Page 84 of Lunar's Ruined Alpha

His hands are sure and strong as he lifts me into his arms, carrying me a few feet into the trees until we’re cloaked in dappled shade and pine-scented silence. I try to squeak out a protest, but he grumbles in my ear that he’s perfectly stable enough to haul me around. I bury my face against his neck, breathing in his rain-dampened earth and mountain breeze scent.

He lays me down gently on the mossy forest floor, and I shiver beneath him. Not from cold, but from memory. From how familiar this feels, and from how it all began, right here in the wild one fire-lit night ten years ago.

The forest around us is a cathedral of spring: wild, alive, and sacred.

Twilight has settled in, casting dusky shadows through the canopy of pine boughs and maple leaves. Fireflies float lazily through shafts of bluish evening light like embers set adrift, and the air is rich with the scent of blossoming bluebells, damp soil, and something rich and warmer. Him.

“We don’t have to rush,” he murmurs, his voice low and thick. “We can take our time.”

“No rush,” I breathe softly, pulling him in close and pressing my hand to his chest. His heart beats steadily beneath my palm, and I feel the way it jumps when I lean in and kiss the corner of his mouth. “It’s just the two of us.”

His hands are at my waist before I finish speaking, and the look in his eyes is like gravity. It pulls me in, anchoring me to him in a permanent sort of way.

Rowan doesn’t rush to kiss me. Instead, he just stares at me for a while, like he’s savoring the moment, or like he's trying to memorize every part of me all over again.

Then comes the brush of his thumbs at my hips. The flush rising in my cheeks. The way my breath hitches just from his gaze alone.

When his mouth finds mine again, the kiss is unhurried and deep, the kind of kiss that undoes me piece by piece. He takes his time, tongue tracing the seam of my lips, coaxing me open. I melt into him with a sigh, fingers tangling in his hair as he deepens the kiss further. His hands slide up my sides, under my shirt, over bare skin, thumbs circling just beneath my ribs. I arch into him instinctively, and he groans softly at the contact.

“You always do this to me,” he whispers, lips grazing my jaw, my throat, my collarbone. “You make me feel like I’m losing my mind.”

I laugh breathlessly. “Good.”

He growls softly at that and shifts so that he’s settled between my spread thighs. Petals scatter around us in the breeze, catching in my hair, and fireflies drift above us like stars that came down to witness this exact moment. His weight settles over me, warm and solid and so beautifully familiar it aches.

He kisses his way down my body like he’s tracing a map. Neck, collarbone, the curve of my breast. My shirt is peeled away slowly, lovingly, and is soon followed by the swift tug of my leggings down my thighs until the night air kisses my bare skin. I shiver, but not from the chill.

Rowan’s mouth finds every place that makes me tremble. His hands know me well, and yet there’s reverence in every touch like he’s discovering me for the first time all over again. He kisses the inside of my wrist, then my hipbone, then lower, until I’m arching off the ground, gasping his name like a prayer I forgot I knew how to say.

He doesn’t rush. He worships, stroking me with his tongue as if he’s been starving for me. When I cry out his name, it only urges himon, and he holds on to my trembling legs until my eyes are pricking with tears from how overwhelming the climax is.

By the time he comes back up to kiss me again, I’m shaking with insatiable need. I reach for him, tugging at his shirt, his belt. I want to feel all of him, now.

When our bodies finally align, skin to skin, chest to chest, his breath stutters against my lips.

“You feel like home, Alina,” he says, voice raw. “You are my home.”

“And you are mine.”

I wrap my arms around him and pull him closer. He slides into me with a slow, deep stroke that leaves us both gasping.

It’s not frantic. It’s not about urgency. It’s about devotion and rediscovery.

We move together in a rhythm that feels like something powerfully ancient, like something we’ve always known deep down in our bones. Every thrust is deep, slow, and aching with emotion. He brushes his fingers through my hair, strokes my cheek, kisses me between every whispered word. I feel more tears pricking at the corners of my eyes. It’s not from sadness, though, but from the overwhelming tenderness of it all. Rowan holds me like he never wants to let go again.

Another release builds gradually, pulled from me by his touch, his voice, and his love. When it finally crashes over me, it’s a quiet and shuddering thing, like a wave breaking against the shore in the dark. I have to bite into his shoulder to choke back the loud whimper that rips out of me, but he merely laughs. Then, with a muttered curse, Rowan follows me over the edge with a groan of my name, forehead pressed to mine like he’s anchoring himself to the world via my body.

We lie tangled together afterward, chests rising and falling in sync, bluebells crushed beneath us and fireflies swirling above like a slow, silent blessing.

He kisses my temple. “Promise me we’ll never be apart again.”

I close my eyes, my body still humming with heat of the blissful moment.

“Never,” I whisper.

As we lay together, panting for breath in the hush of the trees, I can feel it all.

The bond. The future. The love. It's ours now.

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