Page 20

DEACON

I’m grasping at straws here. I know I am.

I know she’s contemplating leaving me high and dry and never letting me see those boys again. I can’t fault her for that, but would I be delusional if I thought telling her I loved her would make her stay?

I love this woman more than I can put into words.

I’ve loved her for so long that when I decide to just up and say it, my heart feels like it’s been relieved of a fucking burden.

The only problem is?

The woman I just said that to a few minutes ago might not feel the same way I do.

Not in the way she looks at me, her emerald eyes wide in surprise, her plump lips parting with a gasp.

My thumb caresses her cheeks, and I take full advantage of that because this might be the last time I see her in my kitchen, in my pool, on my couch, in my living room, and all the places her scent has occupied for five days.

“You don’t have to say it back. This is not me pressuring you to say it back, baby. I want you to know how I feel. I want you to understand that I regret rejecting you every second of the day because you did not deserve that.”

I want to add, “I regret rejecting you and the boys, but since she’s still convinced, I believe I’m not her boys’ father, I keep that part out.

She’ll tell me the truth when she’s ready, and I’ll be there waiting for her when she does.

Leaning closer, possibly signing my own death sentence, I drop a subtle kiss near the corner of her lips. Her lips smell of raspberry, and I want to taste them, but I practice self-restraint.

“You deserve so much love, baby.”

She shivers from my touch, but she doesn’t push me away.

I drop another kiss on her cheek, breathing in her scent like it’s the oxygen I need to satiate my wolf's hunger and thirst.

“You single-handedly raised those boys all alone, and that deserves praise, baby. You are their rock. You are the reason why they turned out good.”

Another kiss to her forehead has her hand joining mine on the cheek.

I anticipate her next words, the way a man resigns to his own death. I brace myself for the bomb she’ll drop in the form of her words, knowing that it’ll directly hit my heart and leave me bruised.

“Deacon?”

Goddess, her voice. And damn it, those eyes. Winter Cavanaugh will be the death of me, and I have no qualms about it.

“Yes, baby?”

“We are not leaving. I mean Adrian, Ash, and I can stay a few days if you are okay with it. Adrian might still be scared of our old—”

I don’t let her finish those words. Not with the excitement rushing through my body like a fix of adrenaline fueling my veins.

One hand disappearing in her hair, the other hand pulling her body flush to mine, I fucking kiss Winter like I’ll die without her.

She doesn’t push me away.

She doesn’t deny me access to her mouth.

She opens up to me like she’s been dying to kiss me all night, and I gobble that up like a greedy son of a gun.

Exploring her mouth, tugging those lips, tasting that raspberry taste, and branding it to memory has me ravenous for more.

My cock screams in my pants from mere contact. That is how much hold Winter has over me. Almost a week of not being inside her, and I can already feel the pent-up frustration begging to be unleashed.

My mate’s nails dig into my chest through my shirt, and while I’m happy she wants this, I pull away from the kiss, my eyes on her.

“Deacon,” she purrs in that sexy and raspy bedroom voice that makes my heart jump.

Fisting her hair, making sure we are on par with each other, I whisper in her ear.

“Do you want this?”

“Mumm.”

“Words, Winter. Can you use your words for me, baby?”

“I want you. Please,” she begs. The plea is added ammo to my already hard cock.

“This isn’t going to be like last time, Winter. I won’t just fuck you, baby. I’ll make love to you all night, preferably on a bed, and you won’t walk out telling me it meant nothing and that you regret it. Are we together on that?”

Fucking her last time felt good, but her walking out and telling me it meant nothing felt like getting a dagger to my back—unexpected and just as lethal to my body.

Nodding, her pupils dilated, I can almost taste the desire ebbing off of them as she responds, “Yes.” Yes, to making love on a bed. Kiss me, please?”

“Prove it to me,” I smirk.

The smile on her face wobbles. Like she’s disappointed I’m not taking her in all the ways my mangled brain desires.

“What?”

“Prove you want this just as much as I want this, baby.”

I let go of her hair, giving her space to process my words. I bank on her yelling at me or bolting out of here, but my woman surprises me by grabbing the hem of her t-shirt and pulling it over her head to show off the black lace push-up bra I bought her.

Slowly and tortuously, she reaches for the zip on her jeans, undoing it and taking them completely off her body.

The sight of her in the matching lacy set I got her sets my blood ablaze. The thought of anyone ever seeing her like this makes me consider mass murder.

“Good girl. Too fucking pretty, Winter. Get on the countertop.”

She holds back the sass and the saucy comeback written on her face, scurrying over to sit on the edge of the counter like a wild cat on heat.

The hunger stoking and stirring within me doesn’t let me do anything but take what I want.

I stand between her thighs, and it only takes Winter’s heated gaze for me to snap.

I lower my head, my lips brushing with Winter’s in a soft, tentative kiss that turns hungrier in a second. Rough and needing to ravage her, I swallow every fucking sound that escapes her lips, my hands roaming up her spine and tracing that line on her delicate back that leads north.

Winter, who is breathless and trembling in my arms by now, lets out a gasp when I unclasp her bra and free her aching tits. I don’t give her any warning as I rip the fabric from her chest, letting the material fall somewhere on the floor.

I don’t give her time to think about anything as I break our kiss, heading south to the hollow on her neck and slowly and finally dipping my nose between the valley of her breasts, which smells divine.

Taking one of her pink nipples in my mouth and sucking the little nub makes me greedier.

Watching Winter bite her bottom lip as her fingers disappear in my hair intensifies my need to be inside her in liquid fire.

Biting around one of her nipples and sucking the pain away, my right hand caresses her navel before disappearing between her thighs. I pull the lacy panties she has to the side, sliding two of my fingers inside her glistening core, which welcomes me in without a fight.

“Deacon…” Winter moans.

One thrust inside her, and her moans elevate to reckless screams.

Every time she moans, I thrust deeper inside her before pulling out and lightly slapping her cunt to submission.

The sounds of my lips latching around her nipples and my fingers working her core surround us like a cacophony of some of the best sounds I’ve ever heard.

Winter comes more than three times on my fingers.

I take her panties off her legs completely, kneeling to lick up her arousal and taste that damning taste that’ll forever be ingrained in my mind. Licking her cunt twice, I stand up, a smirk on my lips at the woman who looks at me like she’s ready to lay her entire world before me.

I’d do the same, too, in an instant.

“Deacon, I want to be yours,” she breathlessly whispers, and I bow so that my forehead is resting against hers and our strangled breaths are on one another’s.

I push a stray strand of dark brown hair from her face. Happiness seeps from my pores like grains of sand just from hearing her words.

“You are already mine, Winter. You always will be.”

“No. I mean, I want to be yours. Completely.”

The implication behind her words has me stiff, but I don’t show the surprise on my face as I blink at her, urging her to let the words I want to hear out.

“I want you to mark me, Deacon Cross.”

XXX

“Are you ready for me, baby?”

Winter’s answer is nothing but a sweet smile and a quick nod, “Yes.”

She hooks her hands around my neck, looking at me with expectant and eager eyes.

I don’t hesitate.

I don’t question myself like I did years ago when I took her virginity.

No one is coming between me and her.

I capture one of her nipples between my thumb and my index finger, pinching the little thing to pleasure.

My nose drags through the graceful column of Winter’s neck, her scent driving my fangs out.

She smells so good. Her whimpers and small moans sound so good to my ears.

And her neck? It calls to me like an electric charge.

The second my fangs touch her neck, Winter lets out an animalistic growl, I sink my fangs inside her, my cock moving inside her in one single thrust as well.

Winter doesn’t just scream. She calls my name like a saving grace.

The blood on my fangs as they retract from her neck is the most erotic thing I’ve ever seen in my life.

Being one with her, our minds almost becoming one, and my wolf feeling hers is catalytic.

I lick her mark as she sobs.

I’d never marked anyone before. When I was eighteen years old, my father taught me how to do it on the occasion I found my true mate.

I know there’s pain. Correction: I know she’s feeling the most intense pain of her entire life, and maybe some part of me is filled with doubts that I marked her and went overboard.

And yet, those doubts are completely erased as I taste her sweet blood off the mark. The intensity of it all solidifies my certainty that this is a primal act and a declaration of my ownership of her. It’s also a symphony of my devotion to her and our passion interwoven together.

My mate believes that, too, because her hands clutch my shoulders tighter, her body arching against mine.

“More.”

“Please…”

“I need…more, Deacon.”

I thrust deeper, the sounds of her cunt and her body accepting me echoing through my room like loud rock music.

Each thrust inside her cements something deeper between us. Every sob she lets out as I lick her mark over and over confirms we are bonded forever.

And the feverish kiss I give her when she clenches around me, triggering my orgasm, speaks one thing and one thing only.

Winter Cavanaugh is mine forever.