“Condoms?”
Austin chuckled. “Wouldn’t work with Shifter sperm. We don’t just have an army; we have a legion of—”
I touched his lips with my fingers. “Austin, please don’t kill the moment talking about your sperm.”
Then he sucked on my finger and the tingles roared through my core and melted down my thighs. Oh God, I wanted this.
“Complain all you want,” he murmured against my stomach. “But you’re going to learn tonight the only way…” He pressed his face against my belly and I felt how enflamed his cheeks were.
I grabbed a fistful of his hair. “Finish what you were about to say.”
His bristly jaw scratched my skin as he looked up. “The only way to taper it down and get you out of heat is to give you orgasms.”
Plural.
A smirk turned up the corner of my mouth. “No complaints here.”
“No sex.”
“Okay, I have a complaint,” I said, propping up on my elbows. “Exactly what are we doing here?”
An intense, dark look swirled in his eyes that I couldn’t read—one with hidden secrets and meanings that drove me nuts. “Do you really want to ruin our friendship with sex? I don’t want our first time to be because of raging hormones,” he said, curling his fingertips inside the hem of my shorts and sliding them away from my hips, down to my knees, and finally my ankles. I felt every second of their slow journey and it drove me wild. “It’s going to be without all the biology bullshit. Just me and you and no regrets.”
I knew he was talking, but my ears were starting to hear that wah-wah sound Charlie Brown’s teacher always makes in the cartoons. Maybe it was the fact that the only thing between Austin and me was a pair of black bikini bottoms.
His thumb hooked beneath one of the strings, inching closer to the center. My heart could have gotten a speeding ticket, as it refused to slow down no matter how much I concentrated.
“What are you going to do then?”
His eyes answered me before his mouth did. They were hooded and dripping with heat. “I’m going to make you come.”
Which almost did. Just the words rolling off his tongue and the way he was looking at me made every muscle in my body tense.
“As many times as it takes until you’re over this, because that’s how an alpha looks after his women. But over my dead body are we going back home so I can sit and watch my brothers look at you the way they were doing at dinner.” A palpable flicker of jealousy sparked in his eyes. “I don’t run the kind of pack where we share.”
Which implied packs existed that did. Austin had promised me independence with no strings attached. Most women went into a pack mated because sometimes the men would get possessive and fights would break out. That’s why he was adamant about his brothers treating Ivy as a sister and had planted the suggestion in their head so they would be more inclined to protect her than mount her.
Then he got right back to business and put his mouth on my sex, moving his lips over my panties as if he were making out with me. I moaned unabashedly and abruptly pushed his head away.
“What’s wrong?”
I blushed. Hard. Then my knees pulled up and I flipped over to my side, staring at an outlet on the wall.
“Lexi?” His hand brushed over my hip and Austin laid behind me, propped up on his elbow so he could stare at my shadowy profile. “Did I do something to upset you? Don’t lie to me.”
I couldn’t. The simple fact was no man had ever gone down on me. Even Beckett was more of a receiver than a giver when it came to sex. How embarrassing was that?
“I’m sleepy,” I lied.
“Bullshit. Turn over and look at me before I tickle the crap out of you, and don’t think I won’t do it.”
He totally would. I once stole his car keys and stuffed them into my bra when I was nineteen and the designated driver. Austin had chased me to the car, which made me run even harder. I dove into the front seat knowing Austin would never dig in my bra. Instead, he pulled off my shoes and tickled my feet until I screamed bloody murder. That was the only time I’d ever seen Wes turn on Austin. He yanked him out by the collar and coldcocked him. I guess from a distance, it looked kind of bad with me on my back in the front seat screaming while Austin was holding my legs.
“Since when did you get all shy on me?” he asked, thunder rumbling in the distance.
Austin’s fingers tickled my skin as they slid down to my hips. I elbowed him away. “Don’t.”
“Then tell me what’s wrong, because you’re not going anywhere, and I sure as hell ain’t going anywhere. Whatever it is won’t leave this room. You can trust me.”