Bastien pounced the next instant, his hands on her hips, his lips on hers. Wrapping her arms around him, she opened her mouth and he took full advantage, giving his hands free rein to explore her curves. “You are mine,” he growled into her mouth. “Always mine. I love you until I can’t breathe.” The mating bond might’ve drawn them together, but it was now entangled with heartbonds as strong.
“You’re mine, too.” Hand fisting in his hair on that ferocious claim, she moaned and held on tight, her body straining as she rose on tiptoe. When she made a frustrated sound, he hitched her onto his hips and turned to the tree trunk, then paused.
“Bastien?” Kisses along his jaw, her skin silky soft against his.
“Bark will hurt your back,” he muttered, nibbling on the tip of her ear because he knew it drove her nuts.
Shivering, she purred, sought his lips for a kiss. He opened his mouth on her own, licked and tasted, but it wasn’t enough. He wanted her body under his, wanted to be inside her, her pleasure feeding his. “Up,” he said, his breath jagged. “Climb.”
She tightened her thighs around him. “No.” Nipples rubbing over the hard wall of his chest, she kissed him again, licking just the way he liked. “Here.”
He almost gave in, pounded her on the forest floor, was stopped only by the sneaking suspicion that had taken root when he’d realized how touch starved she’d been. “Have you done this before?” he asked, too aroused to be anything but blunt.
“No.” She didn’t stop tormenting him, her slickness erotic temptation against his abdomen. “I am so ready, Bastien.” Her body moving sinuously against his own. “I want to be with you. Only you.” Kiss after kiss. “I love you. I love you. I love you.”
God, she made him her slave.
Determined to give her a good memory despite his ragged control, he walked to the rope ladder and started hauling them up. She held on but did nothing else to help him, nibbling and kissing at his jaw until he thought he’d go mad. “Behave,” he snarled, nipping at her ear but careful not to hurt.
Another shiver, a wicked smile. “No.” Another kiss, this one on the mouth.
Swinging up onto the balcony, he somehow found the door, stumbled inside and to the bed. Where he finally, finally, had her curves under the rigid planes of his own body. Pinning her hands above her head with one hand around her wrists, he settled his lower body snug against her damp heat.
It made him groan.
Kirby arched up, sliding her folds over his erect cock.
“Bad lynx.” Chest heaving, he snapped his teeth at her.
She snapped back, then arched her neck in invitation. Leaning down, he suckled at the flutter of her pulse. Laving his tongue over the red mark with unhidden possessiveness, he closed one hand over her breast, teased her nipple. “You are so pretty everywhere.”
A shy-sweet smile, sparkling pleasure-hazed eyes, her tongue flirting with his until he gripped her jaw to hold her in place for an open-mouthed kiss, wet and hot and a prelude to sex. Legs still locked around him, she opened for him, demanded more, the damp musk of her so intoxicating his claws sliced out to tear the sheets.
“Shit.” Retracting them, he pressed his forehead to hers. “Sorry, baby. I’m having trouble holding it togeth—”
Pelvis arching against him, she sucked at his throat as he’d done at hers—possessive and determined—and that was it. All he wanted, needed, was Kirby. She was liquid heat and hot honey on his fingers when he touched her between her thighs.
“Bastien!”
If he’d had any hope of taking this slow, he lost it on the ripples of her pleasure. Pushing one sweetly curved thigh wider, he waited only until her body had stopped clenching in orgasm before beginning to slide in. She moaned, her claws digging just enough into his shoulders that it felt amazing.
“Tell me if it hurts,” he grit out, because not for anything would he hurt his Kirby.
Kisses on his throat, a purr in the back of hers. “It feels sooooo good.”
Shuddering, he withdrew after that first shallow penetration and slid back in, reining in his instinct to thrust; she was so tautly stretched around him, so small. But she was also lusciously aroused, her unhidden desire threatening to erase the last, faint glimmers of his control.
It was excruciating.
It was beautiful.
Then at last, he was buried to the hilt and they were kissing.
Hand tightening on her thigh, the taste of her in his every sense, he withdrew, pushed back in slowly.
Once. Twice. “Fuck!”
Spine locking, he came in a violent rush, his face buried in the curve of his mate’s neck. His utter lack of control would’ve been embarrassing . . . except that he felt her gasp as she came again, her body clamping down possessively on his cock.
Male pride restored, Bastien collapsed on her. Her fingers petted his hair, her arms and legs imprisoned his very happy body, her words a husky whisper. “Can we do that again? I really, really, really liked it.”
Bastien grinned. “Hell, yeah.”
EPILOGUE
Kirby glared at Bastien as he led her out in front of a lovely home set deep in the forest the next day. “Is this your parents’ house?”