Page 37 of The Enemy to the Living (The Wild Hunt #2)

Asher

Q uinn groans when I shove my hands into his hair and tug his head back, trying to get the perfect angle.

I might have no wolf, but my blessing is reacting in the way I’d imagine he would—twisting and turning, an echo of mine mine mine repeating in the back of my head.

Quinn clutches at my hips and tries to drag me closer.

No doubt his wolf is riding him just as hard.

It might be even more insistent, seeing as they’ve only just lined up again.

My mate. Mine . I can hardly believe he’s here in my arms, but now that he is, I never intend to let him go again. I’ll do whatever the Huntsman requires to keep my blessing. I’ll beat any enemy—be they fae or not—to ensure I’ll come home to him again.

I’ll love him like the wolf I am. All-encompassing. Ever-enduring.

Quinn bites my lip as though he hears my very thoughts, then tears his mouth away, panting into the space between us. “Bed?”

“Yes.” I grab one of his hands and all but drag him up the stairs and into my bedroom.

The bed is messy, sheets rumpled, but neither of us cares about that.

Quinn yanks me back against him once we’re inside and slams his mouth over mine—he’s not to be a passive partner in any sense of the word, as far as I can tell.

Sure enough— “What do you want?” he asks, ghosting the question over my mouth before he adds, desperately, “I want everything , Asher. Everything.”

I kiss him harder, hands shaking with the desire to scrape my teeth down his jaw and leave bruises on his throat. They’ll heal quickly, but that only means I can leave more, later, and I’ll let him leave his own, let him mark up every inch of my skin that isn’t already covered in ink.

My blessing might not even heal them, if I’m careful. I can let everyone see that I’m his.

“I want you to fuck me.”

He leans back a little way, looking at me through narrowed eyes. “You want me to, or you think that’s what I’m ready for?”

I growl and tackle him onto the bed. It’s not too quick, and he laughs when I land on top of him and bury my face in his throat.

The mating bond will still work if we bite each other, though considering everything, I’m not sure what my blessing will do about that. Not that we’re doing it tonight. I want a lot from him, but that will wait until we have the patience for a longer discussion.

“Anything I say I want in here,” I tell him seriously, “is something I want. I respect you enough and trust you enough to make that choice for yourself, too.”

“And if I make a bad choice?” His voice is small.

I kiss him again—just a brief press of our lips. “Then we’ll fix it,” I say. “And I’ll check in with you when you want, and I’d hope you’d check in with me when we’re doing something new, too. But if I say I want something, then it’s just that, okay?”

Quinn smiles. “Yeah, okay. I want you to fuck me too, you know?”

“Oh?” I bite down on his jaw, licking over stubble and clean skin. “I suppose we could arrange that.”

“Asher!” He scoffs and rolls us so I’m the one on my back. Quinn straddles my hips and I reach up, revelling in the way my fingers travel up his stomach and over his chest, in the way he lets me do that.

“My mate,” I murmur, and Quinn gasps. When my eyes meet his, his are almost entirely silver.

“ Mate ,” he repeats—him and his wolf both. I shiver at the thought of the beast’s gaze on me. I can’t wait to see him shift again. He’s magnificent, and I feel a sliver of grief at the fact that I’ll never run with him that way, but it’s there and gone in an instant.

If I hadn’t given up my wolf, I’d never have met our mate at all. I think he wouldn’t begrudge me that. In the end, I don’t think he did begrudge the choice I made.

Quinn kisses me, shoving at my T-shirt, and our mouths part only so he can tug it over my head and toss it aside.

Something falls off the chest of drawers, but when he turns to look, I grab his face and kiss him again.

We laugh between kisses, between dragging off my trousers and then his borrowed jogging bottoms, and eventually I have him spread out before me, panting and needy and so perfect it almost hurts to look at him.

His eyes flutter shut when I close my fingers around his cock. He’s thick, if not as long as I am, and I make my strokes slow and deliberate.

“A-Asher.”

“Let me play, darling.”

“Fuck.” He groans and tips his head back. I slide my free hand up the inside of one pale thigh and Quin shivers, letting his legs fall further apart. “More, please.”

“Can’t you wait?” I murmur. I kiss him, teasing his lower lip until he pants and groans again. “Wait to come until you’re inside me?”

His eyes flare wide, the iris almost swallowed whole as his pupil expands. “Yes.”

“Then be patient. Please?”

Quinn groans, this time with a hint of amusement. “You’re gonna kill me.”

“Not yet.”

He huffs and I kiss my way down his throat, then his shoulder. Quinn’s breath hitches when I speed up my strokes, but they’re still fairly even, and he knows he won’t get relief yet.

I meant what I said. I want him to come inside of me. That can be our first time together.

“Reach over for me,” I murmur. “Lube’s in the bedside table.”

Quinn realises I’m not about to stop touching his cock, so he twists and awkwardly drags the drawer almost all the way out. He swears as he fumbles about inside, then makes a triumphant sound in the back of his throat, tossing it onto the duvet.

“Thank you, darling.”

Quinn flushes. Colour sweeps through his cheeks and down his chest, and I kiss over his heart, then the spot where I know he can feel our mating bond. It’s growing stronger with every touch, though it won’t be truly unbreakable until we perform the mating rites themselves.

We’ll do that. I have every intention of doing that. Just not tonight. I need his pack to be used to the idea of me, first. I need Quinn to be used to the idea.

As it is, I reach for the lube, but Quinn snatches it up again before I can. “I want to…”

“You do?”

He gives me a determined nod, then gasps when I let go of his cock. I kiss the corner of his mouth in apology. “Where do you want me?”

“Here,” he says, pushing up onto his elbows. “On your back.”

I haul him up, which makes him laugh again, and we switch places with a kind of earnest clumsiness neither of us usually possesses.

Quinn kisses me once I have my back against the pillows.

His fingers toy with the hair at my nape and I slide my hands down his muscled back, making him groan when I grab his arse.

“Could still switch things up,” he says.

I stick out my lower lip, teasing. “You don’t want to give me what I want?”

Quinn snorts. He kisses me again, then grabs my hips and pulls me a little way down the bed. I haven’t been celibate since joining the Hunt—I wouldn’t say any of us have—but it’s been a while since I indulged, and my heart skips a beat as anticipation curls in my stomach.

My eyes track Quinn’s every movement as he flips the cap on the lube and drizzles it over his fingers.

He growls low in his chest when I spread my legs wider.

Oh yes, we’ll try this the other way around, and soon.

But this is perfect, too. I relax as soon as Quinn circles my hole, rubbing over it teasingly before he pushes the first finger inside.

One turns to two quickly—he’s careful, and I’m so keyed up that the burn is almost instantly overtaken by pleasure.

Quinn teases his own cock with his other hand, thumb flicking over the head after every lazy stroke. I push my hips back impatiently. He smirks and adds a third finger, though I’m sure that’s overkill.

Doesn’t matter. Nothing does except the feel of him, the scent of him, the sound of our panting breaths in the increasingly lightening room.

Quinn lets go of his cock when he curls his fingers and finds my prostate.

I groan aloud, back arching, and he surges up and over me, taking my mouth in another brain-melting kiss.

“I’m ready,” I whisper against his lips. My hands are shaking with it where they run over his skin. “Don’t make me beg.”

I’m not against the idea. Quinn shakes his head all the same. “Never,” he says back, just as softly, then pulls his fingers free.

I only have a second to mourn the loss. He’s as impatient as I am now when he grabs me by the hips again.

I hardly have time to catch my breath. His cock presses against me, then in and in and in, stretching me wider, filling me up.

I throw one arm around his shoulders and wrap my legs around his hips.

I want to be as close to him as I can possibly get.

“Asher,” Quinn moans. His wolf is back, silver shining at the edge of his irises. “ Asher .”

“I know, darling,” I say, though I can hardly string the words together myself. “Move.”

He kisses me when he does, and my first desperate cry is muffled against his mouth. Good as it feels, it takes us a moment to find the right rhythm—probably not helped by the way I’m clinging to him, truth be told—and when Quinn’s cock hits my prostate, I tear my mouth away to cry out in pleasure.

“Fuck,” he mutters when I clench hard around him.

“Fuck me .”

“I’m trying,” Quinn says, voice tapering off into a laugh, even as he keeps moving. I don’t know how experienced he is, and right now, I don’t care. He feels perfect—better than any man I’ve ever fucked because I know he’s all mine, and I’m his, too.

Of course all good things have to end, and I’m surprised by how long we hold out. I dig my heels into Quinn’s lower back as he moves faster, and when he bites my throat, I’m certain his wolf is rippling under his skin.

“God, Asher,” he murmurs. “I’m gonna…”

“Yeah?” I press our sweaty foreheads together and when I capture his lower lip between my teeth, he whimpers.

“Yeah.”

“Do it, pup. Mark me. Inside and out.”