Page 69 of Through Battle and Blades (The Wolf Queen 2)

“Be gentle, brother—” Weyland started to warn but I held up a hand.

“No,” I said, shaking my head, “don’t. Give me your need, Gael.” He let out a low growl at that. “Give me all that you’ve kept pushed down. Give me you, my mate.”

“You’ll regret that,” he snarled as he shoved me back down onto the bed, his body finding its place between my legs, his mouth on mine. “Can’t be gentle. Can’t be sweet.”

“Who said I wanted sweet?” I asked with an impudent grin and that was all it took.

He reared up, more beast than man, though no fur pricked his skin. My legs were rearranged more to his liking, locked around his waist as his hand went to his cock. I gasped as I felt the first push of it, knowing just how that blunt intrusion would feel, even as my flesh felt too tender for such a thing.

“Love the feel of you on my cock,” Gael growled. “Love how fucking slick you get. Love the way it feels when I sink down inside you.” My back arched as he began to do just that, my hands grabbing handfuls of the bed coverings. “But mostly it’s just you.”He drew back then, like an archer pulls back a string and he paused for just a second, staring down at me. “I need to feel you, all of you,” he insisted and while I didn’t understand the words, the sentiment rang true.

“Then take me, my mate.”

Breath stuttered in my chest as he drove himself deep, pulling back only to slam deeper. This wasn’t the careful lover of the night of our claiming, this was the wolf. His hands slammed down beside my head, his hips snapping as he pulled back only to give me more, until, finally, my legs locked tight around him, holding him where he was.

I stared into my Gael’s eyes, catching every tiny response up to the moment his knot was pushed in. It seemed to take an aeon and a split second, my body forced to stretch, stretch around the bulbous protrusion, until I was sure I couldn’t stretch anymore. I let out a little whimper of fear, but he shook his head, that terrible expression softening.

“You’re made to take me, lass,” Gael told me in a gentle tone. “Out of all the women in the world, there’s only you for me. Take me, love. Take your mate. Take all of me!”

His bark forced my body to obey, the terrible pressure exploding into something else entirely as his knot finally wedged in.

“Gods above and below…” Gael muttered a short prayer, his back arching as his eyes closed. “I’ve never… The feel…”

“Beyond anything I’ve ever experienced,” Weyland said, his grin still situated, but all the cocky charm gone from his voice. “I swear I saw the whole pantheon of the bloody gods when it happened.”

“Darcy?”

There was a moment of self-doubt, of concern, on Gael’s face when he came back to himself, but I just smiled, slow and lazy-like. I felt… radiant. I stretched underneath him, testing our link and finding we were locked tight, with little movement possible. But with some experimentation, my hips rocked forward, then back again, great all-encompassing blooms of pleasure flowering.

“Gael…” I loved the sound of his name on my tongue. There was this breathtaking selfish sense of possessiveness that rose in response, because he was mine. “Gael, I…”

“I know.” I stopped moving for a second, my eyes going wide as he gazed down at me, a small smile forming. “I know and I’ll always know. You’re in my heart, Darcy. You are my heart.”

He grabbed my hand and placed it against his chest, forcing me to hang on right as his hips began to shift. That swollen knot rubbed, rubbed, rubbed against a place inside me that wouldn’t be denied, the pleasure building and building. But it grew far beyond my expectations, becoming this massive cloud and we hovered within it. We moved just to spur it on, just to fill him, me, us with it, our capacity for pleasure unending. But at some point, it became a much harder, more desperate thing, his hunger and mine growing, our lips curling back from our fangs.

“You’re going to come for me, lass,” he told me. “I can feel it. You’re tightening around me, strangling my knot. You’ll squeeze everything I’ve got out of me, take everything I’ve got to give. Oh fuck!”

That harsh expletive cut through the night air like a blade, as bliss tore through us, my whole body tensing as the sensation rose, rose and then everything came crashing down.

I flung myself at Gael, the tiniest of gaps no longer permissible. I clung to his strong shoulders, wrapped my arms around his neck as I blindly sought the mating mark I’d left, then sank my teeth down.

I am the sea… I thought distantly, as I was tossed around in waves of pleasure. The two of us pulsed together, him into me, me around him, until finally the tide quietened.

We collapsed down onto the bed, each locked around the other, my head finding Gael’s chest, his body instinctively curling around mine. I felt sheltered, treasured, held close and… loved. That all too seductive haze of emotion that kept swelling long after the pleasure stopped, it clouded my mind, making me smile and then crane my neck to look up at Gael.

“I love you,” I said, smiling wider as I said the words. “I love you, Gael.”

I’m not sure what I expected in response, but it wasn’t his eyes going wide, a terribly serious expression forming on his face. He studied me so intently, a thin thread of fear started to pierce the warm fuzzy sweetness. I shifted then, feeling like I’d overstepped or blurted something out at the wrong time but his arms locked around me tight.

“Truly?” Just one word uttered with a deadly intensity. “Truly, Darcy?”

I’d been flogged by own father more times than I could remember. I’d faced down an army of rabid wolf warriors. Yet somehow this was so much harder. I had to relax the tense muscles in my neck, allowing myself the barest of nods.

“Truly, Darcy?” he asked again, his voice a ragged mess, his eyes burning blue, then bluer, right before they went hazy.

“Truly, Gael,” I croaked out.

At that I was wrapped around with iron bands, held pressed so hard to his body that I could barely take a breath. But those that I could, I took them of him, his scent flooding my nose.

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