I bend my head to the side. She follows my lead, her nose touching mine like wolves do when they acknowledge one another. Bop. She frowns and tilts her head back until our chins touch.
“Have you never kissed before?”
“No. I’ve seen it in movies,” she says. “But getting everything lined up is more complicated than I expected.”
This, at least, I can do and I slide my fingers through the cool, damp denseness of her hair, curving my hand at the base of her skull, holding her in place so that this time when I angle my head, my mouth finds hers. There is a slight flutter of the intimate skin of her lips against mine. I slide my lower lip, imagining burrowing into the silk solace, and bang my teeth against hers. I feel like the inexperienced teenager I never really was, because while I had too much experience in things no child should know, I had none whatsoever of first love. None of the feeling of the awkward touching of lips, of inhaling her breath only to feel it turn to drops of mercury in my blood by the alchemy of a kiss.
I pull her lips back to mine and try them gently, then harder, opening her mouth with teeth and tongue. I drink from her. Her shallow breaths, her lips, her tongue. We taste, touch, and try awkward things as though we were awkward, vulnerable people, though neither of us has ever been allowed to be.
Without moving away, she slides her hand between us.
“I’ve never touched one before,” she murmurs, her little finger pressing against the damp crown of my cock.
“But I don’t understand. Aren’t Nils and Nyala your—”
She waves her hand dismissively. “Of course we fuck, but this”—she spreads her fingers wide across my torso—“is not something wolves do. Touching. I want to know what it feels like. What you feel like.”
I lean my forehead against hers and pull my hips back to give her hand space to roam. She is alternately soft and firm, her hand sketching my collarbone to the notch, then following it down my sternum, her little finger brushing my nipple.
“Does that hurt?” she asks when I jump.
I brush my thumb under the curve of her breast up to the hard, dark tip and make her shiver.
“Does that?” I whisper and feel her smile under my lips as she continues tracing the deep line dividing my chest down to the path of curls at my pelvis, skirting my erection. I have never craved anything as much as I crave the skin at the back of her hand. When I say her name, it is with the voice of a man who is only just not breaking.
I think she likes it, having this power that doesn’t come with all the terrifying responsibilities of being Alpha. Simply the intimate power that Evie has to make me ache. To slake me.
I don’t tell her that I want her to wrap her fingers around my erection. I don’t tell her that I need her to scrape her nails along the seam between cock and balls. Because everything she does to my body channels through the levees I have built around me and I feel her rushing in, an ocean of power and beauty filling me in wave after wave.
“Careful, Evie.”
She laughs and I can feel the tremor of it race down her arm to her hand reaching around my sac. “I’ve never touched them, but I’ve bitten enough to know how vulnerable they are.”
Which coming from her is strangely comforting.
Finally, finally, finally, just when I don’t think I can take anymore, she traces her hand along the length of my cock, feeling the give at the crown, the flared ridge, the hardness of the shaft. She pulls down the skin.
“It’s soft,” she whispers. “Like velvet on antlers.” Now she wraps her fingers around me as though she’s feeling for the bone underneath until I manage to choke out.
“Stop.”
She loosens her hand, taking a step back. I can tell by the expression on her face that she thinks I don’t like it.
“Evie.” I take her hand tight in mine. “It’s not about you. No, that’s wrong: it’s all about you. I want your touch more than anything, but not like this. I want you needing me.”
She looks into my eyes, lines between her brows, her lips pursed. “But you know I am receptive.”