Page 43 of The Alpha's Warlock
It was filthy and wet and better than I could have imagined. No one had done this for me. Not one of my lovers had wanted to kiss me like this, love me like this, light up every one of my nerves like firecrackers with his mouth. Ian was insatiable, eating me out like he couldn’t get enough, and if he didn’t stop soon, I was going to come untouched.
He didn’t stop. Instead, he slipped a finger inside me, found the perfect spot, and pressed, licking all the way around my rim at the same time — and I exploded, every one of my vertebrae sparking like fire along a lit fuse, come striping my chest and pooling on my stomach, my whole body curling in like an overstrained bowstring.
I slumped back on the bed, all my limbs gone loose. I blinked up at the ceiling. There were still spiderwebs up there. They floated in the draft the way I was floating, aimless, drifting on the currents. Everything spun around me — like being drunk, only I knew the hangover would be just as good as the buzz.
Ian’s finger was still in me, gently stroking in and out. It was almost too much. I shivered and sighed out a laugh, overstimulated in body and mind. The bond sang between us, a smug little golden thread of mutual satisfaction.
Well. Not fully mutual, though I could tell Ian had enjoyed himself too. His need pulsed through it, hungry and predatory in a way that almost made my cock harden again.
He pressed a line of kisses to my inner thigh, and I gave another shiver and grabbed a handful of his hair to keep him in check. “Give me a second, Ian. Oh, my fucking gods.”
Ian pushed himself up on his hands to loom over me. He didn’t seem quite as smug as the bond did, but that was probably only because he was hiding it better. Not that I could blame him. My mental list of things that were better than other things had just been permanently reshuffled. His cock was still hard and flushed, with a gleam of moisture at the tip. It looked delicious.
“I really do need to go and deal with Matt and the pack council,” he said in that gravelly, fuck-me-now timbre that made me want to roll over and beg. “If I didn’t, I’d stay here and knot you all day.”
And there was a thought. It didn’t have to be just a thought, either…we could do that, once this crisis was over. We could do that every day, or at least every night, once Ian’s duties were done and he came home to me, studying magical texts in a nest of pillows on the couch, a cup of coffee at my elbow…
Sadness hit me, an automatic response to thoughts like that, which would’ve been nothing but a pipe dream before.
But now they could be real. And that was almost more terrifying than the prospect of a life of loneliness.
I could have that.
Which meant I could fuck it up.
“Hey,” Ian interrupted me, reaching up to stroke the side of my face. With the hand that hadn’t been in me, thankfully. Werewolves’ senses of hygiene could be really hit or miss. “Hey, don’t look like that. No knotting, okay? Not if you don’t want it. Nothing you don’t want.” His voice had gone up half an octave, and the lines around his mouth were making an appearance. “Never anything you don’t —”
Fuck hygiene, anyway. I tugged him down into a long, affectionate, reassuring kiss, keeping him there until the tension flowed out of the bunched shoulders under my hands.
I broke the kiss and whispered, “How about I blow you, and then we both go deal with Matt and the pack council?”
He shuddered. “I’m already late.” Ah, the weak protest of a man who wanted to be convinced. I could work with that.
“Then it doesn’t matter if you’re a little later, right?”
“You’re a menace.” He kissed me again. “Only if you want to.”
Oh, I wanted to, and I showed him how much for the not-very-many minutes it took to have him coming hard down my throat, moaning my name as he did. It was my turn to be smug, and I flopped down on his chest with a distinctly self-satisfied smirk. The taste of him lingered on my lips.
Ian wrapped his arms around me and held me there, seeming to forget he’d been in a hurry five minutes before.
We lay in near-silence for a few minutes. The ancient refrigerator groaned a little, some birds cheeped and rustled under the eaves, and the floorboards settled and creaked. It was peaceful, even if every sound made me want to do an Internet search for a handyman, or possibly a demolition contractor.
But I could also practically hear the gears grinding in Ian’s head. Stupid he was not, but he also wasn’t the sort of guy to gracefully, easily find his way to a solution. Despite his complaining the night before, ripping off body parts was really more his comfort zone.
“What is it?” I mumbled into his chest. Gods, I loved his chest. It had the perfect amount of hair, and the perfect amount of muscle without being all bulgy and weird, and it was warmer than a pillow. “You’re thinking really loud.”
Ian tensed. “You can’t actually hear me through the mate bond, right?”
I rolled my eyes. “Yes, of course. That’s why I’m asking you. Jesus, Ian.”
“Okay, I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I’m actually glad you’re being sarcastic again,” he said after a pause.
I turned my head and propped my chin on his chest, ignoring him when he winced and squirmed a little. Yes, I had a pointy chin. No, I did not care.
“I was trying to be nice.”
“Bullshit. You’re not even nice when you want something.” He frowned. “You’re even less nice when you want something. You should probably work on that. Not everyone lo— not everyone’s going to humor you the way I do.”
