Page 128 of With Fangs and Claws (The Wolf Queen 1)

Chapter 51

I couldn’t allow him to push me down on the bed, something inside me bucking at the idea of it, so when he flopped down beside me, he rolled us over, grabbing my wrists and then holding them stretched out above my head.

“Gael…” I growled.

“You told me to give you everything I have. That means putting your hands up on the bedhead and letting me worship you.”

I was ready to snap back, to shout my defiance, but his words disarmed me more effectively than a hand around the throat would have.

“Worship?”

“I’ve laid beside you sleepless too many times, love, not to have thought very long and very hard about what I’d do if I got you into bed,” he said, tracing a line down the centre of my body with his fingertip. “You’re either going to let me do what I dreamed of, or you’re not. We’ll stop if things get too much but—”

“No stopping,” I said, and somehow I knew that was true.

“Don’t say that.” His voice was more wolf than man now, rough and coarse and, as if to make that clear, he licked at his fangs. “I’m holding him back by a string as it is.”

“No stopping,” I reiterated, then reached up and grabbed the wooden slats in Weyland’s bedhead. I lifted one leg and trailed it up his until he arched into me, pressing his hardness right where I was the softest.

He shook his head then, as if trying to brush off a haze, but it wouldn’t stop, not for either of us, I realised. Whatever we were to each other, all of it was coming to a head tonight. He reared up then, a splendid figure of masculine power, his knees either side of my thighs, making clear just how much he wanted me.

“Part of me can’t believe I’m here,” he said then, his eyes seeming to eat every inch of me up. “I’m sure someone’s going to storm through the door and whisk you away, like almost every other good thing in my life.”

He reached down then, following the line of my arm with the backs of his fingers until he got to my face, and a thumb brushed across my cheekbone.

“The other part is convinced that all the shit that happened before was the price I needed to pay for being here with you, and, if it is, Darcy, I’d pay it over and over. I hated it when I realised we’d found our mate, and now I couldn’t be bloody happier, for the exact same reason. I love you, lass, with every unworthy fibre of my being.” I growled at that, and he smiled. “I’m yours. I’ll always be yours. And now, I’m going to make you mine.”

His hand slipped down to collar my neck, something I only just barely tolerated, until his thumb pressed lightly against the small hollow at the base of my throat, fitting there like it was made to. Then he leaned down, down until his mouth hovered just over mine and he could feel the way my pulse jumped in response.

“I’ll always love you, Darcy. From now until the end of time.”

I couldn’t respond because it was then his mouth crashed down on mine, parting my lips, thrusting his tongue to get to the core of me. I gripped that bedhead tight, trying to keep up. But then his kisses slowed, becoming long, stinging things. The kisses of a wolf. Our blood seeped from several tiny little nip sites, colouring our kisses and that’s when my back locked into a tight arch. I was already full of whatever the goddess had injected into me, but Gael’s blood? It burned inside me, turned my body to fire, and he burned with me. He kissed his way down to my jaw, my head jerking sideways, giving him access to the sensitive skin of my neck and he chuckled as a result.

“You’ll let me bite you here,” he said before sucking my skin into his mouth so I could feel the sharp points of his fangs. “You’ll let me mark you once I’m seated so deep inside you that you won’t be able to work out where I end and you begin.”

“You too,” I replied in a breathy little moan. His lips were wending their way lower.

“You want to mark me?” He pulled away then, breaking the narcotic spell of his caresses for a moment, but when I stared up at him, I realised I’d never seen him look so happy. Gael was like a long-neglected lantern, left to moulder, but all of a sudden someone had decided to light him up. And the cracks that were there? They just let the light through, bright enough to dazzle me. “If you do that, then you’ll never see the end of me. I’ll be yours, Darcy, just like you’ll be mine.”

I opened my mouth slightly, so he could see the flash of my canines, fangs that ached to do exactly as he said.

“You already are,” I replied, feeling a certainty the like I’d never felt before. “I can feel that now.”

“Gods help me if this is just moon madness,” he growled before throwing himself back down upon me. He covered his body with mine and I relished the heavy press of it, because it was him. It was Gael and that’s when I broke the rules, loosening my hold on the bedhead, and wrapped my arms around him.

When I held him, I felt filled with something I’d never experienced before. Nordred was a friend, a kind of father figure, but who else did I have that I could hold like this? Someone I could clasp to my body in an eminently selfish way, run my fingers along the bulky muscles of his shoulders, then down the flat span of his back, and work to undo those warrior braids, until his hair felt soft against my face.

Who else could recast my body in a completely different light? He traced the entirety of me from head to toe. Fingers followed the slope of my breast so slowly I began to pant in anticipation, the fire inside us burning brighter the closer he got to the aching tip. He teased me, just touching the nipple with the pad of his finger. A slow smile formed as I let out a little groan of frustration, only for him to pluck much more firmly, which resulted in groans of a whole other kind. I bucked underneath him at such a simple caress, which emboldened him to keep going with his hand on one breast, and capture my other nipple with his mouth on the other. Then I felt like I was being strung out between two points, the sensations rolling over me, making me shift, writhe, clench, and need something more, a sentiment I finally ground out.

“Oh, you’ll get more…” he answered, pulling away to place kisses all the way down my stomach until he reached what was unknown territory for me. “Weyland said you gained some experience in the way you can please a man with your mouth?”

“Gods, do you lot talk about everything?” I huffed.

“Think of it more as consulting with each other on how to best please you,” he said between kisses placed on my insanely sensitive inner thigh. I felt hotter, slicker, more swollen, as a result and I didn’t totally understand why. “I want to be the one to show you how a man can do that for a woman.” A kiss landed perilously close to the crease where my thigh met my pelvis. “I want to taste you, Darcy.”

“Taste…?”

His hands moved and suddenly I felt split open, cool air playing over the place between my legs. Something pulsed deep inside me at the feel of that.

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