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CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

ZURI

“What?” Stone asked, almost in disbelief.

I paused for a moment, desperately trying to fight the deepest urges inside me. “I?—”

Just as I was about to speak the words that I hadn’t meant what I said, a sudden heat rushed through my body. I turned toward him, my hand on his taut chest and my nails lengthening into claws, digging into the thick muscle.

“Put a pup inside me,” I cried.

While he had told me many times over that was exactly what he wanted to do, he gently grabbed my hand. “Are you okay? It must be sixty degrees in this room, and you’re sweating. What’s going on?—”

Before he could speak another word, I ripped the bedsheets off our bodies and straddled his waist, immediately feeling some relief when my pussy brushed against his hard cock. I closed my eyes and focused on the sensation.

“Zuri, I don’t think?—”

“The heat,” I muttered. “The heat is gone like this.”

“Heat?” he repeated, his canines extending past his lips. “You’re not supposed to go through heat for another couple of weeks, until the full moon.” He grasped my waist harder, as if his control was slipping as well, and pinned my hips against his. “Does that feel good, my little mate?”

I whimpered slightly, “I need you inside me.”

Hesitation washed through his eyes for a moment. “Is this what you really want?”

“Yes,” I cried, panting on top of him.

Heat rolled down my spine, spreading through my limbs to my fingertips. I squeezed my eyes closed, wanting to slip into an ice-cold bath, but I knew that cursed Moon Goddess wouldn’t even let my heat go away then.

“No,” he murmured, as if he could read my mind. “It’s not.”

“It is,” I begged, attempting to wiggle my hips and slip his cock inside me. “Please.”

A low growl escaped his throat, his wolf attempting to escape Stone’s cold, hard grasp on the situation. I howled low, needing him to rescue me, to fuck me, to use me and mark me and take me as his.

“Please,” I cried, the pain unbearable. “Put a pup inside me.”

“No,” he said again, this time much stronger.

“If you loved me, you’d do it,” I said. And then immediately regretted my words because they were wrong. Manipulative. But I couldn’t talk straight anymore. My wolf ached more than she ever had, my entire body burning up in pain.

Suddenly, Stone flipped us over and pinned my hands above my head, his eyes a golden yellow. “Don’t you ever fucking say that again. You know I would do anything for you, but you’re not in the right mind, and I’m not going to fuck you while you’re like this.”

“B-but,” I whimpered, on the verge of tears, “I’m hurting. Badly. Please, help me.”

Somehow. Someway. I didn’t care how he did it, but I couldn’t do it myself. The only ease I felt was skin-on-skin contact with him; the only coolness right now was against my wrists. I tried grinding up into him, but he pulled his hips away.

And then he dipped his head and kissed me softly on the mouth.

Not hungrily, like I had been. Not ruthlessly, like usual.

“Relax,” he whispered against my lips. “I’ll give you a pup when you’re ready.”

“Stone,” I whimpered.

He slithered two fingers down my chest, between my breasts, and then to my pussy. I immediately relaxed against the bedsheets, wanting more, but the pain was not as intense. He moved his fingers around my clit in small circles.

“If you’re a good girl and stay just like this, maybe I’ll let you come,” he said.

I stared up into those glowing golden eyes and clenched, the pressure rising.

“Would you like that?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said breathlessly. “Yes, please.”

“Be a good mate for me,” he said, burying his face into the crook of my neck, his teeth gliding up and down the column of my throat and making me shiver in the midst of heat. “And maybe I’ll give you more than just an orgasm.”

I tilted my head to the side to give him room, heart pounding. “Please, mark me.”

This wasn’t even my wolf talking anymore. The heat had subsided substantially. And I was thinking in my right mind for once tonight. After the Moon Goddess had talked to me, something had clicked—that wasn’t my heat.

“Do you want it?” he asked. “Not your wolf. You ?”

“Yes,” I breathed out. “I do?—”

Before I could finish the sentence, Stone plunged his teeth inside me. It was so sudden and so unexpected. I hadn’t thought he would actually do it, but pleasure soared through my body, driving me higher and higher as an orgasm tipped me over the edge.

I screamed and cried and clawed up his back in an attempt to displace all the ecstasy surging through me. My toes curled, and I moaned into his ear, my canines lengthening too. I drew my teeth against his bare neck, my body on the clouds but weak.

Too taken by the pleasure to move anymore.

And so I lay there in his arms with my teeth millimeters from his neck and his mouth sucking gently on the mark he had left on me. My body still trembled, but I grasped tightly on to his shoulders, bringing him closer.

“Goddess,” I whispered, “I love you.”