Yes, she wanted him.
Her head fell back against his chest as his fingers parted the plump folds of her pu**y, delved inside and filled her with the exciting rasp of his fingers caressing her.
Behind her, she could feel him releasing his jeans, felt the hard, jutting length of his c**k pressing against her lower back, and she knew what was coming. She knew, and she couldn’t stop it.
“Bend over, baby.” His voice was rough, sensual, as one hand pressed against her back. “So sweet, Cassa. You make me drunk on the taste of you, the touch of you.”
If only she could make him fall in love. If only she could make him respect her. If only . . .
She bent for him instead, her upper body lowering as she braced her shoulders on the top of the table and felt her jeans and panties sliding over her hips.
God, this was so primal. Sexy. She had never been taken like this, hadn’t imagined she would want to be until she heard his broken breathing behind her and the heated little growls that escaped his throat.
“Fucking you is like flying.” The head of his c**k pressed closer, slid through her juices and found the entrance it sought. “Like dying, Cassa. The sweetest escape in the world.”
Her back bowed as she felt the thick flesh pressing inside. Tingles of electric, ecstatic energy sizzled through her, inside her. They surrounded her clit, struck at her ni**les. She trembled beneath the force of the energy and fought to keep from crying out as he stretched her slowly, easily.
His hands gripped her hips, holding her in place. She wanted to see his face, but she was feeling something she hadn’t felt the other times when she had lain beneath him. She felt more now. As though he were letting go of something he’d held inside.
His hips moved with a smooth, pumping rhythm. Each stroke of his erection inside her pushed the pleasure higher, pushed her closer to the center of sensation and bliss.
Cassa could feel herself tightening, close to coming apart with the pleasure. She was riding a sensation so desperate, so filled with ecstasy that she wondered if she could survive it.
She wanted to scream but couldn’t find the breath. She wanted to cry out his name, to beg, to plead for more, and couldn’t find the strength. She could do nothing but hold on to the wood of the tabletop, lift to her tiptoes and silently plead for more.
As though he could read her mind, he gave it to her. Harder, faster strokes. The thrusts of his c**k inside her stroked hidden nerve endings, revealed others. It stretched and burned, and as the pace increased to a driving, desperate rhythm, her orgasm began to tear through her.
It exploded in her clit, ricocheted to her womb, then detonated in the center of her pu**y and left her trying to scream, to cry out with such a surfeit of sensation that shudders began to race through her.
She was lost in him. So lost that little else mattered, nothing else made sense for long, agonizing moments. Until she felt his release pour into her, felt the barb extend from beneath the head of his cock, locking him into her and creating another climax that completely stole her breath.
He was there with her. Through the violent tremors, he held her to his chest, arched over her, sheltered her from a storm that wrapped around her as well as inside her.
His fingers tugged her hair, turned her head to the side, and as she fought to hold on to the last shred of reality, his lips covered hers. His tongue licked over her lips, stroked them, then slid inside and spread the fiery heat of the mating hormone into their kiss.
It infused the last pulsing tremors of her orgasm, intensified it, tightened her muscles and left her shaking rather than trembling, left her arching to him, desperate for more.
His lips slid from hers despite her whimpering cry. He kissed and licked his way down her neck, then before she could prepare herself, his teeth bit down on the mating mark at her shoulder and his tongue rasped over it.
Shivers began to course through her, quaking through her body as a muted scream tore from her throat. Finally, there was the emotion. Now, when she couldn’t see it on his face, couldn’t define it. When it couldn’t soothe the pain racing through her heart.
She wanted to cry at the unfairness of it. Because she knew once it was over nothing would change. She would still be relegated to being the protected rather than the protector she had been for so many years. She would be behind him rather than beside him. And beside him was where she longed to be.
“I’d die without you,” he whispered at her ear, his voice rough, dark, rasping with an emotion she wished she could define, could see on his face. “Do you understand that, Cassa? If anything happens to you, then I’m nothing.”
Because she was his mate. Because once mated, there was never another for them.
Of course he would fear losing her. He would want her behind walls, locked away from danger, safely in his bed.
She had to fight back tears long moments later as the barb receded and he eased from her. She could still feel the pulse and throb of his c**k inside her in the echoes of her release. The heat of him was a memory that even her flesh couldn’t let go of.
“I’d do anything to protect you, Cassa,” he swore as he helped her straighten her clothes.
She kept her back to him. She couldn’t look at him, not yet. She couldn’t let him see her tears, or her regrets. Loving him wasn’t going to be enough and she knew it, because she knew she could never be what he needed.
“I don’t need your protection.” She fought to keep the pain out of her tone even as she kept her back to him. “I never asked you for that.”
“It’s here anyway,” he promised her. “I can’t do anything else.”