Page 26

26

TILDA

I ’m exhausted by the time we finally make it back to Reyes’ room, dozens of people having come up to ask questions and offer their congratulations or welcome me to the pack. Everyone seems to be onboard with my joining them, to my surprise, and it makes me feel a certain sense of belonging as we mosey back down the corridor and deep into the den.

I could see myself making a home here, building a family. For the longest time, it’s just been me and Enid. While my sister has enmeshed herself in Homestead’s social ecosystem, I’ve had a harder time doing that…and I’ve never really bonded with anyone but her.

This is different. I feel a kinship with the people here—people who are wild and hurt.

And Reyes…

I’ve never felt this kind of companionship with anyone else. He makes me feel like God has a plan, when I’ve stopped believing in the big man in the sky over the years. Maybe it’s just that being here has allowed me to see the stars again, or maybe it’s this wolf stuff, but I don’t ever want to leave his side.

I want to believe that it’s because I love him for who he is.

I want to believe I love him.

My hardened heart can’t take anything else.

“I liked watching you with them tonight,” Reyes murmurs as we amble down the stone corridor. “With the pack, I mean.”

“For what it’s worth, I liked being with them,” I reply. “But I have to ask—you don’t just think it’s the mating bond, do you? I know it can do some weird things to your mind, and I’m just worried that…”

I trail off. I can’t bring myself to even say the words—that maybe this isn’t real, that I’m throwing away my life in Homestead for an illusion generated by pheromones.

Reyes opens the door and I give him a grateful smile as I step inside. Heat rises in my stomach at the sight of the rumpled sheets on the bed, still a mess from our lovemaking this morning. Isn’t there a chance that I’m just horny?

“What are you worried about?” Reyes asks.

I turn and fall to a seat on the bed, my brow furrowed. “I think I’m just wondering if this is real,” I say. “Do I feel at home here because I truly belong, or because of some…you know, some wolf shit? I can feel my body changing, and I’m wondering if it’s my mind, too.”

Reyes frowns, his brows drawing together as he chews on his bottom lip. His hand moves instinctively to the big silver cross that hangs around his neck, his fingers curling around it through his shirt. He seems to draw strength from the gesture, fiddling with the pendant for a moment before he comes to kneel in front of me.

“Tilda,” he says softly, his voice carrying an unfamiliar vulnerability. “Can I touch you?”

The question catches me off guard. We’ve been in and out of each other’s arms so much in the past few days that I can’t believe he’s even hesitating. “Of course,” I say, blinking at him. “Why wouldn’t you…?”

His dark eyes lift to meet mine, and there’s something raw and unguarded in his expression. “Because I don’t want you to think I’m saying this just because we’re touching,” he explains. “I need you to believe me. To know that I mean it.”

“Oh,” I murmur, my voice barely audible. “Okay.”

He takes a breath, his hands hovering in the air between us before finally settling over mine, warm and steady. “You…” He pauses, frowning, like he’s wrestling with words too big for him to wrangle. “We hardly know each other, and yet…I feel like I know you. I think from the moment we met, I saw something in you. Your strength. Your will. The pain you’ve carried, and how you’ve fought through it, over and over again—not just for yourself, but for the people you love.”

I stare at him, my breath catching in my throat. He squeezes my hands gently, grounding me as he continues.

“And I saw something else in you, too,” he says, his voice quieter now. “Something that I recognized in myself. That willingness to challenge people, to push back against the world even when it feels impossible. That fire. It’s…it’s humbling, Tilda.”

His words falter, and he lowers his head, resting it lightly against my knee. His grip on my hands tightens as if he’s holding on for dear life. I sniffle, startled to realize that a single tear has slipped down my cheek, warm against my skin.

“You’ve already made me a better man, and you’ve only been here a few weeks. That’s why I know this isn’t just my wolf, or pheromones, or anything like that. I can only call it love.”

I huff out a tearful breath, laughing a little at how emotional I’ve gotten. I’m really not a cryer, and this is pretty out of the ordinary for me…but what else is new? I’m breaking norms every fucking day lately. Reyes looks up at me like he’s used to making people cry, and I figure he must be…he is a priest after all.

I put my hands on his face and draw him up to me, until he’s just inches away. “Is it bad that I really just want to fuck your brains out right now?” I ask.

He laughs, his gaze heated. “Not at all,” he growls.

Another second, and he’s covering my mouth with his in a searing kiss. Reyes presses me into the sheets as he crawls over me, his knee sliding between my legs. I’m wearing a sundress, and the scrape of denim over my underwear makes me moan into his mouth.

“Funny—I was thinking the same thing,” he murmurs.

He kisses me hard as he unbuttons my dress, a line of delicate button loops lining the front of it. He growls possessively when he reveals the fresh bite mark on my breast, lapping at it and sending waves of pleasure across my skin.

“Reyes…” I murmur. “Wait—we should talk.”

He pauses, then sits up—like he’s remembered who he is, like he’s not a beast.

I kind of feel like one right now, regardless.

“Of course,” he says, dragging his eyes away from my exposed cleavage with some effort. “Right. What did you want to talk about?”

“Earlier,” I say, “you said something about not telling you what to do because my powers of suggestion were growing? Does that mean…?”

His eyes widen, and he holds his forehead like he’s got a headache. “Oh—I almost forgot, with the conversation at dinner and what we did in the barn…”

Kinda cute that he has to refer to it as ‘what we did.’

“I think it has something to do with the bite,” he says. “I thought my power as Alpha Prime was infallible—I have to avoid telling people what to do on accident because of it. But earlier today, when you told me not to move, I think it happened to me.”

I raise my brows. “Are you saying I can tell you what to do?”

“I think so,” he says. “It must have something to do with the mating bond…a kind of obedience to each other before all else.”

“That’s…” I pause. “You’re trusting me with a lot. If I wasn’t on your side, I could use this.”

He nods, then takes my hand.

“But you are on my side,” he says. He puts his hand on his chest, taking my hand with it. It’s like our pulses fall into rhythm when he touches me, skin to skin. “I can feel it…here.”

I inhale sharply.

“Okay,” I say. “No more secrets. And if we’re doing this—if we’re committing to this—there’s something you should know.”

“I’m listening,” he says, turning on his priest voice.

I kind of hate it at the same time that I love it. It doesn’t make me want to talk to him, just get him naked, which is counter to what I’m trying to do.

But this has to be said. It’s too big to ignore, and he deserves to know.

“If we’re going to stay together, you should know that I…” My throat tightens, and I stop, closing my eyes. It feels like there’s a weight on my chest, pressing down, making the words impossible to push out. When I finally open my eyes again, I stare at the floor, unable to look at him. My voice is barely above a whisper. “I can’t have kids, Reyes.”

The silence that follows is deafening. He doesn’t say anything, doesn’t even shift beside me. His hand stays firmly wrapped around mine, his thumb brushing small circles against my skin, grounding me even though my heart is pounding in my ears.

I can’t take the silence. I glance up at him, chewing anxiously on my lip. His face is unreadable, his brows slightly furrowed, his dark eyes locked onto mine with an intensity that makes me feel both seen and completely exposed.

“Is that okay?” I ask, my voice trembling.

His grip on my hand tightens slightly, and he lets out a breath, his shoulders sinking as if he’s been holding something in. “Tilda,” he says softly, his voice steady and deliberate, “of course it’s okay.”

Relief flutters through me, but his next words catch me completely off guard.

“I never even thought I would have children,” he admits, his gaze dropping to where our hands are joined. “Not when I was keeping to my vows. I had my congregation, and then I had the pack. There was never time to think about kids of my own when I already had so many people depending on me. I told myself it was enough. I think I even believed it.”

He looks back up at me, and there’s something raw in his expression now—something that makes my chest ache. “But when I met you,” he continues, his voice softer now, “I realized I’d never let myself want something for me. Not really. And maybe that’s why it took me so long to stop fighting this. Fighting you. Because you’re the first thing I’ve let myself want in…God, Tilda, in years.”

My breath catches in my throat, and I can feel my heart pounding harder against my ribs, but he’s not done.

“But this?” he says, shaking his head. “This isn’t a dealbreaker. You aren’t some kind of vessel, not some thing to facilitate the creation of something else. You’re Tilda. And that’s more than enough for me. You’re perfect as you are.”

Damn it, he’s going to make me cry again. I feel the tears prickling at the corners of my eyes, but I can’t stop the way my chest tightens. His words hit me squarely in a place I’ve tried to bury—this deep, unspoken fear that I’m not enough, that I’ll never be enough.

Before the tears can fall, I fling my arms around his neck and bury my face in his chest. His arms come up instantly, wrapping around me and pulling me to straddle him, his hands sliding across my back in those comforting, steady circles that seem to quiet everything else. I breathe him in—red wine and incense, warmth and safety—and let myself relax against him.

And God…I need to taste him.

I kiss his neck, gently at first…then harder. I find my mark on him, running my tongue across the grooves where my teeth bit down, along the punctures that are already healing.

His hands go lower, down to cup my ass. I breathe him in, taking a shuddering gasp as his fingers find the hem of my dress and slide it up my thighs. The touch is still comforting, but hard now, a suggestion of something more pushing in at the edges.

“I think I’m ready for you to fuck me now,” I whisper against his neck.

“Good,” Reyes growls.

He hooks his fingers in the waist of my underwear and slides them down my thighs, tossing them across the room. As far as I know, my panties from last night are tucked somewhere in the room, maybe still in the back pocket of yesterday’s jeans, and it makes me feel dirty and desirable.

I thrust my hips up toward Reyes as I lay back on the sheets, smelling our mingled scents all over the bed from last night. It makes me wanton with need, arching my back and clawing at his shoulders as he lowers his mouth to my core.

I really appreciate how much he likes going down on me, but my inner walls are clenching painfully as he runs his nose over my inner thighs, which are already covered in wetness. His tongue flicks out to taste me as he goes, his breath going ragged.

“Please,” I whine. “Just fuck me…I’m so fucking horny.”

“It’s the waxing moon,” he says. “Next week I’ll be in rut…and you can sense it.”

He drags his tongue up my folds and I let out a cry, tangling my fingers in his hair. When I look back down at him, the salt and pepper curls are all mussed up, his beard wet with my arousal. I watch him from up on my elbows as he meets my eyes with chocolate irises, two fingers circling my entrance as his thumb brushes my clit.

“Why can’t you just…ah…” I groan as he presses those fingers inside.

“Because I have to get you ready for my knot,” he murmurs. He pumps his fingers in and out of me, curving the digits to find my g-spot. I don’t know how he fucking does this when he hasn’t slept with anyone in twenty years; he finds all the spots that make me tick like he’s been doing it all his life. “You’re slick, but not quite wet enough…not relaxed enough. Open your thighs for me.”

I spread my thighs open as wide as they’ll go, letting my knees sink to the mattress. My muscles are like butter, melting under him. He inserts another finger and chuckles. “Good girl,” he growls.

The ache in my inner walls starts to ebb only with three fingers inside me, stretching me out and filling me out. But he’s not deep enough, not thick enough, no matter how big his hands are. I groan and buck my hips against him, urging him closer, deeper, and Reyes rumbles low in his chest again. I don’t know how, but the sound somehow settles me at the same time that it makes me want him more.

Wolf stuff again, I guess.

“I need you wetter,” he murmurs. “Sweet like blackberries…”

He lowers his mouth to me again and latches onto my clit, his tongue sweeping across it over and over again. My thighs fall open for him completely, my heart pounding, a strangled cry in my throat. I’m still dressed, he’s still dressed, I need him naked and inside me right fucking now, I?—

I come against his mouth and fingers, rolling my hips almost violently, points of sensation erupting where he’s left his marks. He doesn’t let up, forcing my climax to keep going and going, and I can feel myself melting, pulsing. He licks around my entrance and plunges his tongue inside, curling it just right.

“Fuck, fuck!” I scream. I don’t care who hears; apparently Reyes doesn’t care either. And I’m the Prime’s mate , so I shouldn’t care.

Let them know. Let them hear what he does to me.

I grasp his hair and drag him up to me, kissing him hard and tasting myself on his lips. Reyes doesn’t hold to ceremony, reaching for the neck of my dress and pulling it right off over my head. A couple of the delicate buttons snap and shoot across the room. I feel a pang of guilt over messing up Peaches’ dress, but my mate is already pinning me to the bed, sucking on each of my pebbled nipples, returning to his bite to lick at it with a kind of care that seems out of character for the huge, looming wolf. His eyes flash opalescent with a kind of primal desire, and I answer him with a wolfish smile.

“Take off your clothes,” I command.

Reyes does as he’s told without question, though I don’t know if it’s because I gave the order or because he wants to. He pulls his shirt off over his head to reveal rippling bronze muscles covered in a thin sheen of sweat, then pulls his pants off in one fluid motion to join me again on the bed. I lick up his pec and over his collarbone, tasting salt and red wine and smoke.

I need more, more, more.

He covers my mouth in a bruising kiss, lining his cock up with my entrance. I’m getting used to the heft of it now after all the times we’ve fucked in the past forty-eight hours, and I’m eager to have his length inside me. I reach for that big cock, wrapping my fingers around his shaft and feeling his knot already swollen to its full girth.

“Do you feel how wet I am for you?” I ask, running his head through the slickness between my thighs. He holds himself up on one muscular arm, glowing gold above me. “I need you so bad.”

He gazes down at me, looking more and more like a wolf. His eyes flash like opals now, his teeth sharp, his tongue flicking out as he stares at the bite mark he left on my breast. I can feel his claws as they run along my cheek, sharp enough to cut, but delicate enough not to.

“Mine,” he growls. He pushes the head of his cock inside me and I moan, arching my back to take him deeper. “Mine.”

“Yours,” I reply.

I wrap my legs around his hips as he pins my wrists to the bed, holding himself over me and driving in ever so slowly. I feel half of that length inside…then all of it, his knot pressing against my opening.

I roll my hips to urge him on, begging him for the pressure of his knot, that deep sensation of being filled. I know I’m ready for it, my nipples pebbled as his hairy chest brushes against my breasts, my whole body aching for him.

Reyes seems to come to his senses—at least a little—as he pushes himself as far as he can go. “I think you’re ready,” he murmurs. My wrists are still pinned over my head, Reyes’ voice rough around his sharp teeth. “God, you’re beautiful.”

I know he wouldn’t take the lord’s name in vain.

He absolutely means it.

“Yes,” I say. “Please…knot me.”

I phrase it as a request, not a command. Reyes finally indulges me, nodding, then rocking his hips against me to let me feel just how thick it is. I brace myself, anticipating pain.

There isn’t any.

Just…fuck, fuck , overwhelming pleasure…

He pushes inside in one fluid motion, and I feel him slot into place like he belongs there, endorphins surging through me as the adrenaline of preparation gives way to euphoria.

“You’re so…so tight,” he murmurs as my pussy clenches desperately around his knot. His lips part and he rocks against me, making us both moan. “Fuck, Tilda…”

It’s not like anything I’ve ever experienced–the depth to which I’ve taken him, the heaviness, how fucking full I am of him. He’s not even moving, but it’s the best sex I’ve ever had.

He draws a knee up, notching it under my ass–then the other joins it. I’m tilted up toward him now, and he reaches down to gather me into his arms to straddle him. It puts even more pressure on me, my pussy clenching uncontrollably, and Reyes groans into my ear.

“You okay?” he grits out.

“Better than okay,” I breathe.

He starts to roll his hips–a subtle motion with devastating effect. It’s like I’m living in both our bodies at once as I feel him closer than ever, our heartbeats falling into the same pounding rhythm. He gets faster, thrusting up into me, bottoming out against my cervix.

“Reyes,” I gasp.

“I’ve got you,” he mumbles, kissing my cheek, my neck, my shoulder. “...got you…”

I groan, curling my fingers against his shoulders. I clench his knot inside me, squeezing. And then…

He lets out a guttural sound that’s more animal than man and he loses control completely.

Reyes rocks his hips up, up–obliterating any sense I had of reality, of anything but his body entwined with mine. The bed creaks and our breath fills the room, heavy and jagged. His hands are on my ass, spreading me for him, claws biting into my flesh.

“Mate…” he stutters. A few words slip out in Spanish, like he himself doesn’t know what he’s saying. “I can’t…hold on…”

Neither can I–nor can I speak. I hold him tight, tilting my hips toward him, taking him. “Give it to me,” I finally wrench out in a primal snarl.

And he does.

Reyes muffles his roar against my shoulder as he pumps his spend inside me, filling me up. The knot keep everything inside, liquid heat warming my hips, my lower belly. I scratch at his shoulders as the pleasure keeps coming…because it’s still there, like his cum is dragging it out.

He rolls his hips experimentally, but he’s still lodged inside. I like it that way—feeling him so close, like a full-body embrace. Reyes rolls to his side and takes me with him, where I curl one leg over his hip. He trails a big hand down my side, over my hip, pulling me in snugly against him.

“How long will it be like this?” I whisper.

“I don’t know,” he says. He presses a kiss to my neck, his tongue flicking over my pulse. One day, he’ll bite me there, and I’ll find another place to mark him. Not tonight, though…later. “Chances are I’ll come inside you again before we’re free.”

I chuckle. “I don’t know if there’s any more room.”

He reaches between us and flicks my clit as he runs his fingers along my thighs, where we’re still knotted together. It’s strange to feel him glide his fingers along my pussy…to really understand how I’ve stretched to accommodate him. Taking the opportunity, I glance down and feel a rush of satisfaction seeing where his massive cock is buried to the hilt, his finger toying with my clit.

“You made this seem awful, but…” I pause as a rush of pleasure floods through me, his cock twitching in response. “Oh fuck.”

He smirks. “That good, huh?”

“Mmhm.”

“It didn’t hurt?”

I bite my lip. “Only in the ways I like.”

He kisses me hard and full, his tongue thrusting past my lips. I can already feel him getting hard again, and his eyes are hooded with lust as he pulls back.

“Good,” he says. “Because I think I’d like to do that again.”