Page 88 of Love Bites Hard

Real.

My chest rose and fell quickly. “Are you mine, too?” I asked him, and his lips stretched in a slow, sexy smile.

“Entirely, baby.”

He lifted my hips higher, and thrust into me.

We moved together as he fucked me, slow, smooth, and deep.

His knot swelled inside me as we lost control together, locking us in that process of need and pleasure until we were both so drained that all we could do was collapse on the mattress.

Porter rolled me on top of him, his cock still buried inside me as his knot softened, but neither of us was in a hurry to end the connection.

“You are the best thing that’s ever happened to me, Izzy,” he murmured into my ear, as we caught our breath together.

My eyes widened, my heart still pounding hard from the intensity of our releases.

What was I supposed to say to that?

To him?

After we’d wrestled for power so much, after he’d controlled me, after I basically tortured him with our sex war…

What the hell was the right response?

“You don’t need to feel the same way, and you don’t need to answer.” He kissed the top of my head in a way that made my heart basically burn. “But you deserve to know that you’re the reason I’m not hiding in the forest anymore. You saved my life when you agreed to mate with me. So thank you.”

“I did it for me,” I said. “Don’t thank me for that.”

“You didn’t leave.”

“You wouldn’t have let me go.”

“I assigned you a guard who couldn’t have stopped you from running away if you tried. I wouldn’t have declared war on Hale if you’d hidden with him after you left me. You could’ve gotten away at any time—you just chose not to.”

“It wouldn’t have done any good. You would’ve come after me.”

“I would’ve. But you didn’twantme to let you go.”

The words hit me, hard.

He was right.

I didn’t want him to let me go. I never had.

What that said about me, I didn’t really want to know.

“What does that mean for us?” I asked him, my heart still beating hard.

“The same thing it’s always meant. We’re mates. For better or worse.” He pulled me against his chest a little tighter.

“I don’t know how to be anyone’s mate, Porter. My parents were…” I let out a harsh breath. “They weren’t good people. They weren’t nice. Not to me. Not to each other.”

“You know how to be a good sister. I’ve seen how you are with them. It’s not much different to be a good mate—you just add in a little bit of sex.”

A choked laugh escaped me. “A little bit?”

“A lot. A lot of sex.”

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