Sarah
Sydney’s hand slides down my side, gripping my ass, tugging me closer to him. My leggings feel impossibly tight and unnecessary right now. I’m desperate to get out of them, and I wiggle my hips for emphasis, which causes Sydney to groan my name and hiss out a breath.
“Get them off,” I beg.
He lifts his head, his eyes gleaming with heat and mischief in the soft lamplight coming from my bedside table. His eyes give me pause, a single second to rethink what we’re doing. Eyes like a storm brewing over the ocean when the normally crystal blue water turns dark and turbulent.
Eyes that have seen so much beauty in the world and right now, they’re full of want for me.
No one else has ever wanted me before.
I don’t know how to feel.
All I know is that Sydney is kissing lower and lower and every nerve in my body erupts at his touch. I arch against his lips as he kisses past my navel, and then his teeth catch the waistband of my leggings.
He looks up at me with those eyes that are my undoing, but I have a sliver of sense left.
“Don’t you dare,” I hiss, noticing his sharpened canines. Feral bastard. “These are my favorite leggings.”
“I’ll buy you new ones,” he murmurs, a low rasping tone that sends shivers of heat licking down my spine and settling in my core.
He rises on his knees, hooking his thumbs under the waistbands and pulls my leggings and panties down so swiftly I suck in a breath at the sudden chill of being wholly, utterly, exposed to him.
I close my eyes. I’m sure he’s done now. He’ll probably get off the bed, laugh, and go find some pretty high-bred lady somewhere who doesn’t have stretch marks.
But his hands roam over the swell of my hips, and up to my full breasts, like he’s memorizing every inch of my body.
The bed shifts as he climbs over me. I hear his belt hit the floor, and then the sound of fabric follows. His bare thighs graze mine as he settles between my legs again.
But I keep my eyes closed, barely breathing.
I’m afraid that if I open them, he’ll be gone, and this will have been a dream. Maybe it’s better that way. It’ll hurt less in the end.
But I open my eyes, and he’s still here, looking down at me, his brow pinched in concern.
“What are we doing, Sydney?” I whisper.
“I don’t know,” he replies. “We shouldn’t, should we?”
“No.” The word is barely audible, whisked away by a phantom wind.
But we reach for each other anyway, his lips crashing into mine.
* * *
Sydney
For reasons I can’t explain, kissing Sarah has me going back in time, back to that night at the club.
Music thunders around us. I’ve lost Ryan ages ago, and I have no idea where Kenna is. I really don’t care, though. For the first time in years–years of training, of school, of shadowing my father in preparation to inherit his throne one day–the only thing I care about is right in front of me.
She’s dancing, her face lifted toward the flashing lights in the heavily decorated and exceedingly crowded temple. She’s wearing a bright pink dress that hugs her ample curves, and I’m dizzy with a kind of desire I’ve never felt before.
“Why aren’t you dancing?” she laughs, reaching for me. Her hand is slender, but not totally soft, like she’s some kind of artist who uses her hands often.
She intertwines her fingers with mine, leading me closer, and I take her in my arms as we sway to the music. I’ve had a few drinks. We had a drink together. We’ve talked for what feels like hours about everything that comes to mind.
I don’t generally talk with people I don’t know, but with her? It’s natural. Easy. A dream, if I’m being honest.
When I lead her out of the ball into the warm summer night air, she follows willingly, excitedly. When she continually trips over the hem of her dress, I pull her to a stop against a storefront, kneeling to rip the fabric so it rides above her ankles. She leans down to take off her heels, and somewhere in the middle, we meet, looking into each other’s eyes.
I wish I could remember those eyes, that face, that voice that I feel should be burned into my memory.
But it’s not. Only pieces remain, torn and fragmented beyond repair.
But I remember picking her up and carrying her into Ryan’s house through the sliding glass door off the back patio because the front door was locked. I remember her wrapping her arms around my waist when I pinned her to the wall in the snug hallway off the kitchen and kissed her for the first time.
I remember the sheets beneath me as I lay down, and she straddled me. The way her hair brushed over my chest when she leaned down to kiss me again, moaning my name.
All of that is just a dream now. Part of me wonders if it ever even happened or if this woman from my dreams was just a gift from the Goddess, giving me a glimpse of what was to come.
Because this woman beneath me is real. She’s flesh and blood. She’s hot to the touch and supple in my hands. The way she kisses me sends fire through my veins, igniting something I feel like I’ve lost over the past months.
“Sarah,” I say, my hand trailing up her neck to cup the back of her head.
She opens her eyes to slits, her full lips parted in that way that makes me dizzy with need.
She wraps her arms around my neck and pulls me in, kissing me deeply, nibbling on my lower lip until that last centimeter of restraint I have left slips.
I came home tonight after a day full of ash and chaos. A day that reminded me why I’d vowed to myself never to find my mate, to have this.
But I had to see her. I had to make sure she was still here. Maybe I needed to prove to myself that I could be this for her–the protector. The Alpha. Even after what happened between us last night.
Seeing her in the hallway made those feelings obsolete. I don’t give a fuck anymore. If our world is going to hell in a hand basket, I want to experience this with her, even if it’s just this one time.
The only thought in my mind is how she’ll feel with my cock inside of her and my teeth clamped down on her pretty little neck.
My wolf is begging to be unleashed, and she’s egging it on but biting down on my lower lip while grinding her hips against mine, making those little mewling sounds that turn my blood molten.
I nudge her left knee up with my thigh and press my cock inside of her without ceremony. She’s soaking wet, and her walls grip me so tightly it steals the breath from my lungs.
Sarah arches off the bed, crying out, her eyes shut, and her lips parted in ecstasy and surprise.
“Fuck,” I breathe, pulling out slowly, savoring the feel of her. She’s so hot. She fits around me so well. She can take all of me, and does so, arching her perfect hips to the rhythm of my thrusts.
I drag her to the center of the bed and enter her again, hard, my lips crushing her in a heated kiss that’s just as feral as the way I’m fucking her.
My mind is totally empty. She is the only thing I can see and hear. The only thing I feel is the way her nails dig into my back and how her pussy grips me so tight I might be on the verge of coming already, but I’m not going over that edge without her.
I rise up, slamming into her repeatedly while reaching between her legs to circle my thumb over her clit.
She’s so beautiful right now. Her skin is flushed a soft pink that shines in the lamplight. Her hair fans out around her head like a halo, and those eyes….
They’re the brightest violet I’ve ever seen as she opens them, her lips parting in a silent cry as her muscles tense around my cock.
“You’re so close,” I rasp, slowing the pace, swirling my hips against her in deliberate, calculated thrusts that make her tremble as she slides her hands down my chest and stomach.
“Sydney,” she whimpers, sudden tears in her eyes.
Something heavy snaps in my chest–warm and unnerving, like something is being sewn directly into my heart as each second passes while I’m buried deep inside of her.
I would die for this woman.
The thought hits me directly in the chest at the same moment she arches her back, crying out my name to the ceiling.
Her legs tense, then begin to shake, and then she’s spasming around my cock and so impossibly tight I can’t possibly hold back any longer.
I crush her to my chest as I come unglued, whispering filthy things in her ear that I hadn’t realized were part of my vocabulary.
I’m not thinking straight when I come inside of her. I roll with her so we’re lying side by side, both of us short of breath and glazed with sweat as we stare at the ceiling.
It was over too quickly. That’s the first thing that comes to mind.
The second thing that comes to mind is, What have I done?
But she curls into me, laying her head in the crook of my shoulder. Her eyelashes flutter against my skin, and within moments, she’s fast asleep with a death grip on my arm, preventing me from moving.
So I lie there with Sarah in my arms, wondering what to do next. What to say and where to go from here.
Memories of this morning flood back, like waking up next to her in the hotel and thinking I could get used to this. Memories of that first phone call from my dad about the attack and how I’d been jolted back to startling reality that crushed any hope that I might have a choice in what kind of life I get to live.
I remember the strewn bodies, the fire, the blood that coated the ground where that club stood only a day ago and think of that cavernous temple in Eastonia, of Kenna’s despair as she watched Gabriel slit Evander’s throat.
The distant whine of a baby brings me out of a half slumber.
I untangle myself from Sarah, but she stirs at the sound of Blake’s soft cries coming from the baby monitor next to her bed.
“Go back to sleep. I’ll settle him,” I whisper, gently pressing her back to the bed and covering her with a blanket. She blinks sleepily at me as I edge off the bed and put on my boxers and pants, her eyes glassy in the lamp we left on.
I want to kiss her again, but I know once I do, it will confirm this growing sensation starting to take root in my chest.
I am at serious risk of falling in love with her.
Then what?
I tear myself from the room and slip into the comfortable darkness of the sitting room, Blake’s room, shutting the door behind me.
His whimpering tapers off as I pick him up and change his diaper, but he’s mouthing my chest, rooting with vigor.
I don’t want to disturb Sarah. I peek into her room, and she’s fast asleep again, curled around one of the pillows in the exact spot I left her, so I take him downstairs.
In the muted light of the kitchen, I warm up his milk and sit in one of the chairs with him in my arms. He immediately settles, his eyes heavy and cheeks round and rosy.
“I have to go away for a while,” I tell him, swallowing the lump in my throat brought on by guilt for a multitude of reasons. “To Moorn, for a meeting with my father and my uncle.”
Blake has no idea what I’m talking about, but he stops drinking and looks up at me, his eyes wide, as if he just realized I’m not his mother.
In the light, I can finally see his eye color.
Eyes that I see every time I look in the mirror look back at me.
My eyes.
He got those eyes from me.
I tighten my grip on him as a memory flashes through my mind, something lost and dragged forward from the recess of my mind in full, startling color.
Sarah leans down and brushes a kiss over my lips, morning sunlight drifting through the window in the guest room at Ryan’s house.
“I’m so sorry,” she whispers, her fingertips tracing my cheekbone.
And then it goes black.