BRANDED BY FIRE

Fingers running down his spine, skating lower, then back up. This time, she spread her hands and stroked, petted, caressed until he felt a light sweat break out over his body. As he waited, held in place by her pleasure, she pressed a kiss to the part of his back closest to her. “I like the way you’re built, Riley. All hard and solid and bitable.”


Every dominant instinct he had urged him to take control. But something else, another set of instincts, pulled him back. If his mate wanted to tease him to insanity, that was her right. And, difficult as it was to restrain his wolf, he liked this, liked knowing his mate found him attractive.

Teeth grazing over his back. “Beautiful.”

“Come here.” A husky request.

“Not yet.” But she stroked her hands up his body and pressed herself to him. She was still completely dressed.

“I want skin.”

Hands gliding over his arms, testing his muscles. “And I want to pet you.”

The wolf was a master negotiator. “You can do it as much as you want if you take off your clothes.”

Soft feminine laughter. “It’ll torture you.”

“I like being tortured by you.” Damn if it wasn’t the truth. “Mercy, kitty cat.”

Claws digging into his skin. “I’m still not sure I like that nickname.”

“Tough.” When dancing with a leopard female, the trick, he’d realized, was to give a little, but never too much. “You’ll get used to it.”

Those claws didn’t release. “Or maybe I’ll peel the skin from your bones.”

Playing, he thought in wonder, his mate was playing with him. “I didn’t realize you liked to talk dirty in bed.”

She laughed then and the claws were retracted, his unbroken flesh kissed over by soft feminine lips, flicked by a tongue he wanted to feel on every part of his body. God, when she’d gone down on him … his head had about exploded. Now his cock twitched, eager. Shuddering, he felt her draw back, heard the soft susurration of her shedding her clothes … but not her boots.

His entire body turned into one big flame.

He expected her to press herself up against him again, but she came around to face him instead. Groaning, he raised a hand to cup the lush heaviness of her breast. “You’re the one who’s beauti—” The word ended in a growl as she closed her fingers around his erection and pumped once. “Mercy!” His hands were in her hair, and his mouth on hers before the shout ended.

She tasted like fire and earth, true and real, strong and unique. On his cock, her hand was a brand, and he realized in the dim depths of his mind that he was being taken in a very feminine way. So when she tore away her lips to run them down his neck—oh, God, the pleasure of it—he didn’t force her back. Instead, he angled his neck so she could close her lips more easily over him … so she could close her teeth more easily over him.

The bite shook him to his toes. Not with pain—he had so many endorphins in his system by now, he doubted he’d feel anything less than a deathblow—but with the heartbreaking pleasure of it. She’d marked him, in a place no one could miss. It was a claiming and it soothed his predator’s soul as nothing else could’ve done.

Perhaps there would be no easy answer to their mating, no solution that wouldn’t tear their hearts to shreds, but they belonged to each other. Nothing could change that.

“You taste good, Riley.” A soft purr of sound against his pulse as she laved her tongue over the mark she’d made.

Shuddering, he decided he’d been good quite long enough. “Mercy.” He tried to pull her hand off his cock.

She tightened it. “You said I could pet you as long as I liked.”

“Didn’t say I wouldn’t try to fuck you in the middle of the petting.”

Her eyes snapped up to meet his. “That’s feline logic. You’re a wolf.”

“I’m learning from the best.” He couldn’t get her to let go of him, and to be honest, he wasn’t trying very hard. She was a hot glove over his aroused flesh. “I want wetness,” he whispered in her ear, nibbling on the lobe.

She squeezed his cock in reaction and he almost came. Barely able to stand upright, he swore. “Are you trying to make me a eunuch?”

A laugh, a flush of air against his skin. Strokes along his cock, slow, sure, possessive. “That’s one thing I’d never do—it’d be a crime against Mercy.” Finally, after one more tortuous caress, she released him, only to start sliding down his body.

“No.” He halted her, using his superior strength. “It’s my turn.” His turn to lick and suck and taste and adore. Nipping at her mouth when she growled softly, he cajoled her into a prone position on the ground—though of course, he made sure he was on the bottom, with her lying on top of him.

She kept kissing the mark she’d made, and every time she did, he felt a wave of raw emotion pass through him, a violent mix of tenderness, possession, hunger, and devotion. Desperate to shower that devotion on his mate, he urged her up his body. “Higher,” he said when she straddled his chest.