His seed felt scalding hot, marking me, claiming me, as he ejaculated and, sure enough, as soon as he was done, his hands went to the mess, smearing it all over me and into my skin. Ben sucked in breaths, growling to himself as he marked me as his, before grinning down at me.
“Don’t want you to wash this off,” he said.
“I need to get clean if we’re to do anything else,” I insisted, “but… Your scent marks will deepen with frequent application, right?”
“You want that, beta?” My chin was tipped up so I met his eyes. “You want my cum inside you, all over you? And then when you’re dripping with me, to the point no one will mistake you for anything but mine…” His fingers tilted my head to the side, revealing my neck. “I’ll mark you. Sink my teeth into your flesh as you struggle to take my knot, then, when you snap around me, I’ll make you mine.”
“Promise?”
It was meant to be a cheeky retort, but instead it came out a breathy plea.
“I’ve got you, beta. I keep telling you that. I’ve got everything you need.”
And with that, he snatched up the soap and dropped to his knees, working quickly to ensure I was clean from head to toe.
Chapter 45
“Stay here with me.”
By the time we walked back to the bedroom, the worries were beginning to seep back in. That’s the life of a mother, right? Everything, literally everything, gets shoved to one side for our kids. We’d cracked open Evie’s door to check she was sleeping still, his hands rubbing over my shoulders as we watched her, until finally he’d drawn me away.
“Stay with me,” he repeated as we walked up the hall, not meaning it in a physical sense, but a mental one. He wanted this, this moment, to steal it, snatch it for ourselves while our daughter slept and the rest of the world felt like it was against us. So when he drew me inside the room, I tried my level best to stay right there in the moment.
In the feel of his mouth and the scratch of his stubble. In the ragged, sobbing hiss of his breath each time he kissed me, the gasps between them getting shorter and shorter until we couldn’t bear to pull away again. Glued to the other, our hands skated across each other’s bodies, familiar and unfamiliar and all the more tantalising for the contrast. And we gripped hard, linking fingers, locking our arms, our legs tight, as if someone at any moment would snatch the other away. But there were no knocks at the door, no one bursting inside the room to announce yet more fucking drama. There was only us.
After he’d sated himself on my kisses, Ben pulled his mouth away and stared down at me from where we were sitting with me straddling him on the bed. He said, “I love you, Lily. I think I did the moment we met, but the bullshit of what I thought I was looking for, what I thought I needed, got in the way. I’ve been kicking my arse since I found out about Evie, for not being here, not sharing this with you, but… that feeling, it’s a familiar one. I didn’t want to leave that morning.”
I let out a hopeless little laugh.
“I didn’t want you to go.”
“I wish I fucking hadn’t.” A kiss, another kiss. “I wish I’d had the balls then to do what I know I need to do now.” His kisses grew longer, softer, becoming meandering things. “Last chance, baby. I don’t want to give you the chance to say no, but I know I have to. Tell me you want this, want me.”
This was always what I’d wanted to hear, I realised, something loosening inside me. He was right, a small part of myself I never let see the light had wanted it back then too. It was hard to know what it would’ve been like if he’d done it. If he’d thrown all his family bullshit to one side and just claimed me. What kind of relationship would we have had either together and on our own in the city, or worse, dragged back to his home town to face his family’s wrath? In some ways, I was lucky it’d take us this long to work things out, because now we could go forward from a place of strength.
“I want you,” I said, my voice shaking with the effort of forming those words. “I wantus, Ben. I always have. There’s been no one who’s ever got anywhere close to my heart, not like you did. Part of me was pining like a little bitch, waiting for the day you’d come back or for when someone else would step in and take your place.”
“I shouldn’t be happy about that,” he said, with a grin. “You’ve been lonely.”
“God, yes.”
“You’ve had to do all of this on your own.”
I couldn’t reply to that one, verbally, my throat closing up as his words hit me hard, reminding me of just what I had faced and still needed to.
“But you’re not doing that on your own anymore. I’m here. I’ll always be here.”
And with that, he laid me down on the bed, proceeding to map my entire body with his lips, delighting in all the ways I responded to him, teasing me more and more until finally I snapped.
“I need you to claim me, Ben. I’ve been really bloody patient right up until… oh!” He buried his face between my legs and my hands slapped down on his head. “God, yes. Just like that.”
“Need you all slick and wet to take me. Now I know why I was blessed to have a beta mate.” He growled into my inner thigh. “It forces me to take my time, to taste you.”
And taste he did, with just little kitten licks at first, drawing a sigh from me at every one, but he couldn’t maintain that for long. His tongue burrowed deeper, grew more insistent, lapping at me until I was squirming and then his lips closed around my clit.
“Fuck, Ben…!”
Two fingers forced inside me, stretching me, making sure I’d be able to take him without pain, but I needed no such consideration. The rough shove of them was everything I needed, and yet not enough. He wouldn’t relent though, pushing another finger in until I was well and truly straining, then curling them up and pressing hard against the upper wall of my cunt.