sure.
Gripping her under the knee, he thrust her thigh up and outward, fitting himself even more firmly against her. Amber glowed in the night darkness as he pushed in. She moaned at the stretching sensation on the border between pleasure and pain, her body clasping spasmodically around him. Jaw clenched, he kept one hand on her knee, holding her spread for him as he worked his erection inside her with slow care.
She clutched at the earth, lifted her hips toward him.
Teeth bared, he pushed in all the way. A stab of pain threatened to derail her pleasure, a whimper escaping her throat.
Alexei stopped at once. “Memory?” Perspiration glimmered on his temples, his muscles rigid.
“I just . . .” She sucked in a breath. “You’re big.”
A wicked grin that flat-out slayed her, but he stayed motionless while she got used to the feel of his heat and strength lodged inside her. It made the hard little nubbin between her thighs pulse. She squeezed her muscles experimentally. Breath harsh, Alexei slid one hand underneath her to cup her bottom as he drew out, then pushed back in.
Barely able to breathe through the heavily luxuriant sensation, Memory wrapped her arms around him and held on for the ride to come. He took it excruciatingly slow, until sweat rolled down both their bodies, and she’d melted between her thighs. “Faster,” she gasped.
“Only when I’m certain you won’t hurt.” He moved his hand to her breast, plucked at her nipple.
Memory moaned again. “I’m so ready I’m slippery,” she protested, jerking up her hips at the same time.
She didn’t know if it was the words or the erotic motion that did it, but Alexei braced himself with one hand beside her head and then he began to move. With a speed and a power that made her body shudder and electrified her nerve endings. She moved with him, able to see the precipice beyond which they would fall. So close. So close.
Desperate, she closed her own hand over her breast and squeezed as he’d done.
“Fuck!” Alexei’s eyes on her breast, the hand he had behind her going clawed, his body thrusting into her own with a sensual aggression that pitched her over the edge. She didn’t fall. She flew. On wings of pleasure so deep and wrenching that she was aware of nothing but the blinding power of it—and of Alexei.
She heard him shout out his own climax, felt the shockingly intimate heat of his release inside her, managed to open her drugged eyes in time to see his head thrown back, his arched body silhouetted against the moonlit sky. Her inner muscles clenched again, but this time, the pleasure was softer, more languorous.
When Alexei came down on top of her, she wrapped her legs around him, one hand in his hair, the other on his back. And there they lay, limp and sated as the night breeze wicked the moisture from their bodies.
* * *
• • •
ALEXEI felt a dangerous awakening inside him, a stirring he couldn’t permit. But it was too late. The mating urge had woken for Memory; the wolf had chosen its other half. And wolves mated for life. Shuddering inwardly at the painful gift, he rolled off Memory and onto nature’s carpet.
His skin was tougher than hers, the surroundings part of his natural habitat. Turning so he was on his side, he placed one hand on her abdomen because he couldn’t stop touching her. Couldn’t stop touching his mate.
Of course it was her.
Tough, defiant, a survivor. An empath who looked at him and saw not just the pretty face, but the darkness beyond—and who touched him with an unguarded affection he shouldn’t crave. But he’d kill any other man who dared touch her—where Memory was concerned, he was selfish and possessive and not the least bit rational.
He’d never let her go.
“I like that,” she whispered sleepily. “A lot.” Curling into him, she petted his chest. “Can we dance naked every night?”
Cupping her breast, Alexei pressed a kiss to her shoulder. “Every morning, too,” he rumbled, both parts of his nature in favor of arousing a sleepy, warm Memory and sliding into her body as the first action of the day.
She rubbed her nose against his chest. “Can we stay out here?”
“You’ll get too cold.” He wrapped her up in his arms, his mate with the heart of a lioness. In his mind flickered images of Etta’s mauled body, blood bubbling out of her mouth as she breathed her final breath.
Her mate