Chapter Seven

There was nothing Emmett wanted more than to spend time with Petra, but it was also proving to be one of the most difficult things he'd ever done. Raj was still feeding him romance novels to read as advice on how to "woo her"—Raj's words. Emmett was starting to think the guy had been reading them as guides to women for a while, which wasn't the greatest recommendation since Raj was not known for his ability to maintain a relationship, but anything he'd learnt from reading the tales of Lord Garvey and the Duke of Harthingshire seemed to leave his head in a woosh the moment he laid eyes on Petra. Especially the way she looked tonight, with her hair down and her makeup making those eyes look all big and dark and gods, that dress.

How was he supposed to spend hours more in her company when she was dressed like this, without putting his hands on the curves that the fabric so perfectly outlined? He'd hardly managed to speak coherently over dinner, telling stories of his past he'd barely ever told, his wish to be different to his father and what growing up with his grandparents had been like. The last thing he wanted was her pity, but for some reason he'd wanted her to know the truth of him, to understand where he came from in a way he'd never craved before.

And she'd said yes to another dinner if their library work took longer than one night. She'd said yes. To spending more time with him, in addition to activities that led to the breaking of their bond. Did that mean she liked him? Liked spending time with him, at least? According to the books that he had to reluctantly admit he was kind of enjoying, friendship was the first step toward romance. Anything could come from a genuine friendship, though admittedly breaking the mating bond between us might not be the most solid of foundations.

Anything was possible, though, right? Wasn't that what his grandfather had told him as a child? That if he worked hard, things might not always be like they were, because anything was possible. He just had to hold on to that idea and keep holding himself back from touching her—no matter that his wolf was howling for him to press her body to his and make her scream his name, no matter how desperately he wanted her. Maybe if they did manage to break the bond, he wouldn't feel like this about her anymore, and this friendship would be enough.

In truth, it hurt just to think about it. Even though he couldn't do all the things he really wanted to do with her, even though he had to shove down this craving for her what felt like every damn minute of the day, if he was being honest with himself, the truth was he didn't want it gone. He wanted to keep it, on the off chance that someday she would look at him and realize that she'd been wrong all along, that he was the male she was looking for. That he could make her happy. Though the idea of her just continuing with her life—dating other males, said a snarky voice in his head, to see if one of them can give her what you can't—while he was tied to her in this way made his wolf rise dangerously close to the surface.

He would do it if he had to. He would do it for her. He would pretend as hard as he could that this woman didn't have his heart in a fucking lasso already and hope that he was a better actor than he was a liar. Let her have the life she wanted, since clearly, she didn't feel the same way about him that he did about her, even if he continued to dream of her every night.

They finished with dinner and walked toward the library, Petra wrapping her coat around herself. It hid the dress she was wearing from sight, which was both a blessing and a curse. A blessing, because he was no longer being taunted by every curve of her gorgeous body, and a curse, because he could no longer ogle the perfect lines of her when she wasn't looking and imagine running his hands and mouth over them.

They passed a few groups of people—a couple of vampires just starting their days, some witches tipsily making small fireworks go off above their heads—as they wandered down to the library, where they found Raj sitting behind the returns desk, reading a book of his own. The big wolf looked intimidating, even seated behind the desk, and even more so when he stood, despite his welcoming grin. "You made it," he said, tone enthusiastic but hushed in the confines of the library.

"I told you we were having dinner first," Emmett reminded him.

"Still, not a crime to be pleased to see you. It's been boring as hell tonight, just university students returning textbooks. And you must be Petra," he added, glancing at the woman at Emmett's side. Instinctively, Em moved closer to her, but she reached out a hand to shake Raj's with the same smile that melted Emmett every single time he saw it. The fact that she was giving it to someone else had possessive anger rising in Emmett's chest. Cool it, he instructed himself firmly. She's not yours. No matter how much you want her to be.

"That's me," she said, still smiling and apparently unaware of the jealousy that was so potent, Emmett could practically taste it. "Petra Dalman, Apex River."

"Rajesh Lewis, Blue Crescent," Raj said, holding her hand for what, Emmett thought, was definitely longer than was politely required. The red tide roiled, and he bit his lip until he tasted blood, forcing himself to keep it inside. "But I daresay you knew some of that already," Raj continued, finally releasing her hand. "I'll show you where I've been stockpiling your books, then? You've got some serious study to do."

"I've never been afraid of hard work," Petra said with an easy smile, one of the books on the table catching her attention. "Is that an early edition? I haven't seen one of these in ages." She didn't seem to notice when Raj shot Em a look of damn, complete with raised eyebrows and an unsubtly mouthed wow that faded when he took in the look on Emmett's face.

"Uh, yes," Raj said in response to Petra's question. "I'm impressed you recognized it, actually—most people would have no idea."

"It was one of my mum's favorite when I was young," Petra said with another of those smiles Emmett wanted to capture and stockpile for himself alone. "She had about eleven copies of it because she was constantly buying ones that had been published earlier. Her goal was to eventually find a first edition, and then she'd donate all the others."

"A true believer, then," Raj laughed, and then he was calling over one of the other library workers to cover the desk as he led them through the shelves. Emmett had to stop himself from reaching out and taking Petra's hand as she walked beside him. Not yours, not yours, not yours, he chanted silently as they reached the study room. It would have been a tight fit for the three of them, especially with Raj's bulk, even without the piles of books on both the desk and floor. He'd left them a clear area on the desk to sit and go through the books, though Emmett noted there was only one such space.

"Wow, you really went in depth," Emmett said before he could stop himself.

Raj threw him a wink. "You said you wanted any information on mating bonds in werewolves and how to break them. I can't say I've managed to dig up much on the latter, but there's a lot out there about bonds. Maybe you'll find something I missed." He sidled around Petra and Emmett to the door. "I'll leave you to it. Feel free to come and hang by the desk if you need a break, it gets boring as hell when no one's making a scene about their fines. Otherwise, we close at eleven—good luck!" The massive werewolf closed the door behind him, and suddenly Emmett became very aware of the fact that he and Petra were alone in a small room, with nothing but stacks of books and a few scant feet of space between them. Now he thought about it, ever since their interaction in the hallway outside Della's hospital room, every time they'd seen each other, he was pretty sure they'd been surrounded by people.

He'd never been so aware of being alone with someone. The cool air seemed to spin over his suddenly hypersensitive skin, carrying her scent to him in dizzyingly powerful waves.

He hadn't realized how much the drive to maintain propriety had been lending strength to his ability to keep his hands off her. Right now, all he could think about was sweeping an arm across the desk to clear it of the stacks of books that covered its surface, lying her back on it and learning every inch of the body that dress had been outlining all evening. He'd start with her mouth, that lush pink mouth that had been teasing him with her smiles since the moment they met, and then he'd make his way down her throat, where her scent was so potent, it made his head spin, and expose those pretty tits, and then—

"Emmett?"

Petra's voice saying his name shook him out of his fantasy. "Yes?"

"You were, um… you were staring at me." She looked concerned, like she might have done something wrong. Like anything she did with him could be wrong. He desperately wanted to correct that notion, to tell her that everything she did with him would be right, or he'd find a way to make it so. That she never had to worry about offending him or distressing him; everything they did together would be perfect, because they were perfect together.

No. He couldn't think like that. Couldn't go over in his head all the reasons she would be an incredible partner to introduce to his pack. How proud he would be to know she was with him of all the possible males out there, that it was his scent that had drawn her in and getting to know him that had made her choose to keep their bond.

Because she wouldn't. His imagination was running away with him again, to no purpose. That… that fantasy wasn't the point of this. The point was to find a way to break this bond, so Petra could be free of him, free to find her own partner rather than the one the universe had chosen for her, because she wouldn't choose him for herself.

"Sorry," Emmett managed, realizing he was doing it again. "I'm just, um, zoning out. Should we get started on these books? I don't think Raj actually went through every one of them to find out what they said about mate bonds. I think he just picked up all the ones that had any mention of the bond and stacked them in here for us to read."

"It's going to be a long night," Petra said with a laugh that ran through his body like liquid sunlight. "Luckily, I love to read, and after all these years working in a paperwork-based job, I'm pretty fast. I guess we might as well get started?" She hesitated. "There's only… there's only one chair at this desk, though—"

"You take it," Emmett said immediately. He'd be damned if he'd take the only chair in the room when Petra was around. "I can always sit on the floor if I need to. Easier for me, in trousers, than it would be for you in a dress."

"I daresay you're right," Petra said with another smile. "All right, well, let me know if you find anything. Oh, look—Raj has left post-it notes to mark the books with and paper for taking notes. That's very thoughtful of him." She handed Em a pad of them, and he tried to force his smile to look natural, even though he was once again fighting the jealousy that seemed to erupt whenever she spoke favorably of another man.

"It looks like he's forgotten pens, though," she added, and he had to fight not to be gratified that she'd found a flaw in Raj's preparation. "I've always got a few in my bag, though," Petra added. "Let me see if I can find a couple."

He was amazed by how much of her arm she was able to fit in that bag and how deeply she needed to dig before she withdrew it, holding two pens. "Got them!"

"Is that bag spelled to be extra deep or something?" Emmett asked from his position lounging between piles of books.

"No, why?"

"I just wouldn't have imagined you'd be able to get so much of your arm in there. Or that you'd have to dig through so many things to find pens. How much stuff do you have in there?"

She laughed. "This is my everything bag. It's big enough to fit my laptop, I can bring binders home from work in it, I've got spare socks and underwear in there in case I have to stay somewhere overnight. Just about anything you can think of, I have in this bag."

"Including pens," Emmett added, gesturing to the two she was still holding.

"Including pens," Petra agreed with another laugh. "Which will make note taking a little easier, I suspect."

"We should probably find some way to categorize them," Emmett suggested, looking at the piles of books Raj had collected for them. "Maybe a pile for 'completely useless', a pile for 'could be useful', and one for 'information we can actually use'?" He looked up to find her looking at him strangely. "What?"

Petra shrugged, still looking slightly confused. "I just didn't expect you to be the one doing the organizing. That's kind of what I do."

"It's kind of what I do as well," Emmett said, not sure if he was digging himself a hole. "I couldn't do my job if I wasn't organized. It drives some of the guys in the office a bit insane, actually."

"I didn't know that about you," Petra said, her voice soft. She looked down at the books. "I like your categories, though. Shall we make a start on it?"

"Ready when you are," Emmett said, and they each collected a book and started reading.

* * *

The information was dense, to say the least. They had to scan the content of each book for even a brief mention of the mate bond. Even so, they made good headway, and to Raj's credit, in a number of cases, he'd marked the pages where he found information about the bond. A couple of the books were purely about how to deal with it once you'd found your mate—mostly older books with a young target audience, since viewing the story of the universe selecting your perfect mate as truth had fallen out of favor in recent years—but reading those put an ache in Emmett's chest as he tried not to imagine what it would be like if Petra had been happy with this bond. How easy it would have been if they'd just fallen for each other without these complications. Of course, he couldn't begrudge her the issues she had with it, no matter how much they hurt, but it was hard not to mourn what might have been, in another life. If the mate she'd found had been someone other than him.

A couple of times, one or the other of them would break their comfortable silence to point out something they'd come across—Petra found a book that mentioned that the bond was fragile, but only in the context of nourishing it, not breaking it.

"Maybe if we just did the opposite of what they say, that would help?" she suggested, pushing hair out of her eyes.

"What do they recommend?" Emmett asked, marking where he was up to in his own text with a finger and coming to stand behind her and peer over her shoulder. She leaned sideways so he could see the book open on the desk in front of her better. He had to stop himself from leaning down and breathing in the scent of her hair.

"A couple of things, spending lots of time together, and um…" she paused. "Lots of physical contact. Apparently, that's the most important thing."

His breath caught in his throat, but he forced himself to make it a joke. "I promise I'll wear gloves if you need me to give you a back massage. That should get us around that reinforcer." The image in his head grew and morphed until he was fighting the idea of tying Petra to the bed, spreading oil across the smooth skin of her back, and working the kinks out of muscles made tense by sitting at a desk all day, then propping her hips on a pillow and eating her pussy from behind until she was begging him to fill her. Fucking her with her body trapped in position by the restraints, feeling her skin slide against his when he leaned over her. Then afterwards, when they were both satisfied, releasing her and taking her into the shower to wash off the oil, and pinning her to the wall and fucking her there as well, her legs wrapped around his waist, her face in his neck so he could feel it every time he made her moan. His cock throbbed, and he quickly returned to his position sitting on the floor, partly to hide his physical reaction, partly to force himself to get back to reading these dry texts in the hopes that would tame it.

"I've got another one with strengthening recommendations," Emmett said after the best part of another hour had passed.

Petra turned to him, raising an eyebrow. She was starting to look tired, so he'd have to make sure they called it a night soon even though the library didn't close for three-quarters of an hour. He hated the idea of her working herself into a state of fatigue, even if it was supposedly an activity they were doing together. The drive in him to take care of her made him want to take her home and tuck her into bed immediately, but he quashed the rampant urge to satisfy all her physical needs.

"'Keeping the bond strong is vitally important, especially in the early days of your connection,'" he read. "'You should spend as much time as possible with your mate, talking and learning about them as well as satisfying the physical urges of the bond.' That's a polite way to describe it," he added with a half-laugh that he was satisfied didn't sound too forced. She gave him a tired smile.

"'One of the best things you can do is get to know them as a person as well as physically. This will allow your feelings for them to develop beyond those caused by the magic of the bond. We also recommend sessions of just kissing, though it may be difficult for you to restrain yourselves to only that activity without allowing it to escalate. Kissing your mate is unlike kissing any other person. It is more intense and will cause a stronger reaction in your body, which you will be tempted to allow to escalate into other physical activities, but periods of just kissing your mate are not only highly enjoyable but also an excellent way to strengthen the mate bond.'" He paused. "Well, that didn't tell us much. Sorry for grabbing your attention for no new information. I should have read it myself before I read it out loud." He was fiercely trying to ignore the response of his body to the idea of kissing Petra, now that he'd read that description of what it felt like. "Anyway, maybe we should call it a night soon. We've been at it for hours, and I'm pretty worn out." That last part was a lie—he could have kept going for hours more if it meant spending time with her, surrounded by her scent—but he figured if he finished, she would as well, and then she wouldn't drive herself further into fatigue.

"Me too," Petra said, but she was still intermittently looking at him—looking down, and then looking back, and then snatching another glance a moment later—and he found he couldn't look away from her silvery-dark eyes. Could hardly stand the feeling of her gaze on him, the way she seemed to take in every detail of him, of his entire identity, with one glance. Having her stealing glances at him like this, like she was doing something she wasn't supposed to, was once more awakening the urges of his body, which were never exactly quiescent when she was around. He saw her swallow, then look at him again.

"We should finish. You're right," she said slowly. "It's getting late."

Emmett rose to his feet, not really sure what he was doing, not sure if this was going to ruin everything, but knowing he couldn't stop himself. He took a step closer to her, then another, until he was standing close to her chair, Petra looking up at him.

"Put the book down, Petra," he said gently. "We can finish this another day."

She nodded, but this time she didn't look away, her eyes fixed on him. "Emmett," she said, and he could hear something in her voice, some combination of need and fear that he wanted to both assuage and satisfy. She put the book down and stood, still meeting his eyes. There was space between them—he hadn't just been looming over her—but it felt like there was none at all. Like he might as well have had her pressed up against him, her curves soft against the hardness of his own body.

"Petra," he said quietly, "why are you looking at me like that?"

"I can't not," she murmured. "I've been trying so hard, Emmett. But I need this."

And then, without breaking the hold of their eyes, Petra leaned forward and kissed him.

* * *

The kiss was…

Incredible.

Euphoric.

Paradise.

Heat exploded through her body the moment that their lips met, a storm of arousal centring at the suddenly tight, aching peaks of her nipples and the hot, swollen flesh between her thighs.

Her eyelids fell as a deep, guttural moan slid out of his throat, expecting him to wrap his hands in her hair and control the interaction somehow, but he didn't. Emmett stood completely still, silent other than that telling groan, and let her take what she needed. Her lips parted, and when she pressed her tongue against the seam of his, he opened for her, and pressed his own tongue into her mouth. In that moment, Petra realized exactly how much it was costing Emmett to let her take the lead. She hadn't been wrong, imagining him pressing her down to the bed and plundering her body, all those nights when she touched herself to thoughts of him. He was not, by nature, someone to allow his partner to take the dominant role. But he was letting her now, and it was costing him.

Another groan rolled free of him as she stroked her tongue over his, and Petra took a step forward and pressed her body against his. The voice in the back of her head that was begging to know what she was doing was silenced by the tidal wave of rightness that rolled through her when their bodies met. She brought her hands up and cupped his face, feeling the tension in the muscles of his neck and jaw as he fought to allow her to take the lead. One hand slid backward to twine in his hair, and with a noise that was more than halfway to a wolf's growl, his hands came up to cup her hips, holding her close and tight against him.

She rolled her body against his, moaning out her pleasure, and Emmett took a single step forward and lifted her up on the table. Her thighs slid apart, and he stepped between them, the movements as smooth as though they had been choreographed. The fabric of her dress felt like the most barely-there excuse for a barrier between her body and his. She could feel how hard he was, long and thick, pressed against the aching, swollen heat between her thighs. Her wolf was howling at this long-overdue surrender to the urges she'd been feeling since the first time she caught his scent, causing her to press her aching core up against his hardness and wrap her legs around him and—

He pushed her away.

For a moment, all she did was sit and stare at him.

If regular Emmett was gorgeous, just-been-kissed Emmett was off the damn scale. His hair was mussed from her fingers, his face flushed, his eyes all but glowing silver. He was staring at her like she was the most glorious artwork he'd ever seen, but at the same time, he looked… upset? Disappointed? Instinctively, she closed her legs, trying to find her voice. "What's wrong?"

"Don't do this to me, Petra," he said, his voice even lower than usual. "Don't tell me you want to get rid of me, then kiss me like you're desperate for me."

"I wasn't…" Petra said, then trailed away, realizing that to deny it would have been a lie. She broke eye contact, looking down at her hands. "I'm sorry. I don't know what came over me. This bond is… it's been begging me to throw myself at you. I guess I just lost control."

She felt his fingertip under her chin and allowed him to tilt her head up enough that they were making eye contact once more. "Hey. It's all right. Everyone makes mistakes sometimes. I just can't… I can't handle wanting you like this if you're going to tease me like that, all right? I can barely sit across from you in a café without wanting to plant my dick inside you, let alone if you're wrapping your legs around me and rubbing that sweet pussy against me. It's not fair if you're going to tease me like that then rip yourself away."

"What if I'm not?" Petra heard her mouth ask without permission from her conscious brain. What the hell are you doing? she wanted to demand of herself, but at the same time… at the same time, her whole body was aching for this man, for more of the rightness, of the intense sense of homecoming that she'd felt the moment their lips met.

He looked at her for a long moment, his chest rising and falling with his rapid breathing. "What if you're not what, Petra?"

"What if I'm not… going to rip myself away? What if… what if it's not just teasing, Emmett?"

His eyes met hers, and she had no idea what he was seeing there. A woman as aroused as she'd ever been in her life? A werewolf female, reaching out for the man the universe had bonded to her? Or just regular Petra Dalman, cheeks flushed with excitement, lips swollen from his kisses?

"Are you asking me if I want you, Petra?" He took a single step closer, almost close enough for their skin to touch, and her breath caught.

"I—" she started. "Do you?"

He took the final step, so his body was pressed against the side of hers, his lips almost touching her ear. Once again, her body was filled with a sweet sense of homecoming, as though being pressed to Emmett was where she'd always been meant to be. "You should already know exactly how much I want you, Petra," he said, his breath hot against her ear. "You just had it pressed all up against your pussy, didn't you?"

"Emmett," Petra breathed, turning toward him, and then they were kissing again, only this time his hands weren't restrained by his forcing himself to let her take the lead. One hand wrapped in her hair to better angle her head for him to take her mouth, while the other pressed firmly against the curve of her back, crushing her body against his. Her breasts pressed against his chest, her nipples aching to be touched. Her thighs split to accommodate his body like a breaking wave, and he pressed between them, once more driving his hardened cock where she was swollen and needy for his touch, over and over. She tightened her legs around him, holding him close, and worked her hips over the length of him, dragging her aching core over the place his aroused length tested the integrity of his trousers.

After a moment that stretched into endlessness, with electricity thrumming through her veins, Petra felt him pull back once more, this time just a few inches so he could examine her face from that small distance.

"You have to stop grinding on me like that," Emmett said, something between frustration and amusement in his voice. "I'm not going to fuck you on a desk in a library study room, but you're making it a hell of a lot harder to do this right."

"Is it not right, now?" she asked, astonished that he was pulling back from her, now of all times. "It feels pretty right to me."

"You deserve better than a quick fuck on a study room desk," Emmett said, the hand that had been in her hair coming around to cup her cheek. "And when I finally get my cock inside you, Petra, it's not going to be some quick and dirty bang where half our attention is on making sure no one is going to walk in and see us. When I'm inside you, the only thing I want you thinking about is me and how good I'm making you feel, do you understand?"

"You say that like it's a foregone conclusion that you will be," Petra managed tartly, trying not to feel rejected.

With a growl, Emmett's hands came together to cup her aching breasts, thumbs working over the hardness of her nipples through the fabric of her dress. Petra had to stifle a noise that was somewhere between the groan of herself as a woman and the growl of her wolf. "The way you moan when you kiss me, when you're grinding that sweet pussy on my cock…" he said, looking away from the way his thumbs were strumming the swollen buds of her nipples, her back arching to force them farther into his touch. "Eventually, Petra, you'll let me between these pretty thighs for real. And when you do, I'm going to make sure you never want me to leave. And I can't do that if I have to keep one eye on the door the whole time I'm fucking you."

She went to close her thighs to him, to turn away and try to regain a little bit of her sanity, if not her dignity, but he pinched at her nipples just hard enough that she both gasped in pleasure and arrested her movement.

The look on his face was that of a man fighting an incredibly difficult battle within himself, but one he was determined to win. As she watched, his eyebrows pulled down even farther, transforming the look into a deep scowl.

"If you don't want me," she started, shuffling back so their bodies were no longer in contact, "then why are you—"

"You think I don't want you?" Emmett asked, his voice as deep as the ocean. "You should be able to feel how badly I want you, Petra. The proof is right between your legs." He pushed up against her gently, but the motion put pressure on the places in her core that were aching for his touch, and she felt, rather than heard, her own gasped moan. "Gods, Petra, you think I'm doing this because I don't want you? Let me show you how goddamn much I want you." Without warning, he dropped to his knees before her, his hands shifting to grip her inner thighs, shoving her dress even farther up her legs until the only barrier between her flesh and his gaze was her white panties. "Oh, Petra," he said, his eyes fixed on the apex of her thighs like he was never planning on looking away. "You got these all wet, baby. You know what happens to white cloth when it gets wet?"

"It goes… it goes see-through?" Petra managed, the realization hitting her as she said the words.

"You're goddamn right," Emmett growled before leaning forward and sealing his mouth over her swollen pussy.

Even through the soaked fabric of her underwear, the thing that hit her the most was the warmth of his mouth, his tongue. His tongue. He dragged it over every inch of her like he was trying to memorize the topography of her pussy, tracing her opening and the length of her slit before centering in on the swollen nub at the crest of her sex. The sound Petra made was not a gasp, or a moan, or even a growl, but some unholy combination of the three. To her horror, Emmett pulled back after she made the noise.

"You have to keep quiet," he growled. "You have to keep quiet, or someone will hear us and come looking, and I can't promise how my wolf will respond if anyone else sees you like this. Can you promise me that?"

"Yes," said Petra, who, at that moment, would have promised to climb the Eiffel tower naked if it got his mouth back on her. He returned to stroking his tongue over her clit in patterns she couldn't hope to understand—not that much of her brain was still available for conscious thought while she had this man's mouth between her legs. Her internal muscles clenched like they were seeking something to tighten around, some filling of the sudden emptiness that would have come close to consuming her if so much of her attention wasn't focused on the exact workings of his tongue. She thought he was pulling away, again, for a fraction of a second, but it was only for long enough to tear the panel of her underwear that covered her so he could get to the parts of her shielded by the fabric. And his mouth was even warmer, even more intense when there was nothing between the two of them, his tongue zeroing in on her clit like it was magnetized there; like he never wanted to stop licking and savoring her. She felt pressure at her opening, just a little, and tilted her hips in a silent plea for him to fill that emptiness inside her before she died from it. With a growl, he pressed a finger inside her at the same time as his tongue drew indescribable patterns over her hypersensitive clit, and she had to strangle the gasping cry that wanted to leave her throat in response.

This was like nothing she'd ever experienced before—the one partner who had deigned to reciprocate when she gave him head had been unpracticed, and it had shown. She'd never asked for it again. Emmett… Emmett had experience at doing this, and for once she didn't mind that, because he was with her now, and that was all that mattered, not just to her but, if she was reading him right with what little of her brain could still function, to him. Emmett wasn't thinking through the best way to do this or what his best tricks were to make it good for her. He was just growling and lapping at her pussy like it held the elixir of life as he pressed that finger in and out of her, as obsessed with taking her in as he was with bringing her pleasure, and if he kept going much longer—

"I think I'm going to come," Petra managed, hearing the surprise in her own voice. This never happened so fast if it happened at all, but he was doing it. He'd all but asked her to make sure that no one came through the door because he and his wolf needed them to be alone for this, but she wasn't even looking at it anymore, because her eyes were squeezed shut as she tilted her pelvis farther upward to get more contact with his magical tongue. He laid the flat of it against the swollen bud of her clit and licked, licked, licked as he drove that finger into her over and over, again and again.

And she was lost. One hand braced against the desk so her arching back didn't throw her back into a pile of books, and the other was clenched so tightly in his hair that it must have hurt, holding him tight against her core, but the noises he made just sounded like pleasure. Muffled groans and growls that sounded like satisfaction, as though he was the one being brought gratification by this act rather than her, as waves of pleasure rolled through her body until she had to pull him away from her hypersensitive flesh.

"Please, it's too much," she heard herself groan, practically begging, and Emmett pulled back from her, licking his fingers clean before sitting back on his heels with his hands circling her spread thighs. He stared at her for a long moment, and he must have been satisfied with what he saw, because he rose to his feet and stepped close to her once more. This time, though, their kiss was as gentle as brushing butterfly wings, and though the taste of herself on his lips sent a fresh wave of arousal rocketing through Petra's body, the comfort that came when he tucked her against his chest overwhelmed it by magnitudes. Rightness. That's what she'd thought she felt the first time their bodies had pressed together, but it was nothing compared to how right this felt. Being held by him, after one had brought the other pleasure. This was what rightness felt like.

"Thank you," Emmett said softly, and she looked up at him, confused.

"What are you thanking me for? You're not the one who got to come."

He pulled back just enough to meet her eyes. "You've been sleeping with the wrong people, Petra, if you think the only part of sex worth thanking someone for is the orgasm. Thank you for letting me in like that. Letting me bring you pleasure. If you're not careful, I'm going to spend days with my face between your thighs, pretty girl. The taste of you is…" He shook his head, as though in wonderment. "You're the best thing I've ever tasted, Petra Dalman. I could spend a week just licking you out and consider myself lucky."

She ducked her head against his chest, not sure whether to be embarrassed.

"What I want to know is," he continued, as though she wasn't hiding her flushed cheeks from his gaze, "why did you sound so surprised when you said you were going to come?"

It was a moment before she had gathered herself enough to speak. "Nothing. You're just… you're very good at that." Perhaps in response to his blatant honesty, some part of her brain decided it was reasonable to add, "No one's ever made me come like that before."

Emmett's arms tightened around her for a moment, and she felt a vibration in his chest under her cheek as though he was holding back a growl. "Gods, Petra," he said after a moment, sounding almost breathless. "Are you telling me I'm the first man to make you come with my mouth?"

"Um." She hesitated. "Yes?"

"Gods," he repeated, and if she wasn't mistaken, where his length was pressed against her, she felt him harden even further. "I didn't think I could get any more turned on," he muttered, his arms still tight around her, "But every time I tell myself that, you prove me wrong."

"I mean, it's not like lots of men have tried before," her mouth said, once again without conscious input from her brain. "Most of the men I've been with haven't thought it was necessary to try."

"Then they're idiots," Emmett growled. "Anyone who would deny himself the opportunity to get his mouth on your perfect little pussy should have his sanity checked." He paused, the muscles in his arms clenching once more, and his voice was hard when he spoke again. "But there's a part of me that's fucking thrilled I was the first one to teach you how good it can be. Fuck!" He finished the admission on a sharp exclamation.

"Are you all right?" she asked, wondering if she should have kept some, if not all, of that information to herself.

"I'm perfect," Emmett said, pulling back enough that he could once more meet her eyes. He looked almost savage, his eyes all but glowing silver. "I'm just trying to hold back my wolf from what he really wants to do, which is rip off what's left of those teasing fucking panties and claim you right here on this desk. I'm trying to remind myself of all the reasons it would be a bad idea to do that, but all I can focus on is that I can still taste you."

Even knowing it might be a bad idea, Petra wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him again. This kiss was the wildest of all, filled with the savage need threatening to overwhelm her. If a genie had appeared at exactly that moment and offered to grant her wishes, she would have been unable to think of anything beyond the need to get somewhere she and Emmett could be properly alone, without the threat of interruption.

"Come home with me."

The words were out before she could question them. What the hell was she doing? They'd come here to try to find a way to break this bond between them, and here she was turning it physical? What was wrong with her?

But how could this be wrong when it felt like this? How could she deny the instincts that were begging her to get closer to this man when it felt this right when they touched?

She pushed all of it away. The questioning voices, the ones that justified what she was doing, all of it. She pushed it away and focused on the man before her, the one looking at her like she'd just offered to make every dream he'd ever had come true.

"Not on a desk in a library study room, that's what you said," Petra said, "But I live on my own, Emmett. We won't have to worry about anyone interrupting or walking in on us. Come home with me. Just for tonight."

"Are you telling me you want me to fuck you tonight, Petra?" Emmett asked, and the words dropped from his lips like heavy stones. This question had deeper meaning to him, she knew that, but she didn't let herself think about it.

"Yes," she said, letting her instincts take to the fore. Letting the reflexes of her body, of this bond, take the wheel, just for now.

"On one condition," Emmett said. When Petra looked at his face, she was struck by how bare he looked in that moment. This condition was important to him. It mattered. It wasn't just some fuck-and-forget from a night out—what he was about to say was going to tell her something about the man beneath what he had shown her so far, beneath the reputation of Emmett O'Neill. What he was about to say… it was something real.

"Yes," Petra said again.

"Let me stay the night," Emmett said. "And don't ask me to leave in the morning. It'll be hard enough for me to know you only want tonight; don't ask me to leave like I'm some kind of one-night stand you're hoping to never see again."

The power of his words was potent. Suddenly, Petra was seeing an Emmett she had never even imagined before. What if, she suddenly thought, it wasn't him who had wanted all those liaisons she'd heard of on the gossip grapevine to be one-night-only? He'd admitted to her over dinner that he had a history of falling for women within moments. What if he'd thought he was in for something more serious with those women, had been starting to develop feelings for them, only to be treated as nothing more than a one-night stand?

The wolf in her wanted to howl at the very idea of him having feelings for someone else, but her human side was more reasonable. Her human side wanted to sit him down and ask him the kind of questions one would usually only get in the therapist's office, and try to understand how this man so openly capable of love had been restricted into only giving it in one-night doses for so long.

"I won't," Petra said, pledging herself to something she wasn't sure she should be giving with her head where it was at the moment, but unable to resist the lure of bringing him home with her. Having him take her in the bed where she slept. She craved the feeling of his body on hers, taking her, using her, making her his.

His?

Where had that thought come from? She couldn't start thinking of herself as his, or the breaking of this bond would never happen.

"Do you feel any great need to get much more of this study done, or do you think you might be finished with it for the night?" Emmett asked, and Petra heard the slightest note of desperation in his voice.

"I'd say we've crossed a fair number of these books off the list already," she said, wondering if she should be feeling more nervous about what they were about to do. "Maybe we can finish it another night."

"I don't think the librarians would mind us claiming this room again another day," Emmett agreed.

"I'll give you my address," Petra said, finally biting the bullet and stopping their dancing around what they were deciding to do. "I can meet you there."

"Where are you parked?" Emmett asked. "Let me walk you to your car."

They didn't see any of the library workers as they left the building, which was probably a good thing, because Petra was pretty sure she had arousal written all over her face and body, not to mention her well-creased dress, flushed face, and messy hair. Emmett took her hand as they left the building, and though a small voice in her head told her to protest, most of her just reveled in the contact of his skin. Heat seemed to spread out from the place his thumb traced over her skin, rushing through her like it was passing along the lines of her veins, headed straight for her heart.

Her heart?

What the hell? What were these urges making her think now? That she was going to open her heart to this man? No, that was ludicrous. They were in the process of breaking this bond—they were just playing, really, just exploring what it would be like to give in to the physical cravings driving them together, just this once. This was an exploration, a scientific experiment, nothing more. It couldn't be anything more.

She knew what the outcome was of loving someone like Emmett. She'd had her heart broken into thousands of pieces once and did not plan on ever letting it happen again. Maybe spending hours with his incredible scent in her nose, followed by feeling the touch of his mouth, was addling her brain enough to allow herself this one violation of her internal rules, but she still had enough sense to remind herself that this was only safe for her, emotionally safe, if she kept some distance between them. If she kept herself at least a little bit separate from what they were about to do, she wouldn't find herself in that same position again, left in pieces when she discovered that the man she'd given her heart to had been following the urges of his roving eye for almost as long as she'd been faithful to him.

You really think Emmett would do that? a voice inside her head asked.

That's the problem, Petra told it as she kissed his cheek and rattled off her address by her car, then climbed in and watched him walk down the street to his own. I didn't think Regan was capable of it, either, and look where that got me.

The doubts in her mind built in a slow crescendo as she drove home. It wasn't a long drive, but it was more than long enough for her logical brain to start screaming at her to question what she was doing. But the tug of connection inside her body that seemed to link her directly to Emmett was pulling… well, it was strong enough for her to push away those doubts and questions. We'll try it just this once. We're just seeing what it's like, to give in to the bond. We've made each other no promises. Still, she couldn't stop herself from hearing Emmett saying, 'thank you,' as he held her close, as though pleasuring her was the greatest gift he'd ever received.

She pulled into her driveway, so distracted that she almost didn't notice that the black car was across the road again. This time, she was sure it was the same one, but even with the glow of the streetlamps, she couldn't see who was inside. She was about to walk over to try to get a closer look when a sleek silver car pulled in behind her own, Emmett behind the wheel. A sudden wave of nerves rolled over her as she took in the fact of him outside her home, waiting to be invited in so he could ravish her. She felt in her bag for her keys as he climbed out of the car and waited for him to join her beside her own before turning without a word to walk toward the door.

"Petra."

He hadn't followed her; he was still standing beside her car while she had one hand on the door handle.

"Yes?"

"Don't do this because you feel like you have to," Emmett said, his voice even and determined. "Don't do this for any reason other than because you want me. I promise, if you let me through those doors, I'll make you feel good. But I don't want you doing it because you said something in the heat of the moment that you don't really mean."

She walked back to him, uncaring that any of her neighbors—let alone whoever was in the black car—might look out their windows and see her with her hands on him. "Emmett, I want you," she said, softly enough that no one else could possibly have heard. "Please make me feel good."

The growl that left his lips reverberated through her entire body, leaving shudders of arousal in its wake. "You'd better unlock that bloody door, or I'm going to break it down to get you inside," he muttered, and Petra wasn't entirely sure that he was joking. Honestly, she was feeling rather similarly herself, like if she didn't get his hands on her soon, her wolf might just mutiny and burst through her skin in a way that hadn't happened since she was a child. She needed him—she needed him, in a way she'd never needed someone before.

She turned the key in the lock, feeling his eyes on her like the stroking of fingertips down the nape of her neck and her back, and down lower, lower, over her ass and to the juncture of her thighs where she was aching for him so badly.

She opened the door jerkily and stepped through it with approximately as much grace and hesitated in the entryway, her hands clenching and unclenching as Emmett followed and closed the door behind them.

"Petra," he said, and there was a note of desperation in his voice that she hadn't heard even when they were together at the library. "You've got about thirty seconds to show me where you want to be fucked or it's going to be right goddamn here."

"M-my bedroom is this way," she managed, leading him down the corridor to her room and stepping through the door to reveal her four-poster bed.

"Gods, but I want to tie you to this," Emmett said, coming up behind her. His body came into contact with hers and the rightness wave rolled through her, and suddenly she wasn't nervous anymore. She wasn't thinking about whether this was right or wrong or if he'd think she was silly for her reservations. This was Emmett. This was right.

"Tie me to it?" she asked.

"I could tie each of your arms and legs to the posts and leave you completely open for me," he said, his voice at least halfway to a growl. "I could eat that pretty pussy until you were begging for me to take you and then make you come again just for the hell of it before I even thought about fucking you. And then I'd pin you to the bed and fuck you so good, you'd forget you were even tied up."

Petra didn't even realize she had turned to look at him, until he stopped speaking and bit his lip like perhaps he'd said too much. Without thinking, she managed a half-gasped out, "Gods, yes," and launched herself at him like it had been hours since they'd kissed. Like they had been sentenced to death and this was their last chance to taste each other before the executioner's axe fell. Like she'd been waiting for him for as long as the desperate needs of her body were telling her she had been, which was years.

He walked her backward until the backs of her legs hit the bed, kissing her the entire time, his mouth claiming hers like he was trying to ensure that she remembered this for the rest of her days—as though there was any way she could forget the way his tongue stroked over hers, the way he growled into her mouth when she sucked on it, the way his hands roamed over her waist and hips to cup the curve of her ass. He pulled her tight against him when her legs hit the bed, crushing their bodies together, like he was trying to meld them into one, and then loosened his grip. She opened her eyes and separated herself from him for long enough to sit and shuffle backward toward her pillows, and then he was climbing on the bed after her, prowling up between her legs like his wolf had somehow taken over without him shifting form.

"This dress," he growled, pressing his lips against her throat. "This dress ought to be goddamn outlawed."

"It's a nice dress," Petra protested.

"Absolutely, it's a nice dress," Emmett replied against her sensitive skin. "It's the nicest dress I've ever seen. I was dying to fuck you the moment you walked into the restaurant, it's that nice." He pressed a kiss right below her ear, and she couldn't stop the shiver that ran through her body. "Every single curve of this perfect body is outlined by this dress. You ask me to break our bond, dressed like you're trying to seduce me? It's no wonder we wound up in bed, Petra, if that's how you're going to look when you come to me."

"It's just tonight," Petra ground out, managing to pull away slightly from the temptation of his lips. "It has to be just tonight, and then we go back to finding a way to break it."

"Oh, don't I fucking know it," Emmett said, and then he was grinding his hardness against the place between her thighs that was still swollen and wet from his mouth on her, and she lost the ability to think, let alone speak. Her dress was pushed up to gather around her waist, and he was tugging it even higher, releasing her mouth to pull the garment over her head so she was lying there in just her bra and ruined panties. Her hands fumbled through the buttons of his shirt, then attacked his fly, and then he was stripping off his clothes and returning to her, so almost all her bare skin was covered by his. His mouth on hers was as much as she'd ever dreamed of feeling, the passion and arousal that came just from his tongue tangling with her own.

And then there was the way his body pressed hers down into the mattress, the heat of his bare skin pressed against hers like he simply couldn't get enough of the way her body felt against his. She stroked her fingers over the lines of his muscular chest, down over his abs, slowly getting closer to the hard length begging to be touched, but skipping over it every time her hands came close. She stroked her fingertips over his hips and gripped his ass, squeezing the taut curve to pull him even tighter against her core. He let out a sound that could not have been closer to a snarl if he was in full wolf form and growled, "Petra, if you don't touch my cock soon, I'm going to take your hands and put them where I need them."

"Oh, you are, are you?" she asked archly, tracing one of her hands back around over the ridge of his hip to stroke featherlight fingertips along the swollen length covered by his boxers. Another growl came, this one more than halfway to a moan, and his lips captured hers again and then Emmett was making noises that could have been praise or curses as she wrapped her fingers around him as much as she could through the stretched fabric of his underwear.

"Let me take them off," he panted, lips bare inches from her own. "I need your hands on my skin."

"Yes," Petra groaned and was treated to the view of his rippling musculature as he pulled back just long enough to deal with his boxers before returning to press his now entirely bare body against hers. His hands snaked around her back to unfasten her bra before dragging it off and casting it aside, and his gaze was so tightly fastened on the apex of her thighs as he began to tug the tatters of her panties down her legs that she felt it like he was stroking fingertips over her skin. He stared at her pussy, as he discarded her underwear, like she was a Michelin-starred meal, and she felt all her internal muscles clench in response.

"Let me touch you," she managed to say as he was stroking his eyes over every inch of her naked flesh. "Please, Emmett, I want to touch you bare."

"God, yes," he groaned, and then he was rolling onto his back and dragging her with him, so that all of a sudden, she was straddling his thighs.

"Touch me," Emmett said, his voice rough. "I'm yours. Show me how you want me."

Part of her immediately panicked at his words, but she shoved it down under the storm of arousal currently ruling her conscious brain. She stared at him, at the erotic sight his body presented, all rigid lines and hard dips. She ran her fingers once more down the muscles of his chest, across his abs, stroking across every inch, only this time she didn't skip it when her hands came into contact with his swollen cock. She explored every hard inch of him, curling her hands around his rigid length and pumping them once, twice. The muscles of his abs jumped in response, and Petra licked her lips, still stroking.

"So," she said softly, "when you said you wanted me to touch you, was there any restriction that it had to be with my hands?"

His cock jerked in her grip as her words sank in. With one hand, he reached out and tilted her chin up, so they were making eye contact. "You want to put me in your mouth, pretty girl?"

She nodded without breaking eye contact. "Yes," she made herself say, forcing herself to articulate the desire that was gripping her like iron shackles. "I want to suck your cock."

His whole body, already taut with tension, seemed to tighten even further at her words. She watched as the muscles of his jaw clenched, then slowly relaxed enough for him to speak. "You can't say things like that to me, Petra," he muttered, "I can't handle it. It's too much."

"Too much?" she asked, not realizing the teasing tone the words would take until they came out, even as one eyebrow quirked upward.

"I'm not ashamed to say you drive me to the very edge of my control, Petra," Emmett said. "I don't want to get into a state where I'm so frantic for you that I could hurt you. I don't want to work my wolf up until he's halfway to controlling what I do with you. I don't want you in danger from me."

"You don't think I could fight you off?" Petra asked. "I'm a wolf too, Emmett. I might not be the teacher of fighting classes like you, but I've been taking them for a lot of years, and I know how to hold my own."

"It's not that I don't have faith in your abilities," he replied, "I just physically can't do anything that would put you at risk."

"I trust you," she said quietly, still holding his gaze. "I don't think you'd hurt me, even if your wolf was holding the reins one hundred percent. I have faith in you, Emmett."

His head bowed under the weight of her words. "I just don't want you to be monitoring what I'm doing in case it turns dangerous, when the only thing you should be thinking about when I'm between your legs is how goddamn good I'm making you feel."

"You really think you're that good?" Petra asked, mostly to draw his mind away from the fear of hurting her. "Little bit cocky there, aren't we, Mr. O'Neill?"

In the barest of moments, he'd flipped the two of them, so that she was on her back again and he was kneeling over her. His hands cupped her breasts and then his mouth was on her nipples, his tongue stroking over their aching tightness, sucking until she arched off the bed at the intensity of the sensation. How was it that everything was so much more intense with this man; every touch, every kiss was so much more than it had ever been with anyone else?

His head came up so he could meet her eyes once more, though his hands continued massaging the aching fullness of her breasts. "Cocky? Nah, pretty girl, I've just seen what I can do to you with my mouth, in a library where you're trying to keep quiet. I'm dying for the chance to see how good I can make you feel when it's just you and me, and it doesn't matter how loud I make you." His smile was pure sin, and it sent another bolt of heat through her body.

"Do it," she heard herself say without conscious permission from her brain. "Do it, then."

That perfect, sinful smile widened even farther, turning positively wolfish, and then he was sliding down her body, the angles of his flesh touching every exposed inch of hers. His hands circled her thighs and tugged them apart, smoothly insinuating himself between them. Petra came up on her forearms. "Emmett, I didn't mean… you don't have to… you already—"

"I know I don't have to," he said, once more staring down at her pussy like she was his favorite food and he hadn't eaten in days. "But I've been dreaming of doing this for too fucking long, Petra. Give me a chance to do it properly."

The idea struck her as she stared down at him, shooting through her like lightning. "Let me suck your cock, Emmett. Put it in my mouth while you—while you—"

"While I eat you out?" he asked, looking up at her once more. Surely, it should be impossible that his voice could keep getting deeper, but it seemed to be happening. "You want me to put my dick in your mouth while I'm eating your pussy?"

Yes, Petra wanted to shout. Yes, please do exactly that. But her voice seemed to have gone on hiatus due to sheer hyperarousal, so she settled for nodding so fiercely that her hair flew around her face.

Once more, he moved her like she was a doll he could position at will, shifting her so quickly that she almost lost track of where she was and how he was situating her until he was on his back, and she was—oh, gods above—she was all but sitting on his mouth, facing down his body toward the hard length she was longing to memorise with her tongue.

"Stop," she managed to gasp out, and his hands on her ass immediately ceased lowering her toward his face. He froze in position, managing to ask, "What's wrong?" though she could hear that it cost him.

"Won't I hurt you?" she asked, wondering if giving away her innocence when it came to this act, in this position, was really the best move she could be making right now. "I might… I mean, won't I squash you?"

His laugh reverberated through her. "Gods, just when I think you can't get any cuter."

"What?" Petra snapped, unable to believe he was taking her concern for his safety so lightly.

"You won't squash me," he promised. "I could lift you with one hand. And if I die between these thighs, just know that I've kicked the bucket when I was already in heaven."

She meant to keep protesting. Surely, they should discuss this further, shouldn't they, her worries for his health? But then… oh, but then, he lowered her so his mouth could make contact with her most intimate areas, and every part of her brain that had been so much as considering asking him to wait shut down like someone had flicked a switch. Suddenly, the only thing that existed was his tongue licking her like an ice cream and her incontestable desire to bring him the same kind of pleasure.

She leaned forward, reached for his length, and guided him toward her mouth. Inspired by his tongue tracing her own skin like he couldn't get enough of the taste of her, she stuck her tongue out and licked. And oh, gods above, the taste of him. It was almost as good as his scent, and she immediately abandoned her half-formed plan to lick him all over, drew his head between her lips, and took him deep.

This must be it, she thought distantly, the most pleasure a person could possibly have. Being eaten out by a man who could go to the Olympics for this skill while at the same time being able to bring him enough pleasure that he was groaning against her flesh, growling words of praise that were muffled between her legs. His hands holding her thighs positioned her so he could reach every part of her, pushing his tongue inside her before pressing up against her swollen clit and circling, circling, circling until she thought she might scream. Instead, she took him even deeper, her hand encircling the part of him beyond what she could take and stroking to match the movements of her mouth, up and down, up and down, faster and faster until it felt like they were in a race to see who could get the other over the finish line first. She moaned around the length of him and felt his growl in return, and then his fingertip pressed against the pucker of her ass and drew a soft but determined circle, and Petra lost the race.

Somehow, it didn't feel like losing.

It felt like she had been given wings, like she was soaring far above the bed where they lay as she cried out around Emmett's length in her mouth and felt her thighs try to close, unsure whether she was trying to push him away or hold him there for the rest of time. Her whole body seemed to convulse, her muscles tightening as she let him slip from between her lips for fear of biting down in the throes of her ecstasy, trying to continue the motions of her hand in what must have been the most uncoordinated hand-job in history. But he was making those same gratified noises again, just like when he'd made her come in the library, only more, as though her orgasm was the best gift he could have received, made even better by the way she began to almost frantically work his cock as she came down from her high in her desperation to bring him the same pleasure she'd achieved. He didn't make it easy for her; his tongue was tracing every inch of her pussy like he was going to be asked to draw a map of it, like he wanted to taste every bit of the pleasure he'd brought her, and every few seconds his touch would push what felt like all the muscles inside her abdomen into another bout of tensing.

She was about to beg for him to stop, just so that she could focus on making him feel good, because the drive in her to bring him pleasure was so strong, it was bordering on obsession, when he lifted her far enough that he could grunt loudly, through what sounded like gritted teeth, "Stop, Petra!"

She arrested her rapid movements immediately, releasing him like he'd suddenly become red-hot. Was he… was he not enjoying it? Did she do something wrong? Or worse, was she simply not as good at this as all those women he'd been with before? Suddenly, all of her insecurities rolled back in, a tidal wave of anxiety, and she clambered off him, feeling like this could not have happened with her in a more awkward position. Hesitantly, she turned to look at him and found him staring at her like she was a treasure he'd been searching for his entire life.

One of his hands came up and cupped her cheek and she just stared at him, not sure what this meant—was he about to let her down easy, tell her she didn't need to do that for him anymore when the truth was that he hadn't even enjoyed it?

"If you'd kept going," he said, and was that awe in his voice? "Petra, if you'd kept going, I wasn't going to be able to stop myself from coming for another damn second."

The insecurities melted back like vampires trying to escape the sun. She felt a hesitant smile spread across her face as the tightness in her chest began to ease. "You mean… you liked it?"

"Liked it?" Emmett repeated, like he couldn't believe what she was saying. "Petra Dalman, I've never felt anything like you. That mouth of yours needs to come with a goddamn license, woman—I was trying not to come down your throat after about two minutes."

"Really?" she asked, the anxiety that had been weighing her down only moments earlier morphing into a glow that went deeper than pure happiness, a kind of visceral satisfaction she'd never known before.

He pulled her close, so she was lying on her back once more with him half over her, half beside her. "Yes, Petra. Yes. And if you don't want me taking all that frustration and pounding it into you right here," with the smoothest of movements, he'd reached down between her thighs and pressed a finger inside her, curling it up to press against that spot that no one else but herself had ever found before, and she let out a noise between a gasp and a moan, "you'd better make it pretty fucking clear right now."

"I want that." The words came out in a rush. "Take it out in me."

He pulled away and stood up from the bed, and for a second, she was horrified again that she'd done something wrong, until she rose up on to her elbows and saw him frantically scrabbling in his wallet, muttering, "Come on, please, come on." When he found a condom, you would have thought he'd just won the World Cup, from the joy on his face. He came back to her immediately, capturing her mouth in a kiss so profound, she all but forgot where she was. And then his body was rising over her as he sheathed himself, then returned to her, his kiss as passionate as if they'd been separated for years rather than moments. She felt his head at her opening and wrapped her legs more tightly around him, pulling him into her, feeling the sheer size of him stretching her as he worked his way deeper, deeper inside her, the feeling more intense than anything she'd experienced in her life.

When his hips met hers, both of them swore at the same moment. Petra opened her eyes to find Emmett looking down on her with an expression that she couldn't analyze right now, so she did the only thing she could and tilted her hips to get him even deeper. The cords in Emmett's neck stood out as a wordless growl erupted from him, and he began to thrust.

The feeling was indescribable. Taking him into her body, feeling the ferocity of his need being forced into her over and over… she had no words. She was reduced to wordless cries as she worked her hips as much as she could while pinned beneath him, feeling his cock rub over every single sensitive spot inside her. She was rising upward toward another peak already, feeling like if she didn't have him pinning her down with the repeated drives that were pleasuring every sensitive place she'd ever found inside herself, she might float away. She clung to him, needing him to hold her there, to keep making her feel like this as her pleasure began to build.

"You. Feel. So. Good," Emmett growled out between thrusts. "There. Is. Nothing. Like. This." With a sound that was close to some kind of roar, he rose to kneel between her legs, taking her with him so her hips were propped on his thighs, and started to work her up and down his length in time with his thrusts like some kind of doll, she thought distantly. Yes, use me. Use me for your pleasure. Take this frustration out in me.

One of his thumbs came to circle her clit, rubbing over the flesh that he'd so recently sensitized, and Petra knew it wouldn't be long before she went over that cliff again. She brought her own hands up to cup her breasts, toying with her taut nipples as she all but writhed in Emmett's grip, and managed to gasp out, "If you keep doing that, I'm going to come."

"Yes," he growled, and if anything, his pressure on her clit became even more intense. "Come for me, Petra. Show me what I do to you. Gods, I've been waiting for this my whole life. I've been waiting for you my whole life."

She was saved from having to process that comment by the orgasm that roared through her body like a hurricane, like a tidal wave, like the shock wave from a nuclear explosion. Her back arched like she'd been electrocuted, every muscle in her body pulling taut as she clenched down around the place Emmett was still thrusting into her body. The pleasure was… incandescent. She felt like she should have been lit up as bright as the sun; she felt like a fire that had been doused in gasoline, the strength of the arousal that she'd been fighting all this time suddenly feeding into this. She'd thought the other orgasms he gave her were extreme, but this was… gods, this was otherworldly.

She was barely coming down from her own orgasm when Emmett's thrusts began to lose their rhythm, his fingers gripping her hips so tight, she wouldn't be surprised if they left bruises. He was driving into her like she was the only thing he'd ever need, and the feeling of him moving inside her was pushing her closer and closer to another crest. The truth was if she came like that again so soon, she wasn't sure she wouldn't pass out… but hell if she didn't want to try.

With every muscle in her body, Petra clenched down on his length moving inside her and only distantly heard Emmett growl, "My gods, my gods, Petra," as he drove into her once, twice, three more times, and her orgasm overtook her, blanking all sensory input as the pleasure rolled over her, except for the sight of Emmett, every one of his muscles clenched and working, looking at her like she'd just given him the entire world.