowering us both down to the grass until I was reclined on my back and he had wedged himself between my legs. Lucas smothered me in affection, pinning me between his arms and chest and the ground. I wanted to be nowhere else but there with him. Feeling his stomach as he breathed between kisses, running my fingers through his hair, growing hot and excited at the hardness nuzzling between my thighs. It was scary, too; I’d never been intimate with someone, but Lucas made it feel so natural that I didn’t want it to stop. I didn’t have to tell him to go slow or be gentle. He already knew. “Is this okay?” he’d ask often, “Does it feel good? Am I touching you right?”

Even the clumsiest of touches felt like bliss to me. The moment he pushed inside me and our bodies aligned as one, I was lost in the sensation, to him. Nothing else mattered except for the pleasure and happiness that Lucas and I brought to one another.

I wanted our first time to last forever, but my body could only take so much. We were left sweating and clinging to one another, bathing in the afterglow of our union, savoring each other’s smells and touches. His fingertips trailed through my hair while I watched his muscles flex. “I never knew it would feel like that,” I told him.

“It only feels that good for true soulmates,” he murmured.

“Really?”

Lucas snickered. “I don’t know. You tell me.”

Laughter came easily now. Maybe he was right. We seemed to complete each other as physically as we have emotionally.

My eyelids hung heavy, but I didn’t want to sleep. We were exposed out in the middle of the forest. Even with Lucas’ powerful arms wrapped around me, I knew that falling asleep here would endanger us both, so finally, we both picked ourselves up and returned to our wolf forms.“We can rest when we reach Hale Stone,”said Lucas.

Fatigue fought me the entire way. I wracked my brain, trying to stay awake, revisiting the torrent of questions Lucas had woken in me.“Did you ever have a fated mate?”

Only after I asked it did I realize it might be a sensitive subject for him, but Lucas simply smiled at me, unfazed.“I did.”

Who was she? Was she still around? Was it one of our packmates? The questions only intensified.“Why didn’t you pick her?”

“I would have, but...”Lucas sighed.“You know, it’s been a long time since I’ve talked about this.”

“Oh. I’m sorry. We don’t have to.”

“No,”Lucas shook his head.“You should know. She died when we were young. It was only a couple of weeks that we knew we were fated mates, and then she was attacked by a bear. She was too young to defend herself, too far away from the pack to be saved. I felt it... every moment of her death. It scared me. I didn’t know if I would ever be able to connect with someone again.”

Listening to his story, my heart ached with sympathy for him.“Oh, Lucas. I’m sorry.”

“It’s alright. I guess that’s why I felt so strongly for you so quickly. I didn’t realize how lonely I was, and then you turned up, and you made me realize how badly I wanted that connection.”Lucas pressed closer to me, kissing my cheek.“I have that connection now. The mate bond... I can feel it.”

My heart pounded.“You can feel a mate bond? A real one?”

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