Page 46 of The Wolf's Bullied Pregnant Mate
“Let me keep you safe,” I told her, lowering my voice. Her eyelashes fluttered at the soft but commanding tone I used.
“No,” she whispered, but it sounded more like a whimper. “No, you can standwith mewhile I keep myself safe.”
But there was something there, keeping me in her circle. Keeping me magnetized to her.
“I need to do this, Zephyr. I need the space to do it.”
“I can’t,” I told her desperately. “You can’t ask me to leave you.”
My thumbs rubbed circles into her hipbones, and she swayed with the motion, her head tipping back. I took the chance to press my lips to her throat, gentle with her there when I had been rough other times.
I kissed her softly, touching a line right down her neck. She let out another whimper even as her hands pressed to my chest. But I just wanted my mouth on her. I needed that contact, that chance to worship her not only with my hands that had once brought pain to her but with my mouth, too.
I wanted to show her that my tongue wasn’t only capable of forming words that hurt. But they could murmur admiration and praise and tell her every word that would have her melting.
I sucked a soft patch of skin between my lips, my teeth catching it hard enough to make her gasp. Between us, her hips tried to grind down against my leg, but I stopped her. That wasn’t what this part was about.
I kissed over her neck and collarbones, mapping across her shoulders but never venturing further. Her hair spilled into my palm, and I knew that even if we were trapped down there for another ten years, this was how I wanted to spend every second.
With Adalyn in my arms.
“I need to… I need to do this,” she whispered.
I growled as she pulled away, trying to keep her flush against me, trying to keep what wasmine. That possessiveness reared its head, even if I didn’t know where it came from.
“Please let me do this,” she murmured. “I need you to wait outside the barrier.”
Her eyes mine, adding to her pleas. In the end, I nodded and released her hips.
She walked back to the circle she had been in, incanted a few words, and that shimmering barrier went back up, blocking me out. My eyes tracked her. I watched every movement she made as I paced around the room. I needed to be close to her.
As her chorus of cleansing and apologies rose into the cavern, I watched her. I noticed how the muscles on her back moved with how she beseeched her bloodline for forgiveness.
Forgiveness forme.
She had betrayed her kin to keep us safe.
My desire for her only grew.
I paced and paced. I didn’t know how long I did that, but I had received plenty of patience training in the military but this was nothing like that. Watching her so close yet so far out of reach drove me insane.
And all the time, I couldn’t help but question:why?
I didn’t dare let myself think of my own bloodline, the Brents, who had come to Azure Cove years ago with his witch mate, starting their united bloodline, witch and wolf coming together to reckon against the demons.
I couldn’t let myself think of that word:mate.
I knew it had happened for a shifter outside of another shifter before, hence my ancestor, but…
I gazed at Adalyn. I had hated her. I had…
Brought up short, I tried to recall when I had thought ofhating heras being in the past and not something I still felt. Clenching my fists, I paced again. The urge to be near her rang through me.
Go to her, go to her. My blood pounded, my heart racing, as I fought my instincts to simply pounce on her. Especially when so much skin was on show, and her legs were tucked together as she did what she needed to do. She looked breakable, and Iwantedto break her simply because I knew her looks defied her. With no makeup on, her hair was soft and free, and she had no dark clothing or angry curl to her lips. Adalyn was far softer.
I craved that softness yielding beneath my hands.
The fact that I couldn’t have her beneath me, writhing, only drove me more insane.
