Page 14 of The Alpha's Arranged Mate

She was just about to curl her hand around his cock and undo him completely when, seeming to sense her plan, he slid a palm right up the inside of her thigh and halted just short of the aching heat of her sex. She arched her back with a moan she couldn’t stifle, everything forgotten but the promise of the fingertips that were stroking and teasing the sensitive skin at the crease of her thigh… she rocked her hips up against him, her arousal so intense she was half convinced she’d climax the moment he touched her. If he ever touched her, that was. If his plan wasn’t, as it seemed to be, to tease her until she lost her mind completely—

“Reeve,” she ground out. Her own voice was almost unrecognizable in her ears—throaty and hoarse, shaking with need. Reeve kissed her, soft and lingering, and she could picture the wicked smirk on his face from the way his lips curved against hers. “Reeve!”

He made a soft, inquisitive sound against her lips even as his fingertips continued to dance and tease, so agonizingly close to where she wanted them that she felt her hands clench into fists against his back. She bucked her hips up against him, to no avail—he had her at a disadvantage, pinned beneath him as she was. Furious, aching, she writhed beneath him for a few deeply frustrating moments, not sure whether she was more aroused or aggravated by the soft, sexy laugh her helpless thrashing drew out of him. Her sense of helplessness grew, and somehow with it, her arousal. She knew when she was beaten.

“Please,” she breathed against his ear. It hardly felt like a surrender, not when it drew that kind of sound from him—a choked off moan, a shiver that ran right through his body, a quick jerk of his hips against hers. And then his fingers were finally, blessedly where she’d wanted them, caressing the slick heat of her, parting her folds to explore the depths of her body. She arched her back, muffling a guttural sound of absolute delight against his shoulder, then opening her mouth to bite him for good measure, grinning at the groan it drew from him. She was dimly aware that his other hand was somewhere else, tugging the boxer shorts down, but she couldn’t spare any more thought for that, not when he was drawing such unbelievable pleasure from her body. But it wasn’t enough. Even as he drove his fingers into the depths of her, her body tightened demandingly around them, she knew she wanted more. And when she breathed that request into his ear, she felt his whole body shudder with barely-contained lust.

Suddenly, his hand was gone. But she had no time to complain about its absence, not when she could feel him drawing her thighs gently apart, taking just a moment to tease at the swollen bud of her clitoris with his fingertip. His lips were on her throat, but that sensation wasn’t enough to distract her from the feeling of the tip of his cock bumping against her sex, sliding through the slick trail of her arousal before easing its achingly slow way inside of her. This was what her body had been aching for, she realized in the grips of a rush of arousal that threatened to knock her out completely. This was why she’d felt so frustrated, so out of sorts, so uneasy in his presence… it was because some part of her was fighting against how badly she wanted this, wanted him, wanted … Lyrie groaned as he slowed and stopped, the sizable length of his manhood throbbing inside her. Why was he hesitating? Couldn’t he feel how perfect they were for each other? She rocked her hips impatiently, and the shock of pleasure that ran through her must have been echoed in Reeve, because the moan he stifled against her throat sounded more like a wolf than a human.

That was all the encouragement he needed. He drove himself into her again and again with long, powerful strokes that made her whole body shake and her eyes roll back in her head. Every part of her body was working to meet those furious strokes, the muscles of her midsection coiling as she rocked her hips up to ensure he slid as deeply and powerfully into her as possible each time. Her peak couldn’t be far away, she knew that, ached for it like she’d never ached for anything before… but at the same time, some perverse part of her worked to hold it off, just for a little longer. A little more of this… a little more of Reeve’s body pounding into hers, the muscles of his back beneath her grasping hands, the rasp of his hot breath against her throat….

She didn’t even notice that the chair beneath them was protesting until the final squeal of overstressed joints and the crunch of splintering wood accompanied one particularly frantic thrust of Reeve’s hips. There was a dull thud as the chair collapsed beneath them, but Reeve’s breathing had been ragged and desperate for some time and Lyrie knew that she wasn’t going ot be able to hold off her climax for much longer—and as though the impact of the collapsing chair had been enough to tip the balance, Lyrie’s scream of surprise quickly turned into a scream of ecstasy as she felt the first waves of her climax crashing over her. Reeve wasn’t far behind her—he’d thrown one arm out when the chair gave way to catch some of their weight, but the other arm had wrapped tightly around her and was now holding onto her for dear life as his thrusts grew jagged and wild with the force of his orgasm. She couldn’t see, couldn’t hear, couldn’t think—the utter oblivion of her orgasm took her whole mind with it.

And when she finally came back to her senses, breathing as hard as if she’d just run a marathon, she was lying on the deck in a heap of splintered wood, her limbs hopelessly entangled with the one man she absolutely should not have slept with. But somehow, as her eyes slid shut, she couldn’t for the life of her remember why.

Chapter 9 - Reeve

When had they gotten back to his room? Reeve blinked blearily at his familiar ceiling in the soft pink light of dawn, drifting right on the edge of going back to sleep. He had a faint memory of the two of them stumbling sleepily down the hallways together, giggling as though they were drunk, splinters of the broken deck chair still sticking to their sweat-damp skin. They had both been wrapped in towels and not much else—he remembered tossing the towels aside once they’d reached his room before diving beneath the covers. At some point, they’d exhausted themselves enough to drift off to sleep—and the last thought he could remember entertaining was that he hoped the morning would never come.

Well, here it was. Ready or not.

The steady rise and fall of Lyrie’s chest told him that she was still fast asleep, but he knew that wouldn’t be for long, not with dawn creeping over the horizon. He took the opportunity to steal a peek at her face, craning his neck a little awkwardly to do so—she’d fallen asleep with her face pillowed on his chest, and while he didn’t usually sleep on his back, he’d have felt like the world’s greatest monster for disturbing her. Her dark red hair had come loose from its restraints at some point during their lovemaking and it spilled across his chest, still carrying the shape of the braids it had dried in. Her face was soft and serene, her full lips slightly parted. With those fierce silver eyes of hers closed in sleep, she looked a lot more vulnerable than he’d ever seen her, and he felt a strange warmth in his chest at the implicit trust she was showing in him by sleeping on his chest. He’d never felt that kind of protective instinct before. He’d been in his fair share of fights through the years, and was no stranger to fighting for his own life… but somehow, even those memories paled in comparison to the very thought of anyone trying to hurt Lyrie right now. He’d tear them limb from limb without a second thought.

As if disturbed by the ferocity of these thoughts—or maybe by his own sense of shock and unease about the strength of these new feelings—Lyrie stirred in her sleep, a familiar crease appearing between her eyes as she roused herself. Reeve let his eyes slide shut quickly, pausing momentarily to chasten himself for his cowardice. Lyrie was very still for a long moment… and then he felt the drowsy warmth of her face against his chest lift and disappear. The air that rushed in to fill the space where she’d been was cold, and he felt strangely bereft as he heard her easing back the blankets to sit up.

He cleared his throat and shifted, hoping he was performing a believable impression of someone who’d just woken up. When he opened his eyes, she was looking right at him, that calm, grave mask she wore back in place. Reeve felt a flicker of unease, deep in his gut. That didn’t seem like a good sign. What could he say? How did you break a silence like this? For all the one-night stands he’d woken up from over the years, he’d never faced a situation anything like this one. Lyrie didn’t seem to have any ideas, either—that, or she was waiting for him to speak first.

Well, two could play at the game. Suddenly annoyed with how uncomfortable he felt, Reeve rolled over and grabbed the phone at his bedside, calling for breakfast to be served in his private dining room in a voice that felt as rough and raspy as though he’d been sleeping for days, not just a few hours. When he set it down, he could feel Lyrie’s eyes roaming across his bare chest. He remembered the hungry, possessive way she’d looked at him last night, the way her voice had sounded in his ear when she’d begged him to take her—and with a shock, he realized his body was responding to the memory. Clearing his throat and hoping like hell she hadn’t noticed, he got quickly out of bed and dressed himself.

“Are you hungry?” he asked her finally, turning back to where she was still sitting like a sentry in his bed with the blankets around her waist. Her upper body, however, was uncovered, her breasts bare in the soft light of dawn, and Reeve fought the sudden urge to throw himself back into bed with her. What was wrong with him? They’d spent all night devouring each other—his appetite should have been well and truly sated by now. He distracted himself by rummaging through his drawers to find her something to wear, settling for one of his T-shirts and a pair of tracksuit pants.

She looked oddly small once she’d pulled the shirt over her head and slid her long, fine legs into the tracksuit pants—but when she rose to her feet to follow him to breakfast, he saw that strong, electrical presence of hers reassert itself. How many people had seen behind that powerful front she put up, he wondered? How many people had she allowed herself to be that vulnerable in front of? He just hoped, as they settled in at his dining table, that she didn’t regret it.

Because as complicated as it might make things, Reeve knew in his heart that he could never regret such an utterly wonderful night.

Reeve poured them both coffee, then sat back to sip his, feeling a little strange not to have his phone in his hand. He usually spent breakfast going over the news and skim-reading the dozens of emails that would have made it to his phone overnight—but right now, he couldn’t bring himself to think about anything other than the woman who was making her slow and thoughtful way through a chocolate croissant on the other side of the breakfast table. Despite the growing worry that the fallout of what had happened between them was going to be absolutely disastrous, he couldn’t help but smile a little at the sight of her. Then her silver eyes flashed at him.

“What?”

“Nothing,” he said quickly, scolding himself as he forced the expression from his face. “Just—not used to seeing you in white.”

She looked down at the T-shirt she was wearing, narrowing her eyes a little. “Impractical color,” she said after a long pause. “Far too hard to keep clean.”

“Shame. It suits you.” Her silver eyes narrowed a little, and he took a deep breath. “We should talk about what happened, don’t you think?”

Lyrie nodded, her expression somehow even more impassive than it had been. “What happened. Yes.”

“I mean—the fact that we slept together.”

“Several times,” she said calmly, and Reeve almost choked on his coffee. “It’s a little problematic.”

Understatement of the century, he thought faintly, dabbing at his mouth with a napkin to hide his discomfiture. “A little, yes,” he agreed, feeling a bizarre urge to laugh. Was she messing with him, or was this really how this conversation was going to go? Like they were discussing a minor accident on one of the work sites, or a minor HR issue.

“The dissolution of the Rite depends on the union having gone unconsummated,” Lyrie was saying, now nibbling meditatively on her second croissant. “We have now—technically speaking at least—consummated the union.”

He nodded, feeling thoroughly out of his depth. “Technically speaking?”

A long pause. Lyrie’s mask didn’t shift one bit, and he wondered—not for the first time—exactly how much effort she was putting into that seemingly effortless poise with which she carried herself. “It was one night,” she said, her voice just a shade softer than it had been. “It needn’t happen again. And if it doesn’t… well then, who’s to say it took place at all?”

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