16 Reckless

Carrie Mature

I was tired of fighting the pull towards my mate and my reason for doing it looked—and felt—more and more ridiculous.

His hands were on my hips, but they swept down lower to cup my ass through my jeans and I moaned against him. His fingers trailed lower and brushed between my legs lightly to teased me more. I ran my hands under his shirt and felt the ridges of his muscles under my fingertips.

He released my mouth and breathed into my ear. “I want to mark you,” he whispered huskily.

It was so soon, but I did not care. So much of our time had already been wasted, and if he really was invested enough to want to mark me, what reason did I have to disagree? “Do it.”

His mouth kissed his way down my neck, and his canines extended and bit down into my flesh. The pain was irrelevant, because at the same time came a flood of connection I had been missing, not only since being expelled from Greenwoods, but for my entire life. It was like the pack bond, except a million times more potent and directed towards only one person.

My wolf pushed me towards his neck, and my teeth came down and sank into his flesh. I ignored the taste of blood, and then when I released him he caught my lips with his again.

“Bedroom?” he asked through our newly established link, without breaking the contact of our mouths.

“Down the hall on the left.”

He swept me up into his arms and I was somehow lying on my bed within seconds. His hands roamed under my shirt and found my breasts, and then pushed my bra down and cupped them. His mouth followed his hands and I whimpered as his mouth captured each in turn.

“This is in the way,” he complained, pushing at my bra. I cooperated while he pulled it off along with my shirt, before stripping me down to nothing. I felt rather exposed since he was still fully clothed, and I impatiently pulled at his shirt.

“Soon.”

He paused at my breasts again, before his fingers made their way down to where I was craving him most. His first touch nearly made me come apart, and with only a few swift strokes I really did. He sunk his finger into me and played with me more, and I reached for the button on his fly to try to hurry him along. I didn’t want to wait any longer.

He grinned, stood, stripped off his clothing as quickly as he had mine and returned, lining up his hardness against me. I whimpered as he entered me, aggravatingly slowly, inch by inch until he was filling me entirely. He held still for an achingly long moment, and then he began to move with deliberate strokes.

“More,” I demanded, and he flashed a grin that shot straight to where we were connected.

His thrusts became harder, and I breathed his name as I came apart again, before he followed a moment later. I wrapped my legs around him as he shuddered his own release in a way that made my feminine side purr.

Part of his weight was still pressing down on me, but it felt good to have him there, still inside me, especially when he looked down at me with such obvious satisfaction and kissed me again, slowly. My wolf trilled in the back of my mind, absolutely ecstatic that she had gotten her way, even as he slipped out again.

I was as ecstatic as her, but then a tiny bit of doubt began to creep into the corner of my mind and nag me. He wouldn’t leave me now, would he? He marked me, but...

“What’s wrong?” he asked, adjusting more of his weight onto his forearms and looking down at me.

“I...” What could I say?

“Why are you feeling unsure about this? If anyone should be, it’s me, since you tried to reject me a minute ago.”

“It was longer than that.”

He just grinned at me as he propped himself up higher. “Oh? Tell me more about how long it was.”

I just laughed at his joke. I knew next to nothing about my mate, but I was pretty certain he was not insecure about his physical form in any way. He clearly had no need to be. But maybe my attempted rejection had hurt him... “I didn’t really want to reject you.”

“Good, because it’s too late now. I hope you don’t regret this.”

I was in no position to regret anything while I could still feel his warm weight bearing down on me. He was hot in more ways than one, and I was already ready for round two. “No. Do you?”

He chuckled. “I was finally inside my mate’s beautiful body, what’s there to regret?”

My cheeks flamed a bit at his words.

He paused. “If I regret anything, it’s what I said when I found you. I was caught off guard, I’d given up, but I shouldn’t have said that. It didn’t come out right, and it started everything off wrong.”

I smiled at him. “Well, then, I guess I’m also sorry for messing up your place.”

“I’m just glad it was intentional.”

“Nice home you have there. Be a shame if something were to happen to it...”

“Ouch, are you using blackmail against me, Carrie?”

“More like extortion?”

“You can extort me anytime, baby. But, I guess we should move before I fall asleep on top of you. You don’t like being trapped, right?”

“Well, this way doesn’t sound as bad as being confined in that trailer was.”

“Are you still upset about that?” he asked, as he rolled off to my side, but then pulled me along with him.

“No,” I said. My desire to punish him and make his life difficult had fled the more I had missed him. All that was left was a drive to please him now, and it was probably half my wolf’s feelings, but I didn’t care.

“Can I really take you home with me? Or better yet, to drop off your work notice and then take you home?”

I smiled at his impatience. “I work tomorrow, maybe I’ll do it then.”

“Well, I guess I can wait for that. But I’m going to send a wolf with you, okay? He’ll just check everything out and stay close.”

Through our new bond I could feel how desperately he wanted to keep me safe, so I nodded. “Okay.”

I traced my finger along the pattern on his arm. I met his eyes. “Does this have a meaning?”

“Wish I had a great story to tell you, but when I was about eighteen my friends were going to get done by some witches, and I just thought it would be cool.”

I smiled at the idea of him at that age, although through the bond flowed something deeply sad. A million questions spun through my mind, and I sensed that he could feel them, because he said, “We’ll learn everything about each other, but first I want to properly introduce you to the pack.”

“Alright. I can go anytime.”

“We should grab whatever you’ll need for tonight, or a few nights, or...?”

“I’ll stay with you. If that’s what you want.” It felt like I was jumping off a cliff, or something equally reckless. Maybe I was, but could I trust him? The tenderness of my neck begged me to. He wouldn’t have marked me, let me mark him, if he didn’t plan to stay with me, right? This was not the same as Asshole Dane stringing me along for years.

I would have to tell him about that, but the idea of admitting my previous decisions to him turned my stomach to lead.

“Of course I do. If I could skip back a couple of weeks I would. I’m serious. I never meant it. But every time I tried to talk to you about it, we’d end up fighting.”

I glanced at him. “It isn’t all your fault,” I assured him. Asshole Dane had taken a good chunk out of my confidence before Jason had ever met me, and I’d been hostile to protect myself. I pushed aside the memory, but then the worry about what Jason would think about that whole mess in my old pack nagged me harder.

I chewed my lip and tried not to think about how Jason would react about my sordid past if—when—he found out about it. I dressed and threw a few things into a bag.