Page 62 of Captive Mate
“Like this?” Matthew slid two fingers inside me, making me bite my lip and squirm.
“What do you think?”
“I meant on your back like this.” We’d been experimenting with positions, but mostly I’d either ridden him or he’d fucked me from behind, spooned together on our sides. He never complained — just the opposite — but I knew there was a large part of him (a very large part) that wanted to hold me down and pound me into next week.
I shoved anything other than this moment out of my head. Matthew loved me. I was starting to believe it, even. And there was a part of me (a tight, well-slicked, very eager part) that wanted that too.
“Yeah,” I breathed. “Like this.”
He twisted his fingers and made us both moan, and then fumbled around for the lube and slicked up his cock.
When he sank into me, his whole body pressing me down, I’d never been less afraid in my life. I held myself open, threw my head back, and let him have his way with me. Matthew looped one arm under my waist and lifted me up, holding us both off the bed with the other arm braced in a display of alpha strength that should’ve — who gave a fuck what itshould’vedone to me, it made me stare up at him, eyes wide, and come in convulsions that wracked my whole body and made me clench around him hard enough to draw out a groan.
Matthew’s knot swelled inside me, pushing the limits of my body’s capacity, and he collapsed on me, his arm still under my waist and cradling me close. He buried his face in my neck and mouthed at the sensitive skin there. I felt the careful, restrained scrape of his teeth.
“Not tonight?” I whispered.
“Whenever you want,” he said, pressing soft kisses to my throat. “If you ever do. I love you.”
I opened my mouth, but the words got stuck somewhere between my lungs and my lips. I’d never said that to anyone. I wasterrifiedof saying it, even though I knew logically it wouldn’t change anything — not when it was an increasingly louder refrain in my mind, repeating endlessly whenever Matthew smiled at me, or took my hand and kissed it, or looked at me like I was the sunrise and the sunset all in one.
So I went the Han Solo route. “I know,” I said.
Matthew vibrated against me — with laughter, I realized. “Good enough for me, sweetheart.” And he kissed my shoulder and put his head down with a contented sigh.
I wrapped my arms around his back and stroked him. It was good enough for me, too.
Epilogue
I Know
Two months later
The lights of Lancaster were fading in my rearview mirror, and I pressed down on the gas until the pedal hit the floor. Ian’s car surged, growling like an alpha, eating up the miles between me and the Armitage territory.
No, between me andhome. I’d been gone for a whole week, even though it was only supposed to be three days. A fledgling pack with only six members was getting established right over the Oregon border, and they’d called Matthew and formally requested the services of his pack shaman for their wards and a few charms to repel a particularly aggressive little band of gnomes who lived nearby. They were tired of having all their cutlery stolen in the middle of the night.
I’d accepted the job, because even though they were only starting out they had cash money, something our pack always needed. I’d kissed Matthew goodbye — and then he’d kissedmegoodbye at much greater length, bending me backwards over Ian’s car with a hand fisted in my hair — and I’d headed out, breathless and with my cock straining the front of my jeans, but secretly a little glad to get a few days to myself.
Pack life was a bit much, it turned out. I wasn’t complaining, but…yeah, I needed a few days of relative solitude.
And driving Ian’s million-horsepower monster of a car was a perk I couldn’t turn down. I was the only person he let drive it. The first time I’d seen it I’d practically started drooling and made a few comparisons to Matthew’s Prius that Matthew didn’t appreciate at all. Ian said I deserved it, since I was the only person he knew who drove faster than he did.
Nate just shuddered, rolled his eyes, and went to get a cup of coffee.
Whatever. NatelikedMatthew’s Prius. His opinion wasn’t worth shit.
It was barely getting dark when I roared and rumbled my way down the access road, finally pulling the car carefully into the garage. As the engine quieted, there was nothing but the chirping of early-summer insects and the pinging of cooling metal.
I got out into the humid evening. Matthew wasn’t waiting for me.
I frowned, and that last little bit of worry that I couldn’t persuade away started gnawing at me again. What if a week had been too long, and he’d decided to cut his losses?
That way lay madness, so I grabbed my bag and went inside. A couple of adolescent werewolves looked up from their video games long enough to nod at me, and I nodded back before I headed up the stairs.
There were new scuffs and scratches on the walls, the paint peeled away in a couple of places as if it had been scraped off. Odd, although how this house hadn’t simply given up and fallen down was beyond me.
I turned the corner. Our bedroom door was open, and I could hear Matthew and Ian’s voices. “…dry enough,” Ian was saying dismissively. “It’ll harden completely by tomorrow. But you can use it now.”
