I stare across the cabin at Kier for a second. Then I lift my hand and point at his groin. "You were going to do something with that."
As he stalks toward me, he unbuttons his pants before shoving them down his legs. My mouth goes dry at the thick length of him, and heat spreads all over my body at the thought of him sliding deep inside me.
He moves even closer. "We'll get to that."
I can't take my eyes away. Why can't I take my eyes away? "Why not-"
I stop talking because when I finally find the strength to tear my gaze away from his fierce erection, I discover where he's focused his gaze.
Between my thighs. And the level of hunger in his eyes has moisture flooding my already damp panties. "Oh."
When his hands grip my ankles, I jump in surprise, not expecting him to touch me there. He kneels on the edge of the bed with a faint smile that curves his lower lip, which tells me he felt my nervy response to his first touch.
"Yes. Oh," he murmurs as his hands stroke up my legs and up to my hips. On his next stroke downward, he takes my panties with him, leaving me bare to his gaze.
After tossing the lace fabric aside, he repeats the torturously slow slide of his fingers up my legs, his mouth not far behind.
"You know," I sigh, as he kisses a path up one leg, "I don't want you to feel like you have to do this because I saved-" I suck in a sharp breath when he reaches his destination, my hands gripping at his thick, dark hair. "Never mind."
I feel his smile against me, but soon his mouth and his tongue are far too busy to smile. As his tongue strokes against me, alternately lapping and sucking, I throw my head back and moan my pleasure.
Just when I'm sure I can't take any more, Kier closes his hands around my thighs and spreads my legs even wider before probing me with his tongue.
I gasp at the decadent pleasure, loving the feel of him slowly penetrating me with his tongue. By now I know my grip on his hair has to be painful as I hold on to him, so close to release that the only sounds in the room are my panting moans. "Kier, please."
He lifts his head a little, though I can still feel his warm breaths on my sex. "Baby?"
"I need you inside me," I moan, tugging at his hair to drag him up my body, aching for him to fill the empty heart of me.
Kier doesn't move. He tilts his head up so he can meet my eyes, revealing his have gone fully wolf. "Not until I have you screaming beneath me."
My mouth goes dry at the burning heat in his eyes. I stop tugging so insistently at his hair. "Uh, okay. If you feel you must, who am I to stop you?"
A faint smile touches his lips before he bends his mouth back to his task. Since Kier has always known how to drive me over the edge in record time, it doesn't take him long to have me a giant ball of need as I writhe beneath him, moaning low with each firm stroke of his tongue between my thighs.
I'm going to scream. Probably loud enough that everyone will know exactly what we're doing in here. Yet, even knowing this, nothing in me cares even the tiniest bit.
The only thing that matters is the feel of Kier's tongue gliding through my folds and dipping inside me. That is my only focus, my only need. Everything else is secondary or fails to even register.
Suddenly I still, every muscle in me tensing, and my thighs shaking with my imminent release. "Kier," I moan loudly.
When he sucks on my clit, my release blows through me. Tossing my head back, I scream as I writhe against him. Kier continues to lap at me until I'm so sensitive I'm trying to crawl away from his mouth.
In response, his hold on my thighs tightens, making escape impossible and all too soon drawing another release from me.
With my eyes closed and my breath a series of ragged gasps, I work to come down from the high of my climaxes. Before I can, Kier is there, draping his body over my sweat-dampened one, and his cock probing between my legs.
His lips brush against mine. "You look…"
I open my eyes before he can complete his thought, with a no doubt sated smile curving my lips. "I look what?" I murmur in a voice made husky from screaming.
"Well-loved," he breathes, as his eyes search my face, looking just a little smug.
I lift my hand, but at his low growl, I lower it and raise my uninjured one instead. Curving my hand around his nape, I lightly brush my fingers against the back of his neck. "You're making me wonder if being with an alpha is nothing but trouble," I murmur.
Briefly, his eyes shutter in pleasure as he sinks more of his weight on me, not slipping inside me yet, but close.
This is something he likes to do. He'll hold off for as long as possible and I never know why. I don't know if he does it because he knows it drives me crazy, but it works. Every single time. But that's not all it does.
His delaying things makes me so needy that I've lost count of how many times I've snapped at him that I want to be on top.
"It's a bit late for that now," he murmurs, his lips descending for another soft kiss as I wiggle beneath him, trying to tell him I want him. "You have one on your hands and he's not going anywhere."
"Kier…" I moan as I try to draw his body down on mine. "You're driving me crazy here."
"Maybe that's what I want." He kisses me again. "Or maybe I just love hearing you moan my name like that."
I wrap my legs around his thighs and he gives me a little more of his weight. We both groan at that first penetration as he slowly sinks inside me.
"I'll scream if you don't do something." I nip at his bottom lip, drawing a laugh from him.
"You'll scream, anyway."
"Wow, you alphas are-" My words end in a gasping moan when he drives hard into me, filling me completely with that one firm thrust.
"We alphas are what?" he growls in a voice that's not altogether steady.
I don't answer. I can't with him buried to the hilt inside me. Instead, I press my fingers into his nape and he lowers his head, giving me what I want, a deeply drugging open-mouthed kiss that has me moaning as I rock against him.
Kier soon makes it clear he's in charge, that he's the one controlling the pace, when he pins my hips to the bed, halting my rocking motions. Before I can complain, he eases his hips back, the hard length of him dragging against every single part of me as he retreats, before surging back in again.
I grab at his hips with both hands, knowing my nails are breaking skin as I cry out at each hard stroke. Again and again, he buries himself inside me as I buck, fighting to lift my hips to meet each one of his powerful thrusts.
We find a rhythm, a smooth pace that I know means I won't last long, not with him hitting the perfect place deep inside me each time. As if Kier knows it too, he lifts his mouth from mine and frames my face with his large hands.
His hips slow as he peers deep into my eyes. "How can you be this beautiful?"
I study the harsh lines of his face, his chiseled jaw, his straight nose, and his uncompromising mouth with the slightly fuller bottom lip.
He's mine.
Everything in me knows it.
I shake my head because I don't have an answer for him.
His eyes scan my face for a little longer. All the while, my restlessness builds because I need him to move. I need him to drive us over the edge of this looming explosion.
I don't understand why he suddenly smiles until he speaks. "You look like you're about to start demanding to be on top."
"And I will if you don't-" I stop talking when he dips his head and kisses me.
It's a kiss that makes it impossible to think, to do anything but sink into the bed and kiss him back. As we do, his hand snags my uninjured hand and he lifts it to pin it on the bed above our heads as his heavy thrusts resume.
We lose our rhythm, or rather, Kier's pace increases until I can't keep up. Finally, he breaks our kiss and his eyes lock on mine. In them is a world of emotion-of feeling-and I know mine must be just as telling.
"Hallee," he groans deeply.
I cry out as he pounds into me. When he lowers his head and his lips brush against the hollow of my throat, his tongue stroking me there, I explode.
My hips pump up as I scream out my release, bucking and writhing against him as he growls. His hands grip me harder, holding me flush against him as his cock jerks inside me, filling me with heat.
For long minutes we stay locked together, his thrusts gentling as he softens, the tension leaving both our bodies.
Soon, I'm completely relaxed, with Kier still braced over me, his body serving as a blanket that keeps me warmer than any I've ever had before.
I close my eyes as he eases his body from mine. He shifts us so we're lying side by side with his arm draped around me, his fingers gently stroking my waist. But when he attempts to draw the comforter over me, I shake my head.
"It's too hot," I murmur tiredly.
He grumbles something beneath his breath, and not knowing what it was, I open my eyes and find his gaze has settled on my breasts.
"What did you say?"
Kier lifts his head and sighs. "I said, how do you expect me to relax with you lying naked beside me like this."
I smile. "You went to sleep last night."
He snorts. "Sleep? After seeing you lying stretched out naked on the bed and then your talk of wet panties, which I then had to see drying on the sink? If you think I got more than an hour of sleep last night, you must be crazy."
"Kier?"
"Hmmm."
"I wasn't really going to leave. I was just going to make you think I was. Everyone knows you strike when your enemy is least expecting it."
His eyebrow goes up. "Enemy, huh?"
I nod. "I'm sneaky like that."
He leans close and kisses me softly. "I love sneaky."
"I love you," I hear a voice that sounds just like mine murmur.
Kier's expression freezes for a second, and I tense as I wait for him to find some reason to leave.
In the past, any time I've even hinted that I more than liked him, he's immediately remembered a project he needed to be working on in his workroom or some other commission with a fast-approaching deadline.
"I see," he says in a voice that's impossible to decipher.
That he hasn't run screaming from the cabin is a good sign, I tell myself. But that doesn't stop me from thinking of all the ways I could take it back. "I mean, most women would be happy with a guy who's so good in bed."
He's silent for a beat. "So that's why? Sex?"
Since his expression is more thoughtful than closed off, I hesitate. "I don't know. Maybe."
He raises a hand and smooths back sweat-dampened hair from my face, his eyes tracking the movement. "I thought it was because you cared. About me. A lot, I think were the words you used."
"I don't know, were they?"
His gaze returns to mine. "Yes. I'm sure. I'd never forget something like that."
What does that even mean? Why are you so impossible to read?
Likely reading my frustration from some hidden cue on my face, amusement lights his eyes. Hopefully, he's not laughing at me.
Great, now I have the thought in my head.
Feigning a casualness I don't feel, I turn to lie on my back, at the last second reaching for the comforter to tug it over me. I'm hoping that covering my body will help me feel less naked after exposing my heart like that.
"I thought you weren't cold," Kier reminds me, sounding amused.
I shrug, but instantly regret it when my shoulder twinges. Hoping Kier missed my wince, I relax my expression. "I am a little."
"You're in pain is what you are." The amusement has disappeared without a trace. Now he just sounds gruff.
"I'm fine. I'm just tired, that's all." My tone is insistent, willing him to drop it. "I think I might have a nap." I close my eyes, waiting for him to take advantage of me giving him a way out so he doesn't have to think up a reason to leave.
But what I'm not expecting is for him to lift the comforter and ease his body over mine, his weight braced on his elbows.
My eyes snap open. "What are you doing?"
He studies me in silence for several seconds. "You were hurt protecting me in a fight. Was that because of the sex?"
"It's good sex, okay. Considering the population of Hardin, I'd take a bullet for you since I have no interest in shacking up with a fifty-year-old farmer."
He doesn't call me out on my lie, even though my voice is a little too shrill to be believable. But having made myself vulnerable the way I just did, it's impossible to pretend I'm not hurt by him not saying he loves me. "No, I don't think it's that."
"It might be."
"You know, you should love someone like Luka. Maybe someone like Nathan."
I stare up at him. "I should, should I?"
His expression is as unreadable as ever. "Yes."
"Why?"
"I'd have thought that would be obvious."
I blink up at him, trying to figure out what he means. My thoughts go back to the cops from outside Target and their belief that Kier was trying to protect me, that he wouldn't know how to ask for help.
I think about what it must feel like coming from no family and a messed-up pack, and how he wouldn't know how to deal with one. Maybe, just like him not knowing how to ask for help, he doesn't know how to say he loves me, too.
Sure, at twenty-nine he's a little older than my twenty-four, but he's never known family or love the way I have. Maybe this is something I have more experience with than him. And maybe him pushing me away is his way of protecting me because he doesn't think I would want to be with someone without a pack.
"You look like your brain is about to short circuit," Kier comments.
"You know, I think you might be right," I admit.
"I wasn't expecting you to agree."
"I know."
"So, are you going to tell me what you were thinking?"
"Nope."
"You're very strange." He smiles, as his fingers pull gently on my hair.
"I'm unique."
"I doubt there's anyone like you in the world. I doubt there's anyone who even comes close."
"Probably not."
"And you love me?"
I try to look serious. "It's because of the sex."
Kier nods. "And you're sure about that?"
After a tiny hesitation, it's my turn to nod. "Yes. Why?"
He lowers his head to brush his lips across mine. "Just that the reason I love you has nothing to do with the sex."
I open my mouth. Kier takes full advantage of my shocked state to fuse his lips with mine. So, I do the only thing I can: I close my eyes, wrap my arms around his hips, and kiss him back.
We lose ourselves in each other, his kiss so tender I ache with it, so happy that it hurts.
As Kier is shifting to slip back inside me, a hard knock on the door has both of us growling in frustration. "I'll be right back after I kill him."
Grinning, I watch as Kier rises and pads over to the door, unabashedly naked. He rips the door open as I settle in, preparing for Frank's imminent death.
Only, it isn't just Frank at the door. He's brought reinforcements in the form of this pack's illustrious alpha. As soon as Kier has the door open, Jaxon doesn't beat about the bush. He gets right to it.
"I had thought this challenge was important to you."
I sit up in bed, covering myself with the comforter as I do.
"The challenge is important," Kier agrees.
"Then if I were you, I would be at the house for dinner at six."
Kier closes the door without saying a word and turns back to me.
"You think he only did that because he knew we were having hot sex and he was jealous?" I ask.
He snorts. "Probably."
My eyes slide down his naked body, stopping at his cock, which is standing to attention. "But dinner isn't for hours yet. It's barely even lunchtime."
"So it is," he murmurs as he stalks toward me. "Now, however could we pass the time?"