Page 62 of Taken By the Alpha Priest

“Don’t tease,” she rasps. “Or I’ll bite you again.”

Her tongue finds her mark and I hiss out a breath at the mingled pain and pleasure, thrusting my hips up against her. My knot is already swelling in response to my mate’s closeness, my wolf begging to fuck her hard and fast, to lock her in against me until she’s been bred.

“So now that I’ve bit you, can I tell you what to do?” she asks.

“I don’t think it works that way.”

“Doesn’t seem fair,” she says.

“It isn’t.” I take her face in my hands and kiss one cheek, then the other. “But there are other perks.”

“Like…?”

“You can always sense where I am,” I tell her. “And little snapshots of how I’m feeling. What I want…”

“I think I can tell exactly what you want,” she says, grinding her hips against my groin. “So why don’t you do it? Knot me, I mean?”

“Like I said, it might hurt.”

She gives me a wicked smile. “My mama always taught me to be a suck-it-up kind of girl.”

I thread my fingers in her hair and tilt her head back, looking her in the eye. “Tilda…stop.”

She stills, her lips parted, waiting for the command of her alpha.

Her lips press into a tight line, frustration flickering in her eyes. “I swear I’d be fine,” she mutters, but her voice softens as she glances away, her gaze settling on the lamp glowing on my bedside table.

I sit up on my elbows, releasing her hair to brush my thumb gently over her cheekbone. The movement draws her eyes back to mine, and I catch the flicker of uncertainty there. “What’s on your mind?” I ask softly.

She hesitates, her throat working as if she’s trying to find the right words. Finally, she exhales and meets my gaze. “Do you think…do you think there would be a place here for both of us? Enid and me?”

I let the question settle between us for a moment, my heart tightening at the vulnerability in her voice. “We don’t turn away those in need,” I tell her, my tone firm. “We never have. And if she would be safer here than in Homestead, you’re both welcome to join our pack.”

She bites her lip, the faintest glimmer of hope breaking through her doubt. “But she’s not lycan.”

“She doesn’t have to be,” I say. “She could live in the city, or here with us. Either way, we’ll figure it out. Because if I’m being honest with myself…” I pause, letting the weight of the moment settle. “And with you, of course…I’m not going to break my vows for a one-night stand.”

That earns a dry snort from Tilda, her lips twitching in the ghost of a smile. “Are we like, wolf married or something now?”

“Would that be all that bad?”

She gapes at me. “I’ve known you for all of what—two weeks…?”

“And I knew from the first time I saw you that you were my mate,” I tell her. “There’s something more between us than instinct, Tilda. Can’t you feel it?”

She leans down to stare into my eyes, her breath puffing against my neck. “Kiss me again and let’s find out.”

* * *

The night wears on,and I can’t keep my hands off her.

For hours, we fuck and fuck—never knotting, just breathing, gasping, moaning, coming. I don’t know how I went this long without her, Tilda’s touch essential. Our scents collide and mingle in the cloying air of the den, touch to touch, breath to breath. I catch only a few hours of sleep, rousing when the party moves from out on the lawn to the common room, hearing the sound of music until the early hours of the morning.

We don’t stop making love. I don’t think we can. Now that I’ve broken the vows I kept for over twenty years, I’m starving for her. And it isn’t just my celibacy that has my desire so heightened…it’s the chemistry of my lycan blood resonating with whatever it is that draws me to her, that tells me we were destined to be.

It isn’t until the alarm on my old clock chimes that I remember there’s another world outside. It’s the first day of the waxing moon, counting down until the moon is full…until I’ll finally indulge in my rut. I hold Tilda between my chest and the wall, and press a kiss to her forehead as she stirs, her brow furrowing.

“I should go and talk to the others,” I tell her. “At least try to explain…”

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