The word purred into her consciousness. That inner voice, soft and humble, tucked it into her brain like a lover’s goodnight kiss, and Della let it be. Maybe not forever, but for now.
The pulsations were hardly a faint echo before Cal was on his feet, gathering her up and lifting her off the rock as if she weighed nothing. She snapped her eyes open, arms flailing to his neck for stability. “Cal,” his name grated past her panting, parched lips.
“Hold on.” With her legs wrapped around his waist, he braced her back against a large tree. Well off the ground, her thighs stretched wide over his broad abdomen, and she looked down, loving the raw, unashamed vision of her glossy curls tickling the ridged contours of his belly.
Cal cupped one hand on her ass as he fumbled with his pants, freeing his cock from its prison. It sprang up, nudging against her, hard and hot and insistent. Della circled her hips, caressing the tip with her core, smearing it with slick. Moaning, Cal slumped forward, resting his forehead against Della’s as if having trouble staying upright.
“You want it?” He breathed against her mouth, dick nudging gently between her lower lips. “You want my cock, Omega?”
Needing more of him, she ran her hands over his cheeks, treasuring the gentle abrasion against her palms. She grazed her lips across his, mingling their shared air. “Not before you kiss me.”
After one deep, shuddering breath, Cal flexed his hips upward, thrusting into her body as his mouth crashed against hers. His lips were hard and searching, crashing into her like a breaking storm, and she met him with the same wild vigor. He tasted like coffee and sun and Mexican hot chocolate mixed with leftover morsels of her own flavor hidden in the recesses of his mouth. The taste sang in her veins, vibrant and colorful and so fuckingalive.Alive in a way she’d never thought she’d feel again.
She drank him up as his rigid length drove forward in long, careful, steady thrusts. Pulling almost all the way out before sliding deep again and again, luring her body back on another journey, another path up toward the peak. All the while, he fervently kissed her, never letting up in his intensity.
“Your lips, Della, oh mygod.” His voice cracked, a sign of how affected he was by this, and Della dissolved completely. Everything around them ceased to exist—the scratch of the bark against her back, the rustle of the wind in the trees, the bird calls greeting the morning, even the cramps in her legs and the strain from being pinned between an enormous tree and an enormous man. All of it faded away, leaving her aware of only his taste in her mouth, the feel of his tongue as it delved between her lips, his hand’s groping clasp as it snaked under her shirt and found a breast, his hips rocking between her thighs, and the escalating joy of fullness and impending release.
Yes,that inner voice sang,give it to him. Give Alphaeverything.
Della wedged a hand between them, combing through her curls to add pressure to the spot she needed it. With every hard thrust, his abdomen brushed against the back of her hand, turning her on and intoxicating her with the simple, exquisite feel of skin on skin.
The ecstasy soared. “More,” she said, her free hand dropping to his waist, urging him tighter in an unsubtle demand. “I need more.”
His lips pulled free of hers, their shared breaths slamming together in the narrow space. “You got no fucking idea what you’re doing to me, do you?” he said. With a massive heave, he jostled her higher, changing the angle of his strokes, coming into her faster and somehow even harder, his cock touching a different spot that cranked everything up another level. “No idea how fucking perfect this hot pussy feels on my dick.”
Della’s head bounced against the tree trunk, his words tumbling over her like a filthy waterfall, hauling her under and deeper into their union. Sounds left her lips, a deranged mix ofoh godandfuck me. Della whimpered, her climax skating on the edge where anything could tip her over. One stroke, two, maybe three? One small word or some extra caress, and she would fly into a thousand million pieces, spinning off into infinity.
As if he knew, Cal licked up her throat and then nibbled his way down, his teeth finding their way to the claiming spot high on her shoulder at the base of her neck. “You wanna be mine?” he said, a taunt buried in his tone. He nipped the spot in a gentle tease, biting down but not enough to break the skin. “You already are, you know.”
You want it. Tell him you need it. Let him claim you.
The voice commanded, but Della slammed her teeth together, feeling like her soul was being ripped in two. God, she wanted it, yet at the same time, she didn’t. She wanted to fall over but also hang onto this delicious, terrible edge for the rest of her life. She wanted none of it, all of it, and so much of it that she couldn’t contain any of it.
Cal’s voice brought her back, vibrating against her skin. “I wantyou, all of you. Let go, Della, I’ve got you, and I’m not letting go.”
The sun burst from behind a cloud, blinding everything as her insides went incandescent. Cal closed his mouth over hers, swallowing her scream as he kissed her through the final strokes he needed—one, two,three—to come tumbling into free fall along with her. They clutched at each other, all grasping hands and clenched muscles, erasing space between their bodies. His lips, soft but firm, hovered away from hers, parted as he breathed through his stuttering, post-orgasmic exhalations.
Time passed. Maybe a minute, maybe ten. A cloud edged in front of the sun, and their small corner of the forest dimmed once again. Della’s head lolled against the trunk, her movements sluggish like her body was encased in honey. A glossy, golden sheen colored her vision, Cal’s sweat-glazed skin burnished and gilded and so beautiful she needed to squint. He thought she wasbeautiful? He was a work of art.
Below, the swell of his knot pressurized, not kicking off another climax as it had the night before but spurring something even more dangerous to expand inside her: emotion. It roiled inside her chest, dark, and potent and impossible to ignore.
She’d come so close. So close to asking him (demanding him!) to finish it. To sink his teeth in and be done with it once and for all. The words had teetered on her lips, “Take me. Claim me. I’m your Omega. Make me yours.”Yet some morsel of self-preservation held them in check.
She wanted him, maybe even needed him, but she also needed to go home. Morris Hill needed her, and once she surrendered to his claim, there’d be no going back.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Cal
Arms filled with a fresh load of firewood, Cal climbed the narrow ridge back to the cave. The knowledge that Della waited inside filled his chest to bursting with warmth. He knew she’d stayed where he left her because, for one reason, he could pick out her scent anywhere, and for another, he’d kept the cave within eye and earshot as he’d gathered the wood.
Cal lowered his neck to pass through the cave entrance. “I’m going to head back and check the fishing net. Do you want to—”
The scene before him ate the rest of his sentence. Della stood in the middle of the cave, face concealed in a heavy blanket, while every other piece of clothing and bedding was strewn about in a chaotic rummage pile. He stood, arrested in dismay, as Della snuffled a long, highly audible inhale of the blanket surrounding her face.
“Better,” came the muted voice, “but still a little off.”
He shifted from foot to foot, working to make sense of it all. After fucking her against a tree in the early morning (which he highly recommended and needed to do again sometime very soon), he’d somehow finagled the blanket and laid them down, all the while laughing together about the silly awkwardness of trying to move around while attached at the crotch. Not an easy task, but worth it to spend the next quarter hour stroking Della’s long hair and chatting about what bird calls they recognized in the aviary chatter. She’d been quiet, then. Quiet, but present with him in a new way, like something righted itself inside her. He didn’t know what to make of it but lapped up those serene moments like a kitten with milk.