Page 51 of The Alpha Dire Wolf (Bloodlines & Bloodbonds #1)

Sylvie

“I give,” I whispered, leaping into his arms, trusting.

Linc pulled me to him, my legs wrapping around his waist. He held me there, biceps taut and flexed without the faintest sign of a tremble. Another symbol of how strong he was.

But the most surprising part was when he didn’t immediately tear the breath from my lungs with the kiss I’d been expecting.

“You give?” he rumbled, his focus darting from one eye to another. “Just like that?”

I nodded. “Just like that. I’m done trying to adhere to logic, to what my brain says. It’s time I listen to the rest of me when it comes to you.”

He grinned. “Since you’re too polite to say that you’re dripping wet and needy, I have to assume you meant somewhere a little … higher.”

I playfully smacked the back of his head. “You want me to say I like you? That I’m listening to my heart and not my head. Is that it? Do you want to hear me say I care about you?”

He grunted in fake pain, but then quickly grew serious. “I’ve been open with you. Told you that I want you. That I crave being around you, being near you. I’ve meant that I want your body, and that I just want you . I haven’t shied away from that fact, Sylvie.”

“No,” I agreed. “You haven’t.”

“I still want you.” He meant that in all aspects. “But I don’t want just a part of you. If you want this, if you want me , it has to be for it all. Because that’s what I’m in it for, Sylvie. For all of you.”

I swallowed. This was not how I’d imagined it going after throwing away my restraints. I had thought it would be rough, and hard, and most of all immediate . My body was throbbing with a need for that—an unmet, core-level need that still pulsed through my body like a siren, wave after wave of it.

“So,” he said when I didn’t immediately respond. “Is that what you want?”

I chewed on my lower lip, looking at him. My answer was clear. I had no idea what our future held, where it led, or even what I was. But Lincoln didn’t care. He knew my deepest, darkest secret, and it didn’t bother him. He still wanted me. Perhaps wanted me more because of what I was.

And he wasn’t afraid to show it. Wasn’t afraid to state his desire for commitment, and wasn’t that a breath of fresh air. He wanted me. He said so, and that was that. Now he was asking me if I was capable of doing the same?

“Yes.” The answer just sort of popped out of me, reaching my lips and my brain at the same time. “Yes, it is what I want. You are what I want, Lincoln.”

His eyes burned brighter, becoming more wild as his wolf shone through. “If you are mine, there’s something you should know.” His voice was deeper, huskier than I’d ever heard it. More filled with throaty promise.

“W-what’s that?”

“I take what’s mine.”

And he did, crushing his lips against mine with fiery need and possession, burning his mark into my skin with every kiss. I gasped for air and in shock as he quite literally tore the clothing from my body. Fabric ripped and shredded under his strength until I was naked and exposed before him.

He bore me to the ground. The rays of sun streaming in through the open window and across my skin were warm to the touch but nothing like the heat pouring off Lincoln.

He paused long enough to remove his shirt, and I admired the lines of his body, from the swoop of his pecs to the ridges of his stomach as he leaned over me, the position flexing them all into a keyboard for my hands to run along.

Then my eyes dipped lower, to the curve of his low abdominals as they disappeared into his jeans in a sharp V-shape. I licked my lips, wanting to see more. My fingers fumbled with buttons, shaking with nerves to the point he took pity on me and stood.

“Let me,” he growled, and disrobed under my full, unwavering gaze.

It all came off at once, and I watched him bounce in the air, so hard and full of blood I could see the veins straining to keep it supplied. Like the rest of him, it was … impressive.

“Never knew women were that into looking,” he teased gently.

“We are when we can look at … this ,” I said, gesturing at all of him.

“I’m glad you like it,” he said and lowered himself to kiss me once more, pressing our hips together so I could feel the heat pooling there. “It’s all yours.”

“Good.” I ran my hands up his sides and around to his back, digging my fingers deep into the thick muscle there. “I’m not big on sharing.”

His snarl rumbled the ancient panes of glass in the window to the point I thought they would shatter. “ No one shall touch you but me. You are mine , and they will all know it. They will know you are claimed.”

The shiver running down my spine had nothing to do with him kissing his way down my neck and across my breasts.

Almost nothing.

No, it was the mixture of determination, desire, and belief in his words that worked their way into my core, amplifying every touch of his fingers and every taste of his tongue as he explored my shifting, writhing body.

Always moving lower, he left behind glistening tips of my breasts, hard and puckered in the cooler air after his attentions, and moved between my legs, leading with a hand and following with his mouth.

Questing. Searching. Teasing.

“Please,” I whispered as he alternated kissing and licking the insides of my groin. He drew circles and hot breaths around me, turning me into a quivering mass of gasps and fingers twisting up in his hair, holding him tightly.

“ Mine ,” he growled once more, running the soft, warm wetness of his mouth and tongue across me at long last.

I cried out, my spine arching up and off the floor as he grabbed my legs and pulled them apart, holding them there even as they tried to close naturally.

He overpowered me, held me still, and pleasured me with torturously slow procession.

Lapping up every drop of my very obvious need, he toyed with me, taking me to the edge and then bringing me back down in a cascade of whimpers and whines until one thing was very, very clear.

My body was his to do with. I was his, fully and completely.

And I loved every frustrating second of it as bit by bit I caved to his control, to his touch, to him .

Once. Twice. Three times. A fourth? I had no idea.

When he finally gave me what I wanted, what I had been begging for, I couldn’t hold back.

Nor did he give me a chance. His tongue pressed against me, moving fast and then slow …

fast and then slow. I’m sure I tore out some of his hair.

Still he kept his mouth glued between my legs.

At some point, a finger slid inside me. Then two. I flew off the edge from the different pleasure, a new and yet familiar climax all the same.

“You,” I said, grabbing at his hand as he continued to please me.

“Yes?” he asked, looking up from between my legs, his eyes dripping with carnal wickedness.

“Inside me.”

Linc opened his mouth to speak.

“ Now ,” I ordered in my best no-nonsense voice.

Rearing back onto his knees, he shuffled closer. I was more than wet enough for him to slide right in, but I knew his gameplan. I knew what he was going to do. Lincoln wanted to make sure I knew that on all fronts, I was his, that he called the shots. He was going to tease me again.

That was fine. If he wanted me to beg, I would beg. As long as I got what I wanted. Which was him. Knowing that I was going to get that, I would play along. I would—

“ All mine .” Linc growled softly, plunging his entire length inside me in one thrust.

I blacked out. Fainted. Screamed my head off. All of the above? It was the most intense explosion of feeling I’d ever had, far more than my body and brain could handle. I came at least once just from him entering me. Perhaps twice.

Our hips ground together after that. Lincoln’s heaving breath was hot and humid against my neck and my chest. The sun lit his face and his arms, streaming in from behind me to keep him awash in a yellow glow as he thrust against me.

Over, and over, and over. I struggled to breathe. He struggled to maintain a control I wanted him to lose. Because he was losing it with me .

“Let go,” I moaned through it all. “Don’t hold back. I want this. I want you , Linc.”

His eyes blazed with light not from the sun, and every muscle on his body drew tight, including the one inside me. I grabbed at his chin, holding his gaze steady and staring into his eyes as he pumped harder.

Pumped faster. There was nothing but breathing. Gasps. Moans. He and I, together, with nothing and nobody to stop us. In that heady moment, I knew we could have taken on the world, as long as it was the two of us.

Light subsumed all but his pupils, and Lincoln tossed his head back as he howled my name to the ceiling. I clamped down hard with my legs, my arms wrapping tightly around his neck as he too finally reached his peak, his apex.

We crashed against one another in heavy, hot mutual orgasmic bliss.

Lincoln was breathing harder than I had ever seen him, a sheen of sweat on his forehead.

His body glistened impossibly perfectly as he leaned away from me, one hand resting possessively on my inner thigh, his thumb stroking idly while he watched me with those strange half-human eyes.

Does he see a human when he looks at me? Or does he see that other, strange part of me. The one neither of us knows.

“What’s wrong?”

I blinked. Lincoln’s head was cocked to the side, and he was staring at me with some concern.

“Huh?”

“Your face looked … unhappy. You went somewhere.”

“Oh. Uh, I’m sorry.”

“Did I hurt you? I tried to hold back, but I know sometimes things happen. My strength …”

“What? No, no, no, Lincoln, not at all.” I smiled. “Truth be told, if we had more time, you could have been a bit rougher. I like being tossed around.”

He grinned from ear to ear, leaning in to kiss me. “I’m already looking forward to next time.”

“I can feel that,” I said wryly, looking down between us.

“You’re going to have to wait, though,” he said. “We really need to get going. I want to be far away from here before the sun begins to set.”

He withdrew, heading to the bathroom to get a towel and leaving me alone with my thoughts.

We were leaving. Heading off somewhere he hadn’t told me to see what we could discover. About me. Who I was. What I was. My grandmother had known, but her journal didn’t say. I’d scoured the entire thing now, but I was still in the dark.

Whatever it was, though, it had to do with the Chained. The evil was out there still, at the heart of the forest, and we knew it wouldn’t rest. We had to find a way to stop it. For good.

Because it was coming for me and whatever was inside of me.