Page 13 of By the Blood Moon

Mine. He’s mine.

Jaime’s emotions must have shown on his face, or maybe Finn sensed them through their bond, that warm tether connecting their souls, because as he approached, Finn stood taller. His shoulders squared, and he settled into his full height and breadth.

Finn did not make himself smaller before Jaime, and Jaime did not hide how fiercely proud he was of that.

Reaching him, Jaime placed a kiss in the center of his chest. “All clear?”

Finn ran a shaky hand up Jaime’s arm. “All clear. Are you ready?”

After they’d returned home, Finn had left for a quick patrol run while Jaime went inside to remove the plug and quickly rinse off. He’d stuffedseveralpackets of lube into the waistband of his pants, before he met Finn outside.

Jaime pressed his smile into Finn’s skin, already needing to be closer. “Ready.”

Finn blew out a heavy breath and rumbled, “Your colors?”

Jaime shifted from foot to foot. “Green, which I am right now, because I know you will ask. Yellow is for pause, and red means stop.”

Finn nodded, his voice shaky and low, the way he sounded when he was holding his wolf back. “Right. Ok.” He pressed a flashlight into Jaime’s hand—one of Finn’s requirements, so he wouldn’t run face-first into a tree.

Jaime gripped the torch, a reminder that even though Finn was a predator, he was playing this game with someone who put his safety before everything else. Glassy-eyed, he tipped his head back and caught Finn’s gaze. “I trust you, Finn. And I trust your wolf. With my deepest, most vulnerable desires. With my safety. With my heart—it’s all yours. You won’t hurt me. And your wolf won’t either. You are mine, and I am yours.”

Finn let out a soft whine, grasping Jaime by the hips and pressing their foreheads together. “I love you, more than anything.”

Jaime hummed. “I know,” he said, and pressed his mouth to Finn’s, opening immediately when he demanded entrance with his tongue and teeth.

Finn yanked himself away too soon, breathing heavily. His voice was raw, and his eyes gleamed in the way they did when he was more wolf than man. Thickly, he said, “Good. Remember that, because I’m going to fuck you into the ground right where I catch you.”

Jaime sucked in a breath, suddenly lightheaded from all the blood rushing to his cock. Finn prowled around him, circling, his gait smooth and lupine, and Jaime felt like a rabbit—frozen, staring into the maw of the big bad wolf. Finn pressed his chest into Jaime’s and grabbed him by the hips, spinning him around to face the trees.

Leaning down, he whispered, “Now… run.”

Finn snapped his teeth in the air by Jaime’s ear and he jolted, the urge to flee competing with the desire to lay down and present his ass for fucking right there in the grass.

The urge to run won, for now, and he tore into the trees, high on a mix of adrenaline and lust so overwhelming he didn’t know where one ended and the other began. The combination of them coursing through his veins was deeply primal, and he felt all of his worries and anxieties slipping away, sinking into the same soft feeling that overcame him when Finn gave him a command.

This was what Jaime needed. This was easy. All he knew was that Finn was chasing him, and he had to run, so that he could be caught.

Only by his mate.

Jaime kept to the trail that Finn had made in the forest surrounding their home, his frequent patrols wearing a path in the ground and creating a tunnel through the tangled brambles and snapping limbs with his claws and bulk.

Still, the red cloak billowing behind him caught on stray twigs and tiny stones sticking up out of the earth, and it ripped and tore as he ran. Jaime couldn’t hear Finn—he hadn’t even heard him follow into the trees when he first started running—but he could sense him.

Whether through the mating bond, or some long-buried instinct that was awakened by this game of theirs, he wasn’t sure, but heknewwhen Finn was right behind him. Jaime sensed when to dart around a tree just in time or dash ahead, feeling the ghost of Finn’s outstretched hand as he gasped at the near catch, the snapping of Finn’s canines propelling him forward.

Somehow, Jaime could feel Finn watching. Prowling. Stalking him through the woods, keeping just out of sight so that every time he turned his head, he saw only dark treesilluminated by the orange moon and the chaotic beam of his flashlight.

Of course Finn could have caught him at any time, but he let Jaime run—growled and nipped at his heels to egg him along. The knowledge that this could all come to an end with one swipe of Finn’s arm pinning him to a tree made Jaime’s cock swell, and his adrenaline surged again. He sank even further into that easy headspace, letting his instincts guide him as he dashed down the path away from the big, bad wolf.

Out of breath and sweaty despite the chill in the air, Jaime threw himself behind a tree, pressing his back up against the trunk while he tried to catch his breath and gather his wits.

I’m going to need to do more cardio if we make this a regular thing.

Jaime huffed a quiet laugh, and pressed down on his hard cock in an attempt to calm his arousal, unmistakable in the skin-tight pants he still wore.

Snap.

Jaime whipped his head toward the noise, sounding like a twig or pinecone breaking underfoot off to his left. Holding his breath, he strained to see any hint of movement in the dark, but the flashlight only reached five or six feet in front of him, at most. He quietly let out the breath he’d been holding, but he was still panting, and his next inhale was loud in the muffled quiet of the forest.

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