Page 133 of Cruel Games

“By yourself?”

She nodded, blushing. “How else was I supposed to get us to safety?”

I crawled back into the bed, realizing with sudden clarity that I was not wearing a single stitch of clothes.

And I was very, very hard.

An image of my hand around her throat as I promised her I’d never let her go flashed behind my eyelids, and if it were possible to be any more stiff from the waist down, I was managing it quite nicely. Hell, I could probably beat someone to death with my dick, with as hard as it was inthat moment.

“That’s—”

She yawned and snuggled closer to me, reaching behind her as her head and shoulders popped out from under the blanket. A single piece of wrinkled paper sat in her hand, and with a wave of panic and horror, I realized she’d found the fucking poem I wrote for her when I was half-mad with sleep deprivation and desperation.

“Devotion,” she said simply, shooting me a wink as she tugged the paper just out of reach when I made to take it from her. “Is nothing more than the purest form of love. When one is incapable of the latter, the former becomes the default.”

Lines from my poem.“You read it.”

“Of course I did.” She cocked a brow at me curiously, and I groaned. “Aw, what’s wrong, Coyote? It’s good.”

“Good for a mute, or good for a child?”

“Good enough to make me spend the last twenty hours at your side because I wanted to be the first thing you saw when you woke up.”

I reared back, shocked beyond words as she snaked her arms around my neck, dragging her lips across my chin as she nibbled her way to my ear. I groaned, and she rewarded me by shifting to sit atop me, her core suddenly right against my cock.

Seemed like I wasn’t theonlynaked one here.

“Where are your clothes?” I gasped, hands on her hips, ready to lift her and save us both some embarrassment. “Where are mine?”

“I took a bath and washed away the streets. And you looked like you could use one, too, so I stripped you and washed you down by hand.” Her little shrug was endearing, creating a dimple in her shoulder that I wanted to stick my tongue in. “That a problem?”

“You—I?—”

How the fuck was I going to tell her I was a virgin?

It was embarrassing enough that I’d never had a womanbefore, in all the years of my life. But to tell the only woman I could ever see as my life partner?—

“You looked at me like you might eat me in the woods,” she said breathlessly, dragging herself along my length, letting me feel her dampness as her soft folds parted around my shaft when she tilted her hips. “Are you still interested in having me for a meal?”

“I . . . did not go to this kind of finishing school,” I said quietly, hating my inexperience. “The onlymatingI’ve ever witnessed was between two wolves.”

There. It was out there. If she decided she wanted to end it here, I couldn’t blame her. She deserved to know the truth?—

She rocked her hips again, moaning as her head fell forward and her hair shielded her face from view. “We all start somewhere,” she panted, dragging her folds over my length again, eagerness in her movement, breathing labored. “Who says you can’t teach an old dog new tricks?”

“You deserve someone who knows?—”

“If I wanted a whore, I’d call for Dingo,” she snapped, her teeth nipping at the lobe of my ear as she leaned over me. “What I want is the man who reads and recites poetry to practice words he never tells me. I want the man who’s part beast still. The man who chased me and pinned me down in the forest, promising he’d never let me go.” Her nails dug into my shoulders, raked down the front of my torso as I bucked beneath her and she arched her back, leaning away from me again as her hair parted to reveal her breasts.

I reached out and cupped one in my hand, testing its weight as my thumb dragged over the sensitive nub in the center. She made such pretty, appreciative sounds in my ear as I touched her, explored her body, that I couldn’t help but keep going, eager to learn everything she was willing to teach me with her body.

“Fuck, Coyote, I?—”

I covered her mouth with my hand, forcing her to meet my burning gaze. “No words. Only sounds.”

She tugged my hand down to free her lips, a smile forming on them. “Can I say one thing?”

“What one thing?”

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