Page 42 of Guarded By a Monster

“It’s true. They soothe you and make you happy. I welcome into my home anything that will make you feel…” Like it’s your home. Like it’s where you belong. Like it’s where you want to stay. With me. “Better,” I finished lamely.

It was true. I liked seeing her things here. I wanted her so deeply entrenched in my house, my life, my heart that she’d find it impossible to dig her way out. I wanted her to take ownership of all that I was.

I would never say it. I wanted her to choose me—not under pressure or because of anything I said—but because she wanted me.

“Thurl,” she whispered, “I want to bond with you.”

My immediate reaction was elation, followed by recoil. I shook my head even as my eyes blazed brighter. “It’s too soon.”

“Itissoon, you’re right.” She inhaled sharply. “But I spoke to Bacon. I read the binder. Everything says the fates don’t make mistakes.”

I started to argue but she cut me off.

“I want you to bite me. I feel it, too, you know.”

My mouth watered and I locked my muscles to keep from falling on her, tearing her clothes off and sinking my fangs into the soft flesh of her thigh. My voice was low and strained. “Are you sure?”

She met my eyes with her own and nodded. “Yes.”

“Thank fuck.”

twenty-seven

He was like ataut rope, pulled past its limits and snapped. My words released him from whatever cage he’d put himself in and Thurl scooped me off the floor. Pawssonova hissed at the rough treatment and launched from my lap with a disgruntled look.

I would have shrugged, but Thurl’s warm body trapped me. Before I could fully form a thought, I was on our bed—when had I started thinking of this bed as ours?—stripped of my pants and my monster’s hands wrapped around my thighs, spreading me wide with a delicious pinch of his claws.

His breath hitched as he hovered over my hips, his gaze flicking down my body with an intensity that made me squirm. My pulse quickened, a drumbeat echoing in my ears, and I could practically taste the heat rising from him. Each growl sent shivers cascading over my skin, igniting a fire deep within me.

"This is what you want?" His voice was gravelly and unsure, velvet against the tension in the room. The vulnerability that lay beneath his fierce strength mesmerized me. "Once we bond, there’s no backing out."

I held his gaze. I understood the implications. This meant forever. “I know,” I breathed back, my heart racing as I laid my hands on the sides of his face, my thumbs brushed over his cheekbones, his fur warm beneath my fingers. “I read the information in the binder. I understand, but more than that, I can feel it. It’s what I want, Thurl.”

His jaw clenched, and the friction of my fingers against him spun the response into a singular shared moment. A suspended breath caught between us. Then he leaned closer, pressing his nose between my legs, his deep inhale sending cool air over my heated flesh. It felt as if the world outside—and all the dangers that lurked within it—faded.

“If you’re sure,” he murmured, eyes like molten lava, burning with intensity.

I rolled my eyes. “Yes, I’m sure. Now bite me before I’m so frustrated I scream.”

He looked up at me and his eyes blazed. He was pure beast in that moment. There was nothing tamed about him, and I marveled at the power I held over him. This monster would—had—killed for me. I knew in that moment there was nothing he wouldn’t do to keep me safe.

His jaw dropped open, and I braced for the sharp sting of his teeth, but his tongue darted out and traced lazily up my inner thigh. He gave my other leg the same maddening treatment before finally swiping his tongue through the folds of my pussy.

I moaned in relief. Each flick of his wicked, forked tongue ignited my skin and sent shock waves deep into my core. A primal, desperate need that clawed for release.

Thurl growled against me. My head fell back, my hands fisted in the sheets at my sides, my thighs trembled as he licked and sucked at my clit. I forgot all about the impending bite, my thoughts centered on how he played my body like a Stradivarius.

“You are so beautiful.”

My knee jerk scoff stuck in my throat when he nibbled at my soft folds. The way he played my body made me almost believe.

With every curl of his forked tongue as it dipped inside, only to return to my clit like a long-lost friend, he coaxed me higher, closer to ecstasy. The world outside faded. My entire focus on the feel of Thurl’s tongue, his hot breath, the small sting of his claws where they held my thighs open.

My core fluttered, and my back bowed off the bed. I fell over the edge, swallowed by the most intense orgasm of my life. Sparks flared behind my closed eyelids as wave after wave of unimaginable pleasure flowed over and through me. It was so intense I thought I might die.

Happily, I might add.

I barely felt Thurl’s teeth sink into the crease of flesh at my upper thigh. His upper jaw piercing a line to my hipbone, his lower in the crease of my butt cheek.

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