His response was almost violent. A primal growl tore from his throat as his hands went to her head, fingers threading through the strands of her hair, and he leaned his head back.
She parted her lips farther, sucked him inside, and moaned again. Because his taste could be addictive. He tasted like a mountain storm. And she loved mountain storms. Like the lightning rolling over the forest and the wind picking up through the trees. Earthy and clean, natural.
"Damn you." He breathed out the curse, his voice harsh as his hips jerked. He buried the head inside her mouth as she sucked him, tasted him, and loved every second of it.
She licked and consumed, sucked and moaned around his flesh and never knew a pleasure so great. As she sucked, she felt, tasted, the drops of pre-cum that beaded on the head. She consumed them eagerly. If it felt as though each taste warmed against her tongue, then she ignored it. If after a few minutes she could feel the need inside her raging hotter, then she went with it. Whatever his touch brought her, she would accept.
"Touch yourself," he snarled above her.
Haley lifted her lashes and stared up at him. He was watching her, his gaze fierce, demanding.
"Let me watch," he groaned roughly. "Give me something to hold on to, Haley, or I'm going to lose control here."
Her hand lifted to her breast.
"No," the word snapped from between his teeth. "Not your breasts. Your pussy. Spread your legs. Let me watch you touch yourself."
She had never done that. Never allowed a lover to see her touch herself.
"Lean back."
She moaned around his cock. She didn't want to stop tasting him.
"Lean back, Haley. So I can watch you. I promise, I won't take away your pleasure."
The skin was stretched tight over his face, and as she leaned back, she realized the pillows of the bed cushioned her shoulders and head perfectly. She was elevated enough that she could still pleasure him, still touch him, and he could watch her touch herself.
The eroticism of the act was nearly too much for her. Her fingers moved over the fabric of her panties as she touched herself through the silk and lace. She stared up at him, caught by his expression, held suspended by the hard jerk of his hips as he buried the head of his cock in her mouth.
"Yeah. Stroke yourself," he snarled, lust tightening his expression further as she stroked her fingers over her panties. "I can smell how hot that makes you. You're wet, Haley. So wet and so sweet I can almost taste you on the air."
He held her head with one hand, moving against her, his eyes trained on her fingers.
She gripped the elastic that circled her thigh, pulled it to the side, and touched her flesh. The tips of her fingers eased over the narrow slit as she pulled her panties farther to the side to allow for the careful circular strokes around her clit.
It was too much. Noble nearly roared with the surge of lust that shot into his system. He pulled back from her, forcing her mouth from his cock, his other hand pulling her fingers from between her thighs and pushing those glistening tips to his lips.
And he tasted. Soft, sweet cream. Haley's cream.
He tore the pillows from beneath her head and lowered his head to her as he pushed her arms over her head. His lips covered hers, his tongue sinking into her mouth.
He heard her soft cry in a distant part of his brain. The cry of a woman who knows she has no more room to run. The cry of a woman immersing herself in the hunger feeding into her system.
Her lips closed over his tongue, as though instinct guided her. Her tongue stroked against his, rubbed against it, and then, the soft, sweet suction as the taste of the hormone began to fill her senses.
His cum nearly pumped from his body as she began to suck his tongue. He felt his balls clench, spasm, and wrapped his fingers tight around the base of his cock to hold it back.
Not yet. He wasn't coming yet. Not until he could spill inside her. Not until he could feel the barb locking him to his mate, marking her, making her his. just his. No matter what happened after tonight, she would always be his.
Haley paused as the taste of his kiss hit her tongue. A wild, lust-filled taste, dark and potent, spicy and filled with heat. And tempting. Tempting her to sate the sudden need for more that whipped through her senses.
She drew on his tongue, feeling his lips slant over hers, the hard, drawn contours of his larger body moving over her. Had he just ripped her panties off her?
He had, and she moaned at the sheer eroticism of the knowledge.
He held her hands over her head as he kissed her, refusing to allow her to touch him. But that was okay, the taste of him was making her insane. She couldn't think past the need for more of his kiss.
To say the hormone pumping into her system now was potent was an understatement. She could feel it sinking into her, digging talons of need inside her and stoking the flames of arousal past an incendiary point.
"Ah, Haley." When he finally drew back, she was writhing beneath him, her legs clamped around the hard knee pressing between her legs as she moved against it. "I can feel you burning for me now."
"I've always burned for you," she whimpered. "For too long, Noble."
And that had been the deciding factor in her decision. Noble had fascinated, drawn her, and held her attention, solely, for a year now. Each day, each time he spoke to her, each time she saw him, the fascination had only grown. She couldn't walk away, not when so much of her had already become invested in this one man.
Was it love? At this point, she suspected she had been wrong the night she told him she didn't love him. What she felt for him went so far beyond what she knew love to be that she just hadn't recognized it.
And the night she thought she had lost him? Had anything ever been more agonizing in her life? She knew it hadn't been.
But nothing could have prepared her for the hard pulse that shook her moments later. Her eyes widened, her gaze locking with Noble's as he pushed her thighs apart with his leg and moved between them.
She licked her lips slowly, a hard groan shaking her as the next pulse of need shuddered through her body. She could feel her juices spilling between her thighs. Felt her nipples aching and throbbing, her clit swelling tighter, harder.
"Oh. This is different," she moaned, arching against him as the broad contours of his chest lowered and stroked across her nipples.
"It's different?" His voice was strained, his expression tense as she stared up at him. "How's it different?"
His hips settled between hers, the thick length of his erection pressing into her sex, rubbing against her clit. His cock was hard and hot, like living iron throbbing against her.
"It's like . . ." she gasped, arched again as sensation speared through her womb. "Like pleasure and hunger all mixed up." She could feel perspiration beading on her body. "It's like being . . . like becoming, a living flame."
She arched again, gasped, and felt the sensual contractions in her vagina tightening and building into her womb as Noble gave a low, ragged groan and lowered his lips to her neck.
She shuddered at the sensation of his rough kiss there. The light nip of his teeth, she had so wondered what that would feel like. His tongue stroked over the arch of her neck, her collarbone, then his body shifted against her, moving lower as his lips caressed over the rise of a breast.
"I've been dying to suck your nipples," he groaned, his hair falling over his face to caress her skin along with his lips.
Silken, feather-soft, his hair brushed against her skin, adding to the harsh strike of pure pleasure that raced there when his mouth covered the hard tip of her breast.
He sucked her into his mouth. His tongue rasped against the ultrasensitive tip, and Haley felt herself sinking beneath a tidal wave of pure sensation. Pleasure was a haze of exquisite agony and ecstasy.
It raced over her flesh, filled her with heat and, long before his lips began to spread a path of burning kisses down her stomach, she was begging him for more.
"God how I've wanted t
o taste you." His voice was a growling purr, dark and rough, as he pushed her thighs wider apart, and his kisses moved closer to the burning, tight center of her body. "I've wanted my tongue inside you, Haley. Licking all your sweet cream. Loving you and tasting you."
He rubbed his cheek against her curls and she nearly orgasmed from the sensual, erotic expression on his face.
He had released her hands, but she kept them above her head and stretched against him. She couldn't touch him yet. She didn't dare. If she touched him, she was going to beg. She was going to sink completely beneath the waves.
But her body and her need had minds of their own. Within seconds, her fingers were tangled in his hair, her thighs opened wide, hips arching, and she was pressing his lips into her.
"Oh yes!" Her fractured wail filled the room as he kissed her clit. Kissed it, as though he were kissing her lips. Soft, gentle, sucking little kisses that had her head thrashing against the bed and any thought of control or restraint dissolving beneath the pleasure.
They were wild together. She could feel it, their pleasure and their need blending and merging, creating something she couldn't have imagined as he began to devour her flesh.
He licked and stroked with his amazingly adept tongue. It flickered along the tender slit, circled the entrance to her body, then plunged inside her with destructive results.
She had burned before. But now, as his tongue licked and thrust inside her, she was blazing, consumed, arching, and crying out at the exquisite agony of pleasure. It. tightened inside her, expanded, and before she could draw breath or prepare for it, the explosion of exquisite sensation tore through her.
Haley felt her shoulders jerk from the bed. Her eyes opened, widened, unseeing, her senses dazed as the most exquisite feelings tore through her. Sharp and vibrant, a race of liquid flames, white-hot destruction and dark, primal pleasure.
Noble snarled as he felt her release tearing through her. A year. He had waited a year. He couldn't wait any longer. He straightened between her spread thighs, stared into her dazed feature as he lifted her hips, bracing her rear on his thighs, and tucked the head of his cock into the tiny, spasming entrance to her pussy.
Fiery damp curls surrounded the engorged head as he watched, holding her hips still, determined to see this. To watch her body take him, open for him.
His teeth clenched as he pressed inside her. Sweat ran down his face, burned his eyes, and dampened both their bodies.
He had to hold on just a few more seconds. Just a little bit of control. He had to watch. Watch as he worked his cock into the furnace heat of her rippling pussy and felt his senses incinerate with the sensations.
She clenched around the throbbing head, so tight, so hot he wondered if he would survive taking her. Or if he could hold back his own release until he had felt hers once again.
Beneath the head of his cock he felt the ache of the barb pressing beneath the skin. It matched the ache in his balls as he pulled back, worked in farther, then in one involuntary thrust, the pleasure dimming every thought of control, he impaled himself within her to the hilt.
Her scream of pleasure rocked his soul. It was ragged, feminine, throttled. As though she could barely draw in the air to cry out.
Noble shook his head and fought. He tried logic and reasoning, he thought of fishing and cleaning his weapon, but the thoughts disintegrated even as he tried to concentrate on them.
He came over her, feeling her legs cross above his hips, and gave in to the need striking hard and heavy to the painful erection buried inside her.
Nothing mattered but this. He had to fuck her. He had to take her. Hard and deep. And he took her hard and deep. His arms slid beneath her shoulders, his lips covered hers, and his hips jacked against her, burying his cock inside her with rapid, delirious strokes as she sucked at his tongue and moaned into his kiss.
Her nails were raking his shoulders, biting in and creating an ecstatic burn. Like a cat, clawing at him, demanding more. And he gave her more. He gave her everything he had as he felt her exploding beneath him.
Burying inside her once, twice, he let his release pour from him. Pumping into her, his semen spurted hot and thick as the barb stretched from beneath the head of his cock, locked inside the fluttering muscles of her pussy, and spilled its own, tremulous release into her.
He was shuddering with the pleasure. Jerking against her as his head lifted from her kiss, his lips lowered to her shoulder, and before he could still the need, his teeth bit into her tender flesh.
He tasted blood and heard her scream. He couldn't pull back. His tongue raced over the little wound, licking and spilling the hormone into the marks, sucking at them as he felt another, shuddering orgasm tear through her.
He had marked her. He had promised himself he would hold back, that he wouldn't mar her creamy flesh, that he wouldn't leave that telltale animalistic wound on her. But even as he remembered that promise, his teeth remained in her flesh. The violence of his need rocked inside him, the primal possessiveness tearing through him until nothing mattered, nothing eased it, until he was taking her again.
Chapter 9
"What happened here?" It was dark, the faint light that spilled into the room was courtesy of the bathroom light Haley had left on earlier. Just enough to allow her to see the amazing spots on his body, and the scars.
The scars made her ache. Especially the one on his chest. It wasn't very old, the healing flesh still looked tender to the touch.
"Bullet." He yawned as though it were nothing. "We were on the Lawrence estate a few months ago, and I took a bullet covering one of our enforcers."
She remembered the news reports of that. Callan Lyons had been wounded as well, and Cassie Sinclair, one of the wolf breeds who was often in Sanctuary.
The emergence of the wolf breeds and their Colorado compound had aligned two powerful forces. Journalists were forever covering the compounds, the strikes against them, and the struggle for freedom in the two areas.
"What about here?" There was a long, jagged scar on his side.
"Knife." His tone was lazy, still unconcerned. "Council soldier almost managed to gut me there."
She flinched.
Noble opened one eye and stared down at her. "I'm more careful now than I used to be."
She stared back at him in disbelief. "Why don't I believe you? You wouldn't lie to me, would you, Noble?"
"Course not." His hand stroked down her back, his fingers playing against the rounded curves of her rear as his lips twitched playfully.
"Uh-huh." She rolled from him, aware of his gaze on her, the lazy sprawl of his naked body, and the erect length of his cock.
She glanced at the clock. It was nearly midnight.
"I'm hungry." She was starving. "There's a roast in the slow cooker, if I throw some cut-up potatoes and stuff in, we could have a meal within the hour."
"Let me check the house first."
He was out of the bed in a bound. Smooth dark flesh rippled with muscle as he moved to the surveillance equipment. He checked the screens, then grabbed his weapon, and-moved from the bedroom naked to make his rounds through the house.
Haley pulled on the gown and robe that he had collected for her earlier, when she had meant to finish dinner. He had distracted her that time. When he returned, she was belting the robe and pushing her feet into warm house shoes.
"I'll shower." He entered the bedroom moments later.
She almost grinned at his decisive statement. She had showered earlier, then had allowed him to convince her to lie beside him a little while longer.
While he petted her. Just stroked and touched her. For the moment, the incredible biting need that had filled her had eased, leaving her warm and languorous, a glow of satiation filling her.
Another unfamiliar feeling she thought as she moved into the kitchen and checked the roast in the slow cooker. Opening the refrigerator she pulled out the potatoes and carrots she had cut earlier that day. Emptying the water from them, she rinsed
them and placed them in the pot.
Half an hour, she decided as she turned the heat up on the food.
She moved into the living room and refueled the glowing embers of the fire, watching as the smaller logs caught, and the flames began to lick over them greedily.
She turned and stared at the brightly lit Christmas tree before moving and rearranging a few of the presents beneath it. The bottom of the tree was surrounded by gaily wrapped boxes. Hanging on the limbs were small, Christmas-patterned bags that held much smaller presents. A silver ring for her mother. A necklace for one of her sisters-in-law, a bracelet for another. There were earrings for several of the college students who helped out at the library and almost always joined Haley and her family for a few hours on Christmas Eve.
The house was always filled on Christmas Eve. Her parents, brothers, and their families would arrive a day or two before, and laughter and joy always filled the air as they dragged mattresses from the attic and made room for ten extra people in the small house.
A smile tipped her lips at the thought of Noble's reaction to that. If he was even here.
She straightened one of the bags and frowned at that thought. Breeds weren't known for their Christmas spirit; she wondered if Noble would at least be patient with the friends and family who piled into her house that holiday week.
"What are you thinking of so hard?" His arms came around her as he pulled her against his bare chest. He'd donned jeans, but he was barefoot and sexy and tough and hard.
"Christmas." Her fingers curled around his wrists. "I bought you a present, you know?"
She looked back at him in time to see his surprise.
"Why would you do that?" he asked her, as though he truly didn't know the reason why.
"Because it brings me joy and always reminds me what Christmas is all about."
"It's all about giving presents?" he asked, his eyes narrowing.
"No, it's not about giving presents. Giving presents reminds me of what the season is all about."
"And what's it all about for you?" he asked her, still staring at the tree, his eyes narrowed, his expression thoughtful.
"It's about life. About celebrating my beliefs and my family. About the connections we don't always consider through the rest of the year. And it's about love. Our love for those who fill our lives."
"So you buy presents?"
"Or make them." She grinned. "Or bake them or cook them. Or simply stopping by to wish them a happy holiday and showing you care. For me, it's the joy in the giving, Noble. In remembering all the joys that have been given to me throughout the year."
He was strangely quiet then. He stared at the tree, then back at her. His gaze flickered. "What did you get me?"
She almost laughed. For the slightest moment, just the briefest breath of time, she might have glimpsed an almost boyish eagerness in his face.
"It's a surprise," she whispered teasingly.
He glanced down at her. "It's about tormenting those who receive, isn't it, Haley?" He growled. "Do you have any idea how curious a cat can get?"
"If you peek, then all you'll get is coal in your stocking."
Noble's head swung around, a completely involuntary act to stare at the mantel. And there was another stocking. One that hadn't been there the day before.
Something in his chest constricted as he turned back to her.
"Why did you do that?" he asked her then. "I've not bought you anything."
"You gave me yourself." She stared back as though there were a question in her statement.
Noble nodded slowly. "Every part of me." And every part of him reached out to her.
"Then I don't need anything else."
"But you gave me yourself as well," he stated confidently. He knew she belonged to him. The mating had been strong, already she carried the scent of him mixed with her own, just as he carried her scent within him. They were bonding, perhaps now, only physically, but she would bond with him emotionally he knew, if she hadn't already.
He saw things in her. In her eyes, in her expressions, in her touch. Perhaps his little librarian just hadn't wanted to admit to what she felt for him. But he knew she did indeed feel for him.
"And I love giving presents." Her smile was soft and filled with happiness. "That's part of the fun, Noble. Knowing there's a present and wondering what it is."
He stared back down at her, faintly confused by that.
"Breeds never celebrate Christmas."
"I celebrate Christmas every year," she whispered. "And on Christmas Eve, my entire family descends. My brothers and their families, my parents, and on holiday nights friends and neighbors are always dropping in. Every Christmas Eve we go caroling in the park, and we laugh and drink hot chocolate and freeze our butts off walking back."
"And you do this why?" He fought the feeling of confusion that swept through him.
She was quiet then. The Christmas lights flickered over her face, multihued and giving her expression an almost otherworldly hue.
"Because I love doing it," she finally said, sighing. "Because i feel close to my family, my friends, and to my beliefs."
He nodded slowly. "You feel closer to your God," he said.
And she smiled.
"Dinner should be ready." She pulled from him slowly, catching his hand and drawing him to the kitchen. "And we have all these cookies. After we eat, i have about ten million paper Christmas bags to start filling with chocolate chip cookies."
"And those are for?" But he followed her, because her smile was teasing, warm and filled with joy.
"For the breeds at Sanctuary. Cassie Sinclair told me once that they go nuts for chocolate chip cookies. So Callan Lyons was kind enough to give me a number for the bags I needed, and I've been filling them for weeks."
He paused, ignoring the tug on his hand. "That's over three hundred breeds at the moment, Haley."
"And just think, over three hundred smiles when they taste my delicious cookies. I make