Page 17 of The Alpha's Warlock
It wasn't that he was a werewolf, or an alpha, or even that he was my mate. No one had ever looked at me like that, with such piercing laser focus. Ian's eyes still had that unearthly glow, neon yellow shining through the ice-blue, and they never left mine. Every stroke hit me just right, pressing against my prostate and filling me so that I thought I might break apart from the strain. It was too much, I was going to fly into pieces...
“I can't touch you, you need to — come on, Nate, come on —” His voice was barely human, either, rough and guttural.
“Don't need to,” I whispered. I threw my head back and cried out to the rafters, and came all over us both.
Ian let out a sound halfway between a groan and a howl; it resonated in my chest and echoed off the ceiling. He stopped, shaking, his hips crammed against my ass, and his knot started to press inexorably against my insides. The pressure wrung another shock of orgasm out of me, and then another, and I collapsed in total sensory overload.
With another groan, Ian collapsed too, his sweaty chest crushing mine and his forehead on the pillow next to my cheek. His body was almost unbearably hot, and far too heavy. More or less the same drawbacks as wearing a bulletproof vest, but...basically the same pluses, too, because I'd never felt safer in my life.
I squeezed my eyes shut. I knew what came next. The bond hummed with satisfaction between us, like the living thing it almost was. Fully recharged, it wasn't fucking with my magic anymore, and I felt healthier and fitter than I had in days — maybe in a lot longer than that, if I was being honest. Ian had to be feeling it too.
So there wasn't really anything else to be done here. He'd hold uncomfortably still until the knot went down — and it was already a little smaller, so it wouldn't take too long — and then pull out and grumble himself off to the shower, or somewhere else I wasn't.
He pressed his mouth to my shoulder.
I froze. What the fuck. He did it again, brushing his lips over the soft curve between my neck and shoulder, nuzzling under my ear, and then kissing me again on the tip of my earlobe.
My heart had settled down a little from its frantic rhythm, but it picked right back up again. For a second, I started to panic. I didn't have the fucking manual for this. What did a guy do when his hostile asshole werewolf mate started to, like, be nice to him?Sweet, even?
All the guilt from before came rushing back; this wasn't Ian, this was the mate bond.
Maybe it was. And maybe I was going to hell for taking advantage of him to satisfy my need for a few minutes of feeling like a lovable human being instead of an outcast. Fuck it. I wrapped my arms around his back and turned my head a little, nuzzling him in turn, brushing my nose over his ear.
“Let's try and turn over,” Ian murmured, and kissed the side of my head again. “I'm too heavy for you. My claws are in, finally. I can hold you up.”
I nodded, and with some awkward maneuvering, made a lot less awkward by his crazy super-strength, we managed to shift onto our sides with my top leg wrapped over his hip.
Facing each other, with our heads on the same damn pillow. So maybe not less awkward after all. We gazed at each other, the air between us thick with...something. Not quite tension. Just...something that wasn't comfortable.
“Can you reach the blanket?” he asked after a minute. The words were small and intimate in that little space between our mouths.
“No. You're not cold, are you?” No way was he cold. He was never cold. And everywhere our skin touched, it was like cuddling with a furnace.
He looked away, not an easy thing to pull off when our eyes were three inches apart. “You'realways cold,” he mumbled. “Guess we don't need a blanket.” He pulled me in and tucked me against his chest, my face against his neck and his arms around me like steel bands.
“Hey, Ian?” My voice came out all muffled, since my face was smooshed into his skin. “Are you lulling me into a false sense of security so you can murder me later when I'm off guard?”
“I think maybe you're projecting.”
What the fuck? I started to shake, laughter catching me by surprise. “What are you, some kind of werewolf psychologist now? Did you buy a dictionary?”
If he hadn't been plastered all over me, his knot still stuck inside me, I might not have felt the faint tensing in his body. “Glad to see you're feeling better.”
“Oh come on,” I said. “What did you expect?”
There was a long, long silence. Finally, he said, sounding a little strained, “No big deal. I like you just as much as I did before too.”
I snuggled down a bit, getting my head at precisely the right angle against his shoulder, and closed my eyes. Maybe this time I felt like napping after sex after all. Ian and his weirdness wouldn't be so, well,weirdif I could sleep through it. “Glad we're on the same page.”
“Yeah,” Ian sighed, and then laughed a little. “Great.”
“Good.”
A pause. “Do you seriously always have to get the last word?”
“Shut up, Ian.”
“Make me.”
