It was a deeply personal, intimate gesture, but what wasn’t here?
He was attached to me somehow, deep inside, and he was throbbing worse than the best vibrator I’d ever had.
I rocked my hips at just how hard the pulsations were, and the emotional tears turned to glazed distress as my body began to process what his was doing to me.
“I-I can’t,” I muttered thickly, knowing what his body demanded of mine, unsure if I could even give it to him.
“Yes, you can,” he rumbled, his teeth moving to my lips and gnawing on the bottom one until I parted my mouth, letting him in.
He explored me, tracing here and there, tangling with mine, as I absorbed the kiss, the vibrations, the pleasure, and the pressure.
I could feel it building, and it made me roll into him, harder, faster, my breath bursting out of me only for him to swallow.
I felt inundated, overwhelmed, faintly daunted by what I was going through, and then it happened, and it made my orgasm of moments before, the sheer mind-blowing power of it, fade away into memory as I came.
This time, I had nothing to do with it.
My she-wolf claimed this moment, took it into her, absorbed it.
Took his claiming.
Made him ours.
Made us his.
I was Austin’s like I’d never been anyone else’s before. He owned me more than I did, and the crazy thing?
As his knot pulsed, I could feel him. He was there. Inside me. That bright orange light no longer just behind my eyes, but bouncing around my body.
He was a heavy, solid presence in my soul.
And I heard him too.
“She’s so fucking beautiful,” he thought. “She feels like fucking heaven.”
Those thoughts, the first ones for me to hear at this moment, in this place, where he’d been unable to hear me, suddenly resonated.
This was the gift.
This was what all mates had, not just what we’d experienced.
I couldn’t hear him on that regular channel, I felt his thoughts like they were my own.
I’d never have thought it possible, but there he was.
In my soul.
With a few dull throbs, his knot began to lessen. No longer so hard, it softened, but I felt it still, like it was hooked in me.
He rolled us over so I was on top of him again, and he grabbed me by the knee, lifting both of them so I knelt atop him. His hand came to the back of my head, and he stroked my hair as I settled on him like a living blanket.
From his gestures, his movements, I knew this was going to be a while.
I could never have anticipated that, the next morning, when I woke up in this strange new place, he was still inside me until he woke also, and the knot disappeared.
Seven
Austin
“Won’t they be worried?”
I stared at her, my lips twitching at her concern as she raked her fingers through her hair in an attempt to get the tangles out.
We were in a pond that was near where we’d been tossed out into the other dimension.
I’d heard the rushing water and knew what that meant, so I’d brought us here because I knew she had to be as dehydrated as me.
The pair of us, laughing like kids, had rushed over to the pond, and I’d had to monitor my pace because, quite naturally, she was stiff.
Was it weird to feel proud of that knot?
That living, physical, metaphysical proof that we belonged together?
I mean, this entire situation was proof of that. I wouldn’t be here with her if we weren’t mates, and yet, that knot would be all that remained of these moments, aside from our memories.
I’d knot with her until both of us passed over, and while it wouldn’t last the night as it had the previous evening—if a night had even passed since it was constantly twilight here—it would be there.
My brand.
Her claim.
I sighed with delight at the thought, then I stopped floating in the water and gave her an answer that was both confusing and reassuring. “This is our time out. From everything. They won’t even know.”
“They won’t?” Her brow puckered. “How odd. But I feel certain you’re right too.”
My lips twitched. “Odd’s the word.”
She giggled, and the sound filled me with happiness, even as she muttered, “I need a comb.”
Of course, the second she asked for it, it was there. In her hand.
Of course.
I stared at it, she gaped down at it. Then, I mumbled, “I need a burger.”