“But...” Fight dripped out of her drop by drop, squeezed out by the low rumble, until only a vague outline of her arguments remained. “But... you can’t drag me away from my home in the middle of the night and expect me to say, ‘Oh yes, please, Alpha, that’s a great idea, Alpha, thank you, Alpha.’”
Yes, that’s right,that irritating inner voice rejoiced.He’s your Alpha,it said, as if to mock her for inadvertently giving voice to her deepest, darkest secret. Sarcasm or not, it didn’t matter because now the words had left her lips, and there was no taking them back.
Pupils blown to black, Cal’s muscled chest bunched and heaved with each raggedy breath, and things got even worse. That inner voice, summoned from its shameful depths, took possession and ran through Della’s fracturing self-control.Look at him. Alpha’s big and strong and beautiful. You don’t need to worry.Unable to stop herself, Della listened. Knees weakening, she indulged in a long, visual drink of the Alpha, standing tall and assured, a wild creature at home in the wild surroundings.
He curled his full lips. “Say that again.”
Heat billowed low in her belly. “I need to go back.”
“Not that part.” He looked her over seductively, and Della’s stomach tightened to a near cramp, locked in his unwavering hazel spotlight. “Call me Alpha again.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Della
Della’s pulse ticked upward to what surely must be a dangerous level. “I was being sarcastic,” she managed to croak.
Long legs ate up the distance between the water and her seat on the rock, all the while making that deephmming noise that wove through the air and tickled her in places it had no business tickling. She tilted her chin up, his body filling her gaze as he stalked closer.
Hmm. He made the noise again, roughed up and veering uncomfortably closer to that infernal growl. With a final lurch, he invaded her space, immediately burying his nose in the crook of Della’s neck. A surprised squeal left her lips, and she made to jerk away, the movement stopped by Cal snaking his all-too-quick arms around her waist.
Sharp teeth slid along the thin skin of her neck. “But it rolled right off those luscious lips, didn’t it?” His rumbling voice sent her eyelids into a spasming flutter. “Say, ‘please Alpha’ again, and I’ll give you what you want.”
Flashes of the night prior played in her mind like a film. Every sordid minute writhing on the cave floor grabbed her like a giant hook, as if to drag her out of this moment and back into the memory.
She was losing it, absolutely losing it.
A fresh burst of his scent exploded through her senses and hauled her to the present. Coffee and cinnamon and masculine musk blended together. It fused and synthesized to become something altogether new, something uniquely, exquisitelyCalthat activated some hidden switch she’d never known she had.
“Please, Alpha,” she mouthed the words, barely loud enough to cross the spare inches between her lips and his ear. “I want to go home.”
Cal’s hands flexed around her middle, holding her in place as his nose slid up the sensitive skin behind her ear. He inhaled loudly, breathing her in as she did him. What did he scent when he filled his nose with her?
She didn’t have time to ask, as the next second, he freed that unrestrained growl. Della’s lower belly throbbed hard, the blood flowing to her swelling sex like a mini climax of its own. A trickle of slick wet the blanket she’d fastened into a skirt, highlighting the vacant space demanding its own attention.
“You’ve said that.” Quickly and purposefully, he untucked the blanket from her waist and spread it out beneath her bottom. Immediately his hands were on her skin, rough and assured andperfect. Thumbs rubbing circles on her inner thighs, his magical hazel eyes skipped up to hers, and the lustful yearning in them stole her breath. Was she looking at his desire or a reflection of her own? “Is that the only thing my little queen wants?”
The circling thumbs inched closer to her core, the swelling, achy part of her body centering all her attention. Della’s reason shuffled closer to a cliff edge, scrabbling for a foothold of sense to withstand this spiraling insanity. She knew her task, they’d been talking about going back to Morris Hill, and now a few simple caresses and a near-growl had her ready to spread her legs and beg for all the pleasure he’d surely give her if she asked.
Last night she retained a distant hope of resistance, but today she knew how this went, how thisfelt, howhecould make her feel, and there was no more denying it. Later, later they would need to figure it out. The return to Morris Hill and the question of the claiming and all that. But, right now? She was here, in this moment, and those worries couldn’t touch her.
In answer, Della shifted her weight, spreading her knees and propping her feet up on the rock. Making her decision, she exposed herself without a single ounce of reserve. If she were going to allow herself this incredible thing, she would reach out and take it with her whole self. His heated gaze turned molten, and a strange, singular power tangled alongside her mounting desire. Since he’d stolen her away, she’d been at his mercy, but in this, he was very much at hers.
“If I’m the queen,” she whispered, “you should be on your knees.”
Throat bobbing with a low groan, his eyelids stuttered closed and then opened again. Slowly, he dropped to one knee and then the other, his gaze never faltering from hers as he dipped his head to hungrily mouth along the length of her inner thigh. Della’s muscles shook at the stimulation on her energized flesh, lost in the way he looked at her like she was his doom and salvation all at once. Her heart pounded in a visceral salute, an acknowledgment of the same.
“Goddamn, Della,” he breathed, gently sinking his teeth into the flesh of her thigh and then licking the unbroken skin. “You show me your puffy, wet pussy anytime you want, and I’ll be on my fucking knees in a second. Makes my mouth water just looking at you.”
With another low moan, Cal brought his mouth to her heated sex. The reaction to his touch was swift and strong, and her back arched so hard the muscle cramped. His lips and tongue moved not with tentative, testing, or teasing strokes but with a full-bodied commitment to devour everything she’d offered up to him with appreciation and ravish. Staking a path through her sex, he glided over and alongside her clit, winding her coil of pleasure tighter and tighter. Head fallen back between her shoulder blades, Della’s closed lids shimmered with rosy warmth as the sun climbed higher. It was heady and luxurious and indulgent and perfect.
“Oh shit,” she breathed, the sensation spiraling too soon, too fast, too hard to control. Fingernails scraped against the rough surface of the rock. She wanted this to last but didn’t, butdid,but didn’t, butcouldn’t.
A large Alpha hand spanned the soft flesh of her belly, his fingers spread wide, holding her in place. Della groped for that hand, needing more of his skin on hers to moor her to earth as her connections frayed and snapped with every wrenching, building second. Images flew through her mind: hazel eyes glimmering with a grudging approval as she fumbled a knife against his throat, his face contorted and beautiful as he’d taken her body, his shadow cast large on the wall like a hulking, mythical, feral beast as he surged into her and delivered the final peak of his exquisite knot. No longer afraid of it, her body shuddered as her release neared, thinking of nothing but that final moment of all-consuming fullness.
Waves of pleasure crashed. Her thighs closed around his cheeks, holding him against her. Time seemed to stop as her body evolved within itself, her cells and very essence rearranging to accommodate this new reality, this new way of being, of surrender and acceptance and electric connection. Her lungs became a vacuum, her breaths suspended between inhale and exhale, and shards of sunlight splintered into constellations of stars. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think, couldn’t cry, argue, rage, or do anything other than combust and reform anew.
Omega.