“And?”
Chapter 17
And?
Her pulse rapped against his skull, the glands in his neck strained beyond the point of pain. Drink. Take. Stop denying yourself. His entire body was pulled tight as a bowstring, his animal nature ordering him to take the sacrifice that was being offered. And goddammit, he’d denied himself too long. Too often. Being in close quarters with his Mary day after day, night after night, had worn his control down to nothing. There was no willpower left for this final test. The ultimate test of being seduced by the girl he wanted more than life or afterlife itself.
Was it possible she was really considering staying with him?
Giving up the things she wanted most…just for Tucker?
With every rub of her tongue, every tightening of her thighs around his waist, every loving scrape of her fingernails on his scalp, he believed her a little bit more. And more. Until he was forgetting why this was a bad idea in the first place. With his body in the driver’s seat, he lost sight of selflessness. Or doing what he believed to be the right thing by her. He could only devour her mouth, clutch her buns in his hands and grind her against his lap, earning hot, little mewling sounds from her throat. Yours it’s yours it’s yours. Her greedy reactions to his touch made Tucker believe. Or desperately want to believe that their love ran in two side by side currents. Not just one. His.
He ached to be shown that physically.
To lay her down on the ground and let out this explosion of need, love, lust, possession that teemed within him at all times. More than that, he wanted to go home. He always had. Always ached to belong, but he could say with total conviction that…with his home sitting not a hundred yards away, Mary felt more like home than anything or anywhere.
She was his home. A home that wanted him back, by some miracle. And that—her need—pushed him into a place of no return.
A place that had him kneeling on the semi-soft ground, never breaking their kiss, and gently laying the girl of his dreams on her back in the field where he grew up. Her radiance glowed and ebbed beneath her skin, golden stars spinning around her head at a dizzying pace. What gripped him hardest was the trust she showed him, not flinching or even feeling around her for the sensation of something familiar when her back met the ground, and God, he didn’t want to take that trust for granted.
If he drank from her, he’d never be able to exist any other way.
Her decision to stay or go would mean life or death for him.
She wasn’t fully decided about forgoing the wedding and remaining by his side. He couldn’t take the decision out of her hands. He couldn’t.
But Jesus Christ, her vitality sang to him, reeled him in, put him in a trance until he could only stare down at his mate, this brave girl with red hair spread out around her in shimmering flames, his every molecule existing for her, and marvel.
Mine. Mine Mine Mine.
He’d have to find a way to keep from drinking her.
He’d have to.
“Tucker,” she whispered, reaching up to drag her palms down his chest, descending farther until she found the fly of his jeans, unfastening the button, her chest lifting and falling faster and faster. “Don’t make me wait any more.”
The urgency in her command channeled something inside of him, a demanding instinct to please his mate that brought his fingers to the hem of his shirt, peeling it over his head and tossing it by the wayside, his fangs throbbing at the sight of Mary pulling down his zipper with her small, elegant hands. She gasped when he filled her palm, running eager fingertips up and down his rigid dick, tongue snaking out to wet her lips, thighs falling open in a way that almost snapped his sanity.
He was on top of her before he registered his own movements, rubbing the heel of his hand side to side against the crotch of her panties, satisfaction expanding his rib cage to find her panties already sodden. “Can’t believe kissing me did this to you.” His voice was threadbare against her mouth. “Can’t believe any of this is happening.”
Mary’s hands ran down the columns of his arms, along his chest and down to his stomach and he automatically reached for her wrist to move it somewhere else, somewhere he wasn’t quite so abundant, but she tugged out of his grip and placed her hands there once more, running her fingers through the springy hair on his rounded stomach. And to his utter shock, she writhed with all the more urgency in the grass, her lungs laboring to draw breath.
“I love how dense you are here,” she whispered. “How substantial you are all over. It matches the man inside and it anchors me. The world isn’t empty when you’re filling it up.”