She shrieked. He did it again, slow and powerful, and then started to speed up once more, but this time the thrusts were deliberate and forceful.
It couldn’t be contained. His love and his desire twined around each other as he moved inside of his mate. And she clawed at his back, thrust her hips along with him, and finally shuddered over the edge and came.
Cal’s vision whited out at the desperate clutching of her muscles. His own orgasm spilled out of him without any warning, following immediately on hers as though they couldn’t be separated. His muscles shivered, pleasure coursing through his body and overwhelming him with joy.
When he came back to himself, he was wrapped up in Lillian’s body, their limbs all entangled, smelling like sex and each other.
Cal thought it might be nice if he never had to move again.
Lillian’s eyes eventually blinked open. The crystal-blue was surrounded by damp lashes. Her pupils were enormous. “Wow,” she husked, laughing a little.
“Take that as approval, then?” Cal asked, raising his eyebrows.
She laughed a little more. “Approval is a bit weak. Awe, maybe. I’ve never—I’ve never felt like that. Ever.”
Cal reached up and caught a rogue tendril of hair, smoothing it back so that it wasn’t falling into her eyes. “Me, neither.”
Her delicate eyebrows went up. “Oh, really? This isn’t just another evening for you?”
There was a teasing note in her voice. Cal smiled. “Nope. One of a kind.”
Her eyes closed for a minute. “One of a kind,” she whispered. The words resonated with longing and the echoes of loneliness.
Cal pulled her close, tucking her head against his shoulder. “You’re the one,” he murmured into her ear. “All mine.”
This time, her laugh sounded like part of a sob. “All yours,” she agreed. “And—and you’re all mine.”
That was something to hear. His mate wasn’t just someone who belonged to him...but that he belonged to her. He thought about being Lillian’s. Lillian’s mate, Lillian’s leopard...Lillian’s husband. All hers.
It brought a deep, slow pleasure into his chest. A sense of love and safety that he’d never imagined for himself.
It was what he wanted to give to her, of course. But it looked like she was giving it to him, too. And that was more than he’d ever thought he’d have.
“All yours.” He could hear his leopard’s rumble in his voice.
It was right. It was all so right. Cal’s arms tightened around his mate and he held her as her breathing slowly evened out into sleep.
***
Lillian was nervous.
She and Cal had arrived at Glacier Park early, an hour or so before the snow leopards had planned to meet. Cal had told her that in addition to Teri and Zach, there was Zach’s brother Joel and his mate Nina, and two other couples, Grey and Alethia and Jeff and Leah.
“Leah isn’t a leopard,” Cal told her. “But she’s part of the pack just the same.”
That was a bit reassuring. Lillian thought that being the only human faced with a whole crowd of shifters would be nerve-wracking as hell. This way, at least there’d be one other non-leopard there.
Maybe she wouldn’t feel like so much of an intruder, that way.
As much as Cal and Teri had assured her that it was normal for shifters to form quick bonds like this, Lillian couldn’t help but suspect that it would take a while for her to be welcomed. After all, this was a group of people who had to hide from most of the world, who shared a magical, strange secret. Who had a whole separate form—with a separate identity, perhaps?
It was something she could never quite be part of. And sharing it would’ve made them quite close, surely.
But right now, Cal was distracting her from the prospect of the meeting by showing her around some of his favorite spots in the Park.
Lillian had been to Glacier before, of course, since she’d grown up right next to it. There had been endless class trips back in school, and she’d visited one or two times on her own. But Lew hadn’t been very outdoorsy, and somehow even after they’d split, she’d forgotten that this gorgeous natural wonder was practically on her doorstep.
Now, she stood on a rocky crag overlooking an endless mountain lake, and she thought she might never catch her breath again. The sunrise lit everything on fire, leaving her feeling as though she and Cal were alone here at the beginning of the world.