Page 110 of The Wolf and the Chimera
For a moment, all I could do was bask in the words, but the next breath, my lips were on his. He met my fervor with matching passion. As our hands roamed, and our tongues tangled, my hunger for him became a living beast.
In the hushed light of our room, the world was a blur of ragged breaths and exploratory touches and slick skin against mine. My clothes were tossed, and Ryder’s towel was abandoned, and everything in me burned for him.
I wanted him in a way I had never let myself want anything. I wanted each strong plane of his body and every shuddering breath. I wanted to memorize every place hetouched with such love and lust and need. I wanted him so close, we became one, and I wanted to be marked by him in a permanent, insurmountable, life-altering way.
I’m yours, and you’re mine, and I love you.
As Ryder led me on a chase toward that edge of oblivion, the words were my chant and prayer and call.
“I love you too,” he whispered in between kisses. His lips and tongue explored every dip and hollow of my body. “Good gods, Ellie, I love you.”
When his teeth bit into the spot where my neck met my shoulder, I barely registered the pain through the ecstasy singing in every nerve-ending of my body.
Mine, mine, mine…
When he licked and kissed the spot, and my power knitted my flesh back together, my chimera writhed under my skin, eager to return the favor and claim him as surely as he had claimed me.
The door flew open, and my world careened to a halt.
As he crouched in front of me, Ryder’s power flooded the room, and a deadly growl tore from his throat.
“Before you kill me for interrupting,” Kieran rasped, “the Handmaidens are here.”
The words took a moment to break through the haze of bliss and need. When they finally landed, icy fear filled my veins.
The High Witch’s cronies had infiltrated Circe’s realm.
They had come for me.
Chapter Thirty-One
Ryder
Kill, kill, kill…
The wolf’s words filled my once supple and sighing mate with fear. Too lost in her taste and scent and touch, I hadn’t registered what he had said. I didn’t care.
He would die soon.
He had died the moment he interrupted the sanctitude of our claiming—the moment he’d caught a whiff of my mate’s exquisite, lust-flooded scent, still hanging in the air amid the bitter tang of her fear.
He scared her, and now he’s going to die.
I squeezed my mate’s knee as a wordless promise to her that once this mongrel was gone, she would have nothing to fear, and she could sink her lovely teeth into my flesh. She could bind me to her as I had bound her to me.
Shifting midair into my wolf form, I lunged off the bed. The wolf cursed but remained frozen in place by my dominance. I landed in front of him and bared my teeth. His fear mingled with my mate’s, and I luxuriated his terror.
There would be no mercy for him.
“Ryder!” my mate trilled. “Ryder,stop!”
I paused. Her command chafed me—did she want this other wolf?
As I studied his round, green eyes, a sensation offamiliarity drifted through the feral haze of my anger.
Had I seen him before?
Was he here to challenge me?
