Iron Master – Jennifer Ashley Page 0,71
touched her thighs, which readily opened for him, and groaned as he slid home inside her.
Peigi had always believed that surrender meant loss of freedom, confinement, and fear. Today, she discovered that surrendering could be a different thing.
She didn’t expect Stuart to catch her, comfort her, or wrap her in a blanket. Surrender today didn’t mean submitting to one stronger than herself and hoping he’d be kind—it meant surrendering to love. To the need to make the world better for that person, to make certain he had everything, even if she didn’t.
Stuart kissed her throat, her breasts, his breath hot on her skin. Having him inside her made her complete, her last uncertainty gone in a puff of wind.
It also made her cry out in ecstasy—why not? Stuart opened her and touched her deepest places and it felt astonishing. No, astonishing wasn’t a strong enough word. It was wonderful, tight, glorious, and plain fucking fantastic.
Stuart’s midnight eyes held the gleam of magic he constantly tried to hide. It flared, and she saw him, the powerful being who kept himself contained so he wouldn’t destroy others.
The Shifters didn’t understand what they’d taken in, with Stuart. But Peigi did. She always had.
Stuart’s power surrounded her, tingled through her, touched the latent magic within all Shifters. A surge of wildness hit her, blotting out the rain, the gray mist, the cold of the winter day. She and Stuart were solid, hot, together, and she wished this would never end …
But then the heat where they joined expanded to drown her, and she spiraled toward a screaming peak. Peigi came and came, and Stuart, holding her, let out a shout that rang through the room.
Mine, mine, love, mate. The words tumbled through Peigi’s mind and might have come out of her mouth.
Stuart pounded the mattress with his fist. He moved inside her, the friction hot and driving. as though he’d lived his entire life for this moment, this loving.
His cries joined hers, as they came together, finally, finally finding a haven from their long and weary existence. Wrapped in each other, they fell together, panting, laughing, tears wetting Peigi’s cheeks and falling from Stuart’s beautiful eyes.
“Ben’s keeping them out a long time,” Peigi murmured much later.
It was mid-afternoon. Whatever daylight had formed was gone, and mist pressed the window in swirling white-gray.
Reid, his whole body rested and satisfied, traced a pattern on Peigi’s bare arm. Satisfied, yes, but he knew he could do more, and more. They were only stopping to rest.
“We’ll have to find a place to be alone as our family grows,” he said. His voice was scratchy. “Noelle is right—it’s a small house.”
Stuart hadn’t been able to speak at all as he loved Peigi, until passion had taken him, and he’d yelled his release in the cozy room. He’d gone on and on until he could only rasp.
“If the family does grow,” Peigi said.
She sounded so wistful that Stuart lifted on one elbow to look down at her. His arm was sore—they’d made love a long time.
“You’re afraid you can’t have cubs?” he asked gently.
A swallow moved Peigi’s throat. “I was twenty years with Michael and never …”
Reid touched her face. “You were also stressed, on the run, confined, afraid …”
“So were the other women. They conceived and bore cubs just fine. That’s why we have our six.”
Reid liked that she spoke of them as “ours.” “Can I ask a very personal question?” he ventured. “Did you have mating frenzy with Michael?”
Peigi’s cheeks went pink. “I thought I did, at first. I was young, not long past my Transition. I knew Michael wasn’t the ideal Shifter, but I thought the alternative to staying with him would be worse. I’d be stuck in a Shiftertown, probably with members of my clan who didn’t want me. Shiftertowns are decent places now, but back then, they weren’t at all.”
“I know.” Stuart hadn’t been assigned to the newly formed department that handled Shifters when Shiftertowns first opened, but he’d seen the crowding and misery whenever he’d had to handle complaints from humans who lived nearby. “You were right to try to avoid it.”
“I convinced myself I should be with this strong Shifter who took care of me. But when I didn’t have cubs, he easily turned to other women. I had enough dominance that he couldn’t put them above me, but he let me know I’d disappointed him. I was still head mate, but it became pretty awful.”
Reid kissed a tear from her hot face.