He growled in agreement, male pride swelling inside him like a tidal wave.
She was his.
Again.
Still.
Always . . .
It was that last thought, the lie of it, that stuck him like a barb. Always wasn't theirs anymore. No matter how much he wanted it to be true.
And it had been unfair of him to take this from Mira - her pleasure, her surrender, her undeserved fidelity and affection - knowing that it wouldn't last. It couldn't last, not with the grim future that awaited him.
But it was hard to feel the dread of that fact right now. Hard to feel anything but pure masculine satisfaction as he held her sweat-sheened, naked beauty against him and reveled in the pleasure she was taking from him.
He kissed her as the last of her orgasm ebbed, caressed her pretty face as her bliss-drugged gaze lifted up to meet his amber eyes. When he spoke, it was with a gravelly depth that sounded more animal than man, even to his own ears. "I knew we'd end up like this, naked together in my bed."
He wasn't proud of it. But he sure as hell couldn't muster much regret.
Part of the reason he'd held out so long with her in the first place, before his life took the detour he was currently on, was that he knew giving in to his desire for Mira - consummating it - would only make him crave her that much more. Loving her like this only made him want to taste her. To bind her to him. Things he had no right to want anymore.
Years ago he'd resisted his temptation for her with a rigid will he could hardly fathom now. What a fool he'd been to hold her at a distance, to push her away. Now all he wanted was to keep her close. He couldn't keep her close enough.
He gave a slow thrust of his hips, groaning at the delicious, wet friction of their bodies. He caressed her face, brushed a damp lock of hair from her forehead. "I knew when the call came in from my crew at Ackmeyer's place, and I made the decision to bring you here . . . I knew if I saw you again, I would not be able to resist touching you, kissing you." He pressed his lips to her brow, tracing his thumb over the outline of the Breedmate mark that rode at the hairline of her left temple. "And I knew that if I let that happen, if I touched you, kissed you, there'd be no stopping me from eventually getting inside you again too."
Mira's fingers were twined in his hair, cupping the back of his skull. "I don't want you to stop." She pulled him down for a fevered kiss that made his whole body go taut and electric. She moved beneath him, rocking into him with ungentle demand. Her kiss ended with a nip of her teeth on his lower lip. Her breath was hot against his mouth, hungry. "Don't stop, Kellan."
Ah, Christ.
He couldn't have stopped now if his life depended on it.
He took her mouth in a hard claiming, at the same time driving his cock deep and slow, filling her with all of him, seating his thick shaft to the hilt. Her gasp spurred him on, her soft mewls making his arousal knot ever tighter, each thrust a possessive, hungered thing.
He swept his hand down the length of one smooth thigh, bending her at the knee and bringing her leg up onto his shoulder. He rolled his pelvis against her in another deep push, his tempo rising, racing to match the fierce beat of his pulse.
"I can't get deep enough inside you," he snarled against her mouth. "I want all of you."
"Yes," she whispered, holding on to him as he drove harder, lost to everything but the feel of her sheath wrapped around him like a glove, her delicate muscles clenching him with sweet ripples of pressure.
He touched her cheek, wanting to see her face in the moment he exploded inside her. It was roaring up on him quickly, a coil of heat at the base of his spine.
Mira turned her head within the cradle of his palm and pressed a kiss there. The tip of her pink tongue darted out, moist and hot against his skin. He pumped harder, about to lose all control. And then she turned her head and took his thumb into her mouth. She sucked him deep, the pad of her tongue cushioning him, cleaving to him, just as her tight channel clutched and suckled the rigid length of his cock.
Kellan thrust with frenzied abandon, the knot of pain and pleasure building, ratcheting up with each heavy throb of his pulse. Mira didn't let go of his thumb. She swirled her tongue around him, her eyes locked on his as he slid in and out of her mouth, shuddering deep in his bones at the feel of her blunt little incisors grazing his skin. Then she closed her teeth, clamping onto him in a bite that triggered every sensory switch in his body.
Kellan roared as his orgasm erupted.
He couldn't hold back, feeling the wild rush of his seed shooting through him, filling her. He came hard and fast and frenzied. The force of his release staggered him, left him shaking as he spilled himself deep inside Mira's hot, wet sheath.
As he came, he knew a sudden sense of relief that regardless of how wrong it was to be taking his pleasure with her, at least he wouldn't be planting a child in Mira. No, that would take more than the pure, reckless impulse that put him between her thighs today. It would also take the fertile time of a crescent moon phase and the simultaneous exchange of blood between a male of his kind and a woman bearing the Breedmate birthmark.
Thoughts of blood and bonding were dangerous things. Especially now, when Kellan's fevered gaze was already drawn to the artery ticking like a caged butterfly in the side of Mira's delicate throat. Beneath the intoxicating scent of Mira's skin, dewy with clean sweat and the musky perfume of sex, Kellan's Breed senses caught the faint lily sweetness of her blood.
His hunger to drink from her - to pierce his fangs into the smooth white column of her neck and bind her to him as his mate for life - returned with the force of a gale storm, almost too much to bear.
"Shit," he muttered, closing his eyes and turning his head away from the temptation.
Mira's gentle hands brought him back, her palms framing his face. But her eyes held a note of sadness. Confusion in her softly murmured words. "You never wanted to take that last step with me. You never wanted to bond with me."