Page 35

35

LANDON

T he blood moon cast crimson streaks through the tent’s seams as Sonya stood inside, her ice-blue eyes glinting like fractured glass.

Landon’s bare chest gleamed with sweat from the day’s drills, his auburn hair tousled from fingers raking through it.

She paused, jaw tight, fingers twisting the silver pendant at her throat—a pack heirloom, a shackle.

“Still think we’re fools for doing this?” His voice rasped, raw from shouting orders earlier.

She snorted, kneeling beside him on the wool blanket.

“You’re the one who is leading. I’m just here to enjoy the view.” Her knuckles brushed the scar slashing his collarbone.

He caught her wrist, thumb skating over her pulse.

“Your ‘view’s’ about to get obstructed.”

Her laugh dissolved when he tugged her into his lap, her knees bracketing his hips.

The friction of denim against his thighs made him aware of how clothed she was in comparison to him.

He leaned in, his breath hot on his ear.

“You’re still overdressed, rebel.”

His hands found the hem of her fitted black tank, calluses snagging fabric as he peeled it up.

Moonlight spilled over her toned stomach, the dip of her navel, the swell of breasts encased in a sports bra.

“Christ, Sonya. You’re…”

“A tactical distraction?” She arched into his palms as he palmed her, thumbs circling nipples already pebbled.

“A damn masterpiece.”

Her teeth grazed his neck, blunt and possessive.

“Then worship better.”

He obeyed, mouth searing a path down her sternum.

The bra came undone with a flick of his fingers.

Her back bowed as he suckled, tongue lapping, teeth testing give.

She gasped—a fractured sound—and fumbled for his belt.

“Landon. Now. ”

He flipped her onto her back, pinning her wrists.

“Impatient wolf.”

“And you’re stalling.” She hooked a leg around his waist, heel digging into his spine.

“Or scared?”

“Terrified.” He kissed her throat, her jaw, her snarling mouth.

“Of wasting a second of you.”

Her defiance crumbled.

She guided his hand past the waistband of her pants, slick heat clenching around his fingers.

“ Feel that? That’s not fear.”

Landon peeled her pants down trembling legs, his lips trailing fire across every newly exposed inch.

Salt and musk and her —dark ambrosia flooding his senses as he buried his groan against her inner thigh.

“You taste like victory.”

Her hips jerked, blunt nails scraping his scalp as she fisted his hair.

“Then drown in it.”

He obliged without mercy.

The first swipe of his tongue drew twin reactions—her choked sob above him, the violent clench of her around nothing.

Landon mapped her need like uncharted terrain, each shuddering gasp a coordinate.

Landon’s thumbs carved possessive crescents into the flare of her hips as he devoured her, each lap of his tongue against her slick heat a conquest measured in tremors.

The air hung thick with brine and spent ozone—her gasps sharpening to keening notes when his roaming palm slid higher.

He felt the telltale flutter beneath her navel, that delicate prelude to unraveling, and doubled down with merciless precision.

Sucking her clit in slow, filthy pulls while his fingers circled lower, deeper, a dual assault designed to fracture resolve.

A starving man savoring a feast, yes, but one already calculating how to steal the next meal before the plates cleared.

Her climax wasn’t enough.

Not when every pulse of her around his fingers only amplified the ache in his cock, the primal need to replace clever digits with the brutal stretch of himself.

To feel her clench around him as she came, milking his own release in a shared chokehold of sensation.

The fantasy nearly undid him—jaw tightening against a groan as he imagined her heat sheathing him, taking him.

When he surged up to claim her mouth, she met him halfway.

Not a surrender, but an ambush.

Her teeth caught his lower lip in a punishing drag before she rolled them over with a predator’s grace, moonlight gilding the sweat-slick curve of her spine.

Landon’s breath seized as she straddled his hips, her thighs bracketing him like a throne.

Her palm ground his trapped cock against his abdomen, a velvet vise, and for one fractured moment he wondered which of them was really being consumed.

"You get —ah — bigger every time.”

He gripped her waist, blunt fingers denting soft flesh as she rose and fell, the glide of her slick heat bordering on unbearable. Her breasts swayed with each roll of her hips, moonlight catching the sweat beading between them. Every gasp she tore from her throat was a match strike to his control. “You’re shaking .”

“From wanting .” She ground down, taking him deeper, the clench of her inner walls milking a broken curse from him. Her nails scored his chest, a bright pain that anchored him as she leaned close. “Look at me. Remember this.”

He did—the fevered flush staining her ivory skin, the damp tendrils of hair clinging to her neck, the way her body swallowed him whole with each desperate undulation. Her breath hitched when his thumbs found her clit, circling the swollen bud in time with her thrusts. The rhythm of her hips turned jagged, her thighs quivering where they bracketed his. “You’re close.”

“So are you.” Her accusation came out half a moan, her rhythm faltering as her back arched.

He moved before she could finish the thought—flipping her onto her stomach with a growl that vibrated in his ribs. She gasped into the sheets, hips already lifting in invitation as he dragged her onto her knees. Her fingers clawed at the mattress. “ Take . Take me like you mean it, Landon.”

He obliged, slamming into her with a force that shoved her up the bed. Her choked scream was a hymn. His hands found her hips, fingers bruising as he pistoned into her, each thrust punctuated by the slap of skin. The wolf in him snarled, drunk on her whimpers, on the way her body stretched to accommodate him, hot and silken and his . She reached back, nails digging into his thigh. “ Harder — ah, God ?—!”

He fisted her hair, wrenching her head back as he drove deeper, the primal cadence of their joining echoing off the walls. Her climax hit like a storm, her inner walls convulsing around him as she sobbed his name. He followed her over the edge with a roar, trying not to sink his teeth into her shoulder as his release tore through him—a claiming, a vow, a wildfire neither could contain.

Landon dragged his palm down the slick curve of her spine as the final tremors passed between them, their fractured breaths tangling with the salt-sting of sweat. Her legs buckled the moment he withdrew, and he caught her with an arm hooked beneath her breasts—her moan still vibrating against his forearm as he lowered them both into the wreckage of sheets. Moonlight carved her profile in silver where she turned toward him, eyelids fluttering with aftershocks he could feel thrumming through her skin.

He memorized the hitch in her pulse beneath his thumb, the way her lashes stuck together in damp clusters. Dawn's threat pulsed on the horizon like a fresh bruise, but here— now —the world compressed to the humid press of her shoulder against his lips, the animal truth of her nails still lodged in his flesh. Let oblivion come. This moment spun through his burning blood would linger—her gasp lodged in his teeth, warmth cooling on their tangled limbs, the way her surrender had tasted like a reverent derailment of every lie they’d ever sold themselves. One perfect theft from death’s ledger.