Page 40 of Mate

Sure. Okay. I’m too desperate to put up a fight. There’s nothing inside me— nothing but the need to come. I don’t feel embarrassed when he asks, “When you touch yourself, what do you do?”

“I don’t— not in months.” I had more pressing issues, even though I can’t remember what they were. How was anything ever more deserving of my attention than this ? “I’m sorry, I— ”

“Hush. It’s okay.” He licks a spot on the hollow of my throat, sending a live current down my spine. “I said I’m going to help you, didn’t I?”

The help I need involves him bending me over and fucking me into the mattress, so I let out a whiny whimper when he takes my hand, braids our fingers together, and moves them to my lower stomach, where the elastic of my panties sticks to skin.

It feels wrong, that they’re the only thing I’m still wearing, especially when Koen seems hell-bent on not touching me anywhere else.

And then my stomach drops. Because I realize that he’s not going to touch me there , either.

“You’re going to use your fingers,” he instructs slowly, letting go of my hand. His lips are hot against the arch of my ear. “And you’re going to make yourself come.”

“What? But I— ”

His teeth close around the fleshy part of my neck, just this side of too hard.

I yelp. Squirm against his chest. Moan in frustration. Plead wordlessly.

“Tell me, killer.” He nuzzles me. “What makes you think that this is a negotiation?”

“Please, use your fingers. Why don’t you want to— ”

“You need to shut the fuck up about what you think I want. This is a mess, and you’re not in any condition to make any asks. You promised to do what I say.” A kiss on my cheek. “Is this who you are? Someone who breaks her promises?”

I shake my head, feverish, panting.

“Good girl. Fingers,” he orders. “Now.”

I shove my hand down my underwear with no grace. “Oh my God.” It’s just . . . so much. Way too much. “Why am I so wet?”

“It’s normal,” he says. “You’re going to need it.”

“F- for what?”

He exhales against my shoulder. “Don’t worry about it. Just touch yourself.”

I rub myself clumsily, slipping through my folds. I’ve done this enough times in my life, it should be easy. But it’s like there’s a balloon swelling inside me, and it won’t pop. My hips buck impatiently, and I circle, I rock, I grind, and . . . I nearly burst into tears.

“Slowly,” Koen orders roughly. “Can you go slower?”

I can. God, I can. And it’s already so much better. His scent is suddenly pleased with me, and I revel in it. Let my head fall back against his shoulder.

“Do you need something inside you? To come?”

I shake my head. Not usually. Right now, though, I want it.

“Okay.” He inhales deep, like I smell as good to him as he does to me. “You’re doing so good, killer.”

“Yeah?” I whimper.

“Yeah, baby.” His laughter is soft. Wound up. “I’m trying to come up with a list of things I wouldn’t do just to be allowed to eat your cunt right now, and I can’t think of a single item.”

“Why don’t you, then?” I whine.

“’Cause you’ve never asked me to before.

And no, now doesn’t count. Open your legs wider.

A little more. Yeah.” The last word is exhaled.

A little choked. Like he’s savoring . Adding a file to his visual library.

“I have no right to it, but fuck, I just want to see enough to imagine what’s happening.

” His tongue runs a broad stroke across a spot on the side of my throat, and a fraction of a second later I’m on the verge of coming.

“W- why does that feel so good?”

“What?”

“When you touch me— there.”

“Where?” He briefly lets go of me. Moves my hair over my shoulder again, baring my back. “Here?” This time, he scrapes his teeth against the skin between my shoulder blades, and my head shatters into a thousand pieces.

I arch like a sail, breathless, speechless. Nod frantically as my fingers speed up under the cotton of my soaked panties, and—

“I didn’t say you could go faster,” he chides with a brief tap of his fingers over the fabric.

I grit my teeth and stop. Resume with slow circles that are somehow too much and not enough. My entire body is glowing .

“These are your glands, Serena. Did no one show you?”

“No.”

“Might be for the best. I’d have to stop what I’m doing and go kill them.” Another graze of his teeth. All my muscles clench, and I’m afraid I’ll pass out. “There are five places in your skin where your scent is stronger and your hormones are thickest.”

“Five?”

“The inside of your wrists.” He brings my left hand to his mouth and nips the area at the base of my palm, making me shudder.

“Each side of your throat.” He sucks on the right for far longer than would be necessary for a simple demonstration.

By the end, I’m trembling so bad, my fingers can barely stay on my clit.

“And then there’s the back of your neck.

” Another slow, savoring lick. My eyes roll back in my head.

“’S good,” I slur. “This one’s . . . good.”

The chuff of his laughter makes me even shakier.

“This one is special. It’s where I would bite you, Serena.

High up, where clothes couldn’t hide it.

And then I’d lick my bite every day to remind you.

” He sucks on it, and the pleasure is so intense, I have to twist away, overwhelmed.

“If you knew the things I think about every time your neck is bare, you’d walk around in a fucking cape. ”

“I do— I want to know. Tell me.”

“That would be unwise, killer. In fact, you shouldn’t let me near it at all. Near you .” One last kiss. He covers my back with the curtain of my hair and taps again at my hand— a silent order to continue touching myself.

I’m instantly on the verge of coming. I think I’ll slip over, but something pulls me back.

“What about— ah — what about me ?”

“Hmm?”

“Where would I bite you , to show that you’re mine?”

Koen goes still at the question. And then, after processing it for entirely too long, he lets out a soft, explosive curse against my collarbone. “I hate it,” he breathes out.

“What?”

“How perfect you are. I spent the last twenty years hoping that if there was a mate for me out there, I’d never come across them. And then I found you, and, Serena . . . there isn’t one thing I would change about you. Or one single thing I regret about knowing you.”

Suddenly, tears are streaming red-hot down my cheeks. “You haven’t answered me,” I say, quickening the rhythm of my fingers.

Koen’s response is a bittersweet exhale against my cheek. “I think I’d have you bite me right under my jaw. People would glance at it and think that it’s obscene. But they’d immediately know who I belong to.”

His words hitch me higher, and it’s happening.

I’m going to come. Koen’s hands are on my waist, palms so large, fingers so long, they easily cover me in warmth from hip to hip— and the hard shift of his muscles against my back— his stubble chafing my neck glands in that delicious soreness— and this unbearable tension that pulls me in all directions—

I stay there, teetering. On the edge of a cliff, in constant equilibrium.

I sob. The harder I grind, the more I ache. “I can’t— Why can’t I come, Koen? Why do I feel so . . .”

“Empty?”

I nod. How does he know ?

“Okay, it’s okay. Put your fingers inside.”

“No— not big enough. Your fingers.”

He groans. “Hush. Do as I say, or I’m going to . . . yes. Good. Like that. I know what you need. Come here.” He cranes my neck backward. One of his large hands cups the back of my head, pressing my lips into his skin. “Keep touching yourself and lick the base of my throat.”

I do. Gingerly. And—

He exhales a groan.

I freeze.

Because . . . Oh.

Oh.

“Oh my God,” I moan against his flesh, but it comes out like a mumbled, shapeless noise. I’m starting to get the whole gland thing, because running my tongue over it is like tasting Koen’s scent. The most potent, most perfect narcotic exploding right into my bloodstream.

And I think he likes it, too. He encourages me with low, filthy praises, telling me how beautiful I am, how perfect, what an honor it is for him to be here, with me, how he wouldn’t want it any other way, how he would do unspeakable things to have it again.

So I suck, and take more, even as I feel his muscles vibrate and the rope of his scent drawing tighter around me.

“ Shit , you smell so good.” He sounds as shaken as I feel. “Fuck the covenant. I want to be so deep in your cunt, you’d be squirming to breathe— ”

That’s what does it— the picture he paints of him, buried inside me. Of a world in which he and I— we — are a possibility. My body clenches, my vision whites out, and the orgasm that follows is so sharp and sudden, I cannot tell the pleasure apart from the pain.

There might not be an after, not following this . And honestly, I don’t mind. I forget everything— my fingers, my pride, my pounding heart— and all I breathe is him.

Koen.

I’m not aware of being laid down on the bed, in his arms, pressed to him. My nerve endings are unresponsive for a while, but once I’m able, I turn around, luxuriating in the feeling of my bare chest against his, skin to skin, nearly close enough to—

The brain haze clears at once. What just happened hits me like a sucker punch. I’m nauseous. Spinning.

I practically forced Koen to—

He’s the Alpha of the Northwest, and he shouldn’t—

He can’t— but I—

“It’s okay.” He kisses my forehead. I try to push away, but his grip is unbreakable. “Serena. It’s fine.”

“But I— ”

“You didn’t.”

“Yes. I— ”

“No.”

“You don’t even know what I— ”

“I can read your mind, remember?”

He can’t. He doesn’t. But I feel myself relax against him anyway, too tired to fight.

And since we’re already so close, since he doesn’t seem to mind too much, I hike my leg up his hip, uncaring of the sticky cotton between my thighs.

My knee meets the scalding length of his cock.

For the first time in my life, I fully comprehend the meaning of the word throbbing .

I want to offer him some help with that. But . . . wouldn’t it just make things worse? “I’m sorry,” I say, and I am. I’m sorry for everything .

“That’s okay.” He sighs. Somehow, gathers me even closer. “I’ve never been less sorry about a thing.” Koen kisses me on the forehead. His hold never loosens, and we both fall asleep.