adopt as many pups as we can handle,” she told Kenji. “But, baby, is that something you want?” He was perfect to her, but he’d been unbearably hurt and she’d never do anything to exacerbate the wound.
Kenji wrapped her up in his arms, his voice rough when he spoke. “You’re enough. Anything else would be a bonus—but yeah, I still want rug rats. Human or wolf, they’ll be ours to love.” A shuddering sigh. “It was never about fathering them myself. I just . . . I didn’t want to steal your choice.”
“You are my choice, Kenji. You.” Gripping his hair, she made him look into her eyes. “I have missed you for seven goddamn long years.” Tears, hot and wet, rolled down her cheeks. “I’ll always miss you if you’re not with me. So don’t you dare walk away again.”
“I won’t.” It was a rasp. “You live in my heart, Garnet. Multiple times a day, I’d see something and want to tell you, only to realize I’d given away that right. Then I’d want to kick my own ass.”
She laughed wetly. “That ass is now mine, so I’ll be the one doing any ass kicking. Got it?”
“Got it.”
She heard the conviction in his tone, saw it in his eyes, in his smile, and it was as if that was all the mating bond had been waiting for. It just . . . opened on his side and was a hurricane slamming through her. Because her own heart had been open to Kenji Tanaka for one hell of a long time.
She clung to him, he held on to her, and when it was over, she laughed in giddy delight.
“Wow,” Kenji said, that smile she loved lighting up his whole face. “You pack a punch.” A ravenous, possessive kiss that melted her bones, her calves straining as she rose on tiptoe to follow his mouth. “I’m not giving you back.”
Breathless, she said, “Ditto.” She went down flat on her feet again. “You’re far too tall. How are we ever going to make this work?”
She’d been making a silly, happy joke, but his responding look burned.
A heartbeat later, she was hard up against the back wall of the shower and Kenji was pressed up against her stomach, his cock a rigid brand. Forearms braced on either side of her head, he looked down at her with eyes gone wolf. “Garnet.” His voice was all growly. “I’m on edge.”
Nipples tight and skin hot, she reached down to caress him. “We’ll go slow next time.”
Shuddering, he dropped his head as he thrust into her hand. It made a moan ripple out of her throat, her body primed and ready for him. But he didn’t do what they both wanted and plunge into her. Pulling out of her possessive hold before kissing her with a raw ferocity that had her claws slicing out to scrape his shoulder, he bit at her lower lip, squeezed her breast, sucked on a pouting nipple on his way down her body.
Then he was pulling her leg over his shoulder and oh—
Her blood turned to honey as he used his tongue, his lips, to do delicious, wicked, exquisite things to her. He ate at her as if she was his final meal and he was starving. Clenching one hand in his hair, she came with a scream. He bit her inner thigh on the heels of it; it just made sated pleasure curl hot and warm in her gut.
Sliding his hands up the backs of her thighs as he rose to his feet, he hitched her up with a bunching of his arm muscles that made her feminine core flutter. And then he was pushing the hot steel of his cock into her. It stretched her almost beyond bearing, but the discomfort was a sweet, welcome one. There he is, her body sighed, there he is. At last.
Trusting him to hold her up while her hands roamed his shoulders and chest and her legs locked around him, she went for his throat. He growled but didn’t stop the intimate caress as he thrust deep into her body over and over again, his rhythm ragged. Not really thinking now, Garnet pulled his head down to her own, took his mouth.
Kenji Tanaka was hers, and he was delicious.
That was the last rational thought she remembered having.
Epilogue
Lying in bed afterward, sated and loose limbed as Kenji spooned her—they fit so well that way—Garnet sighed. “How the mighty have fallen.”
Nipping at her shoulder, her