Gage gently moved one hand to her legs, stroking her skin up and down with supreme affection. He felt the heat between her legs rising again and continued along her bare legs as he spoke.
“You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to,” Gage whispered. “Please never forget that. I only want what you want, my darling.”
Rylee responded by pulling him by the collar on top of her, their lips crashing together. Gage’s heart was hammering in his chest when she sat them up assertively, touching his chest with extreme need.
“The bedroom is just down the hall,” Rylee said.
Gage took her hand, and they went into the bedroom. Everything was dark beyond the streetlights that flickered in the windows. They undressed slowly, with Gage helping Rylee out of her dress and kissing every exposed portion of her skin like she was made of honey.
When they were both naked, Rylee backed onto the bed, pulling Gage on top of her. Her eyes were like flares as he entered her, making her gasp as if it were the first time she had felt him inside of her.
They made love slowly, holding onto each other tightly in the dark. Rylee wrapped her legs around Gage’s waist as his thrusts flowed in and out, and she met him with her aching desire succinctly. They both reached a climax one after the other, with Rylee crying out his name with his head pulled into her neck and Gage spilling inside her as he whispered into her ear.
They fell asleep soon after, with Gage spooning her after he kissed every inch of her body as if he feared he would soon forget it. The last part he kissed was her mouth as they fell into slumber together. The wind whistled against the windows for a time, acting as melody to lull them into the world beyond their own.
ELEVEN
RYLEE
As the days slipped into months, Rylee found herself settling into a pattern. She enjoyed her time with Gage a few times a week, and even though her passion for him kept burning brighter and hotter, she wasn’t prepared to make the relationship more serious.
She knew that Cassie and Sydney had found true love at Midnight Mates. Seeing her best friends getting married didn’t encourage Rylee to get closer to Gage at all.
Rylee liked her life with the busy days at school surrounded by bright, eager young faces and letting loose on the weekend strapped into her leather outfits. She liked coming home to a quiet house afterward, and as much as she enjoyed her time with Gage, she didn’t feel the need to make him a permanent fixture in her life.
Her craving for him never waned, though. Rylee thought of him several times a day, and her body burned just at the slightest mention of his name. She couldn’t wait to see him if they had been apart for a few days. Rylee felt addicted to him somehow…she seemed to lose all her reason around him.
She never asked him to move in with her, though. What if she did, and the craving for him went away? What if they couldn’t stand each other after a solid twenty-four hours together?
If anything, attending her friends' weddings made her even more cautious around Gage. To her relief, Gage seemed to feel the same way because he never mentioned getting serious. Rylee was perfectly happy with everything staying exactly the same.
It had been a little over two months since she and Gage had first met, and Cassie and Sydney had both gotten married. The Friday night girls’ nights had been derailed for a while as the girls organized their new lives, but now they were back on track. Cassie and Sydney were showing off their rings and talking about their weddings while Maeve and Rylee listened intently…or as best they could over Draco’s smashing beats.
Rylee looked around the club, the whole place wall to wall with writhing bodies. They had a small table up in the VIP section, and it was slightly less crowded there, but the dance floor was utterly packed. Even though she used to be one of the people jammed in there, quite happily squirming around like a hand-caught eel, right now, it looked like extreme torture.
“It’s all fine now, though,” Sydney said. “Wedded bliss, you might be in. But that first encounter with the pack was freaky as fuck, though. What’s up with their strict rules on couples making it official?”
“I know, right,” Cassie said, her eyes darkening. “I didn’t need the threat of his death to prompt me into a lifelong relationship. I knew I wanted to be with him.”
“Too right,” Sydney said. “At least you went out there willingly. I got fucking kidnapped!”
“What?” Rylee asked, alarmed. She’d heard the brief versions of the story, but this was news to her.
“Oh, there we are, having breakfast, waking up on a wonderful morning. Draco’s getting his memory back. Everything looks awesome. Then we get thrown into trucks by goons and carted out of town.”
“Leadership challenge,” Cassie said. “If the alpha finds his mate, he must claim her or be exiled.”
“Whoa,” Maeve said, taking a long sip of her cocktail. “Hectic.”
“You have no idea,” Sydney said. “It’s not just a fight. If they refuse to submit, they fight until they die.”
“What?” Rylee shrieked. Cassie nodded sagely.
“They just go out into the arena, prepared to never come back. If they don’t claim their mate, that’s their only choice.”
“But it’s really quite sweet, actually,” Sydney said. “The reason why things got so bad is that both of them refused to coerce us that way. They wanted us to choose. It got really fucked up at the end, but I was always going to choose Draco.”
“Just like I will always choose Talon,” Cassie whispered, her chin in her hand and a dreamy look in her eye.