CHAPTER 18
Lyra tried to contain her smile as she glanced through the door at Grey where he sprawled across her bed, face down on the furs, a soft grunt escaping him as his nose wriggled and his legs twitched. What was he dreaming in there?
He had faded during their journey to her cabin, the fight and whatever magic Brink had poured into him to heal him taking its toll. She hadn’t even had a chance to show him around her home. The moment he had spotted the double bed, he had walked towards it, fallen onto it face-first and dropped straight off to sleep.
That had been two days ago.
Every night when she crawled into bed beside him, he growled, rolled onto his side and pulled her against him, spooning her, his arm banded tightly across her bare stomach.
Every morning she had to wrestle free of his vice-like grip and weather a lot of growls and disgruntled snarls.
When she finally extricated herself, he would flop onto his front and settle again.
She finished washing in the tub in the small bathroom adjacent to her bedroom, stood and let the warm soapy water roll off her, and then stepped out and dried herself off. She slipped into a pair of dark blue-grey shorts and a white tank, and padded quietly out of the bathroom and through the bedroom into the living room at the front of the cabin.
Snow drifted across the windows on either side of the door, the fall heavy enough that the world was going white.
She would have to get supplies in before the weather turned for the worse and she was cut off from the nearest town. She didn’t mind the run to it in her hellcat form, but she hated the long trek back pulling a sled of goods through the snow.
She glanced to her right as the light dimmed. The fire was getting low. She snatched a few small logs from the stack as she passed it, rounded the worn dark brown couch and crouched in front of the wood burner. She lifted the door latch, placed the wood in and cleared some of the ash, and then closed the door again.
The living room instantly brightened as the hungry fire devoured the fuel and she breathed a sigh at the comforting warmth that greeted her, and the scent of wood smoke.
Grey growled.
She rose onto her feet and crossed the room back to the bedroom, and peered in, checking on him.
He flipped onto his front and kicked at the furs.
She knew it was a bit warm, but she didn’t want him getting cold while he was recovering. Even tigers could get sick.
Lyra went to him and sat on the left side of the bed facing him, propping her bent right leg on the mattress and resting her left foot on the wooden floor. She leaned over him and gently brushed the rogue strands of his silver hair from his forehead, a different sort of warmth curling through her as she studied him.
Her male.
Her mate.
He was even more gorgeous in her bed, his face soft with sleep, all of his worries and cares swept from it and leaving him at peace.
He had watched over her in Hell, had done his best to take care of her and protect her.
Now it was her turn to take care of him.
His eyelids fluttered, and then slowly lifted, revealing the pale blue eyes that had entranced her from the very first time she had looked into them.
He blinked a few times as he looked at her, those eyes sleep-filled but gradually clearing as he woke up. A groggy frown pinched his eyebrows together.
“Shit,” he muttered and lifted his left hand and rubbed at his face. “Sorry for falling asleep on you like that.”
Lyra shrugged and smiled. “No need to apologise. I slept a little myself… or at least I tried to. It wasn’t easy with you pulling me around like a ragdoll.”
His cheeks pinkened, and she wondered how long it would be before he stopped feeling embarrassed whenever she talked about things like that. He was new to this, but she never would have guessed from the way he had spooned her like a demon, his long body pressed firmly against hers all night.
He stretched, stopped halfway through as his backside pressed into the furs, and his eyes popped wide. He propped himself up on his elbows and looked down the length of his body, and the pink on his cheeks darkened to red.
“I didn’t want you being uncomfortable.” She wasn’t sure why she felt a need to explain how he had come to be naked, or why her face heated as he stared at her, surprise in his eyes.
“I think you just wanted a good look,” he grumbled, but his tone was light and teasing, and she pushed his right shoulder.
It seemed he was already working his way towards losing that sweet and charming innocent edge.
He slumped back into the bed with a sigh, and looked as if he might fall asleep for another two days.
No chance.
He was awake now, and he was staying awake. She’d had two days of getting a ‘good look’ at him from all angles, and that meant she had spent two days fired up. Horny as hell. Whenever she had tried to cover him, he had kicked the covers away, exposing himself again.
She had started to get the impression that even in sleep, he wanted her eyes on him, and only him.
He wanted to make sure he was the only male she wanted.
As if she could ever want another.
He was the only one for her.
“How are you feeling?” She pressed her hand to his forehead and his eyes slipped shut, a contented sigh escaping him.
“Like a train ran me over. A very long train. And it reversed back over me too.” His deep voice had a gravelly edge that did wicked things to her, had her imagining him husking naughty things in her ear in that voice.
She didn’t think he was ready for that sort of thing though.
“How long was I out?” He flicked his eyes open, locked them with hers and sent a hot shiver over her skin.
She noted that he made no move to cover himself.
He wanted her to look.
He lifted his arms above his head, settled his hands behind his head and stared at her.
A blatant invitation.
She was starting to get the feeling she wasn’t the only one horny as hell.
She ran an appreciative glance down the length of his body, tracing broad pectorals and firm abs, and that enticing ridge of muscle over his hips that lured her gaze downwards.
His cock twitched.
A tremor of need went through her.
“Two days,” she muttered, lost in imagining him seizing hold of her, sweeping her under him and giving her a repeat performance of their time in Hell against that boulder.
She wasn’t sure she would ever look at rocks the same.
“Shit.” Grey shot up in bed. “I need to call my brother.”
She glared at him, trying to make it painfully clear that he needed to do something else.
He needed to tend to his mate.
But it was sweet that he wanted to speak with his brother and tell him what he had discovered to alleviate the curiosity that was probably driving him mad.
“There’s a phone in the nearest town.” Which was miles away, and meant a long journey, and she was damned if she would survive it if she didn’t crawl on his lap and scratch the itch she had for him before they left.
“Where’s my pack?” He looked for it, blue eyes scanning the room, an edge to his feelings that said he remembered how far away that town was and wouldn’t survive delaying making love to her that long either.
She fished it from the floor beside her.
He snatched it, rifled through it and pulled out a phone.
“I doubt you’ll get service.”
He looked past the phone at her. “You don’t know for sure?”
She shrugged and gestured to her small cabin. “I don’t own a phone. I don’t own much at all.”
“We need to change that.” The phone screen lit up, brightening his eyes. “Come on. Ha. No bars, but it’s not a big fat no.”
He did something, and then brought the phone to his ear.
She could hear it ringing.
“Talon?”
A male voice answered. It was more of a shout. He sounded angry. Or perhaps just worried.
“The line is crappy.” Grey frowned at his phone and then plastered it back against his ear.
She lowered her gaze from his face to his chest and lost track of his conversation as she studied him, memorised the way his muscles moved as he raked fingers over his hair and as he spoke.
She couldn’t stop herself from moving onto her knees on the bed and leaning over him.
His conversation faltered as she pressed a kiss to his right pectoral, biting back a moan at the feel of his firm flesh beneath her lips. His gaze dropped to her, burned into her together with the spike in his feelings, in the need she could sense in him.
She swept her lips across his chest and then downwards, carefully exploring every muscle on his abdomen so she didn’t miss a single one.
His eyes tracked her.
“A meeting,” he breathed, a little distant as he watched her kissing down his stomach. Talon sounded less than happy on the other end of the phone. Grey cleared his throat. “I am paying attention.”
He wasn’t.
The rigid length that pressed against her ribs as she moved to straddle his legs said every drop of his focus was on her and not his brother.
“I’ll be there,” he muttered. “I won’t be alone.”
She lifted her eyes to his, rested her chin on his stomach and smiled at the way he looked at her. He wasn’t letting her out of his sight.
She had been to London a few times.
It would be nice to see it again.
And maybe meet his brother.
She lowered her lips to Grey’s stomach again and kept kissing downwards. When her breasts rubbed his hard cock, he swallowed hard and shifted his hips, drove it between them and bit down on his lower lip.
Talon said something.
Grey just swiped his thumb across the screen, dropped the phone on the bed, and fisted his hand in her hair.
“Vixen,” he muttered.
The phone rang. Grey ignored it, fire in his eyes as he stared at her and thrust his cock between her breasts.
She smiled and dropped her lips, and kept moving downwards.
She halted before she reached where he wanted her to be.
He groaned. “Stop torturing me.”
She grinned, lowered her head and swept her tongue up the length of his rigid shaft. He moaned and shuddered, hips rising to meet her touch and broad shoulders pressing into the bed.
“Gods,” he breathed, and she licked him again, swirled her tongue around the blunt head and flicked. He bucked and groaned, his face screwing up and his hand tightening in her hair. “Lyra.”
He sounded more serious than delirious.
She lifted her head and found him staring at her, his blue eyes holding a nervous edge.
“I… what… I mean… now you’re home…”
She sat up astride his legs. He was nervous, and he hadn’t been a second ago. But then, he had been thinking with his little head, and it looked as if he was using his big one now.
“What’s the matter?” She stroked his sides, wanting to help him find his voice, because he could talk to her about anything.
It dawned on her what he wanted to say.
“You know how you always took care of your sister, and now that role has ended?” A role she had realised had meant a lot to him and losing it had left him adrift, unsure what to do with himself.
He smiled but it was solemn. “It’s strange only having to take care of myself.”
“But that isn’t the case.”
He frowned. “It isn’t?”
Lyra shook her head, leaned over him and planted her hands against the pillows on either side of his head.
“If you would like to… you could take care of me too… and I’d take care of you.”
His blue eyes went impossibly wide.
And she fell a little bit more in love with him.
“I could?” He stared up at her, and she wanted to box him for being surprised that she would want that.
She had never relied on a male for anything, but she had the feeling she might enjoy relying on Grey.
Being with Grey.
“Someone needs to have my back when we take down Archangel, and I can’t think of anyone I want to do that more than you, Grey. I want you at my side when we fight, and I want you at my side when times are quiet. I want you there every hour of the day and every second of the night.” She pressed her forehead to his and breathed against his lips. “I want you there forever.”
He swallowed hard. “You mean that?”
She nodded. “With all my heart.”
He growled and she squeaked as he rolled her onto her back and pinned her to the bed.
“Besides, you swore to protect me,” she whispered.
His eyes gained a bright blue corona around his pupils, a hint of fire that she loved seeing in them.
“I did… and I will… I’ll protect you forever, Lyra… but I’m greedy.” His expression turned wary, solemn again, and he lightly stroked his fingers across her throat. “It’s not a collar... but I need to know you’re mine and only mine.”
Gods.
She needed that too, with a ferocity that stole her breath, had been eating away at her the past two days. She had spent them figuring out how to approach him about it, and instead he had been the one to approach her.
“You’re not alone, Grey.” She lifted her hands and cupped his cheeks in her palms, and she saw the fire that burned in her eyes reflected in his, all of her feelings echoed in them. “I need it too, and I don’t want to wait. I know that’s what you’re going to say, because you have a big heart in here.”
She pressed one hand to his chest and felt that heart beating against it, racing as he took in everything she was saying.
“I’m not leaving this cabin until you’re mine, and I’m yours, because if a female so much as looks at you, I’ll kill them,” she whispered. “So, be mine… forever?”
“When you put it that way.” A small smile tugged at his lips. “I suppose I should, in the interest of saving lives.”
“You’ll be having to save your own life if you keep on like that.” She growled playfully at him.
His smile dropped, his expression shifting towards serious again. “I’ll be yours… and you’ll be mine. We’ll both bear the marks, and bear them proudly, and all the world will know that I love you.”
“And I love you.”
He growled and seized her lips, and she instantly looped her arms around his head and held him to her, tried to pull him closer as a need to stake that claim on him swept through her.
He slipped his hands beneath her tank, pushed it up over her breasts and broke away from her lips. She gasped as he pulled her right nipple into his mouth and sank into the furs, surrendering to him. He teased it with his tongue, flicking it back and forth, sending shiver after shiver over her skin and cranking up the tightness that began low in her belly.
It became heat when he helped her strip her top off, his need flowing through her, laced with a desperate edge that was there in his actions as he tossed her top aside and attacked her shorts, eager to bare her.
She unbuttoned them for him and shimmied them down her hips, and when she tucked her legs up in front of her, between them, to pull them off over her feet, he caught her behind her knees. She slowed, aware of his eyes on her, of the position she was in, and pulled her shorts off and dropped them.
She stared at her legs, waiting for him to make his move, to gather the courage as his heart pounded, need spiking in his veins and flowing into her.
He slowly slid his palms up her calves and caught hold of her ankles, and his eyes burned into her as he parted them, his gaze locked on the apex of her thighs. He groaned as she opened for him, that hunger she could feel in him blazing hotter and burning through her too as he set her on fire with just a look.
There was so much need in his eyes.
He dropped, sank between her thighs and speared her with his tongue.
She bucked up, body singing his praises as her legs fell to rest on his back and her right hand shot down to grip his silver hair.
“Grey.” She rocked against his tongue, moaned in time with him as he stroked and teased her, sending her shooting high into the stratosphere.
Gods, she wasn’t sure she would ever get enough of him.
He lapped downwards, ran the flat of his tongue hard up the length of her and tore another strained gasp from her lips.
Damn, her tiger was a fast learner.
She slipped her eyes shut and gripped the pillow with her other hand as he brushed his fingers across her core, and slowly eased two inside.
He growled, his shoulders tensing, pleasure rolling through his emotions.
Because she was already wet with need of him.
She had been ready from the moment he had asked her to mate with him, desperate to make it happen so he could finally be hers, and she would finally be his.
He managed three thrusts of his fingers before need got the better of him.
She squeaked as he flipped her onto her front, his feral growl lighting up her blood, a command to submit to him. She growled right back, making it clear that she wasn’t going down without a fight.
He tugged her hips up and she barked out a moan as he swept his tongue over her, spread her and speared her with his fingers again.
Her front half sagged into the bed, bliss washing through her to sedate her.
Fine, maybe she would submit to him, because it felt good, so good she wanted to just lay there and take it, let him do as he wanted with her because she felt sure he would make it feel incredible.
He palmed her backside as he stroked her with his tongue, his growls vibrating against her, adding to her pleasure.
When he removed his fingers from her and clutched both of her buttocks, and spread her, she gripped the furs and couldn’t stop herself from moaning into them, couldn’t keep her hips from rocking as the heat of his gaze scorched her, promising things to come.
He groaned and stroked her so softly, so slowly, that it drove her mad.
His tongue probed her core just as she was about to growl at him, and it came out as a low strangled moan.
“Grey.”
His deep growl told her that he could feel her need and swore that he would satisfy it.
He rose to his knees behind her.
Her breath came quicker, anticipation stoking the fire inside her, and she looked over her shoulder at him.
He was glorious as he knelt behind her, long cock jutting towards her and that hungry look in his eyes, one laced with a need to dominate her.
To claim her as his mate.
He stared deep into her eyes, gripped his length and edged his hips towards hers.
She forced herself to hold his gaze as he nudged inside her, as he sank deeper and stretched her, filling all of her, completing her.
Gods.
It heightened her pleasure, had her soaring higher still, on the verge of finding release before he had even done anything.
He stilled inside her, his hands coming down on her hips and then palming her backside, and she moaned in time with him, savouring the feel of him inside her and the connection that bloomed between them.
It wasn’t enough though.
She needed more from him.
She reached a hand beneath herself and he grunted as she found his balls. As she pressed her fingers to a spot below them, he growled and shuddered, and his hips shot forwards, driving him deeper into her.
He snatched her hand and leaned over her, pinning her to the bed with his weight as he spread his knees apart and sank lower. She moaned as he planted one hand in the small of her back and pressed down, shifting the angle and sending sparks skittering along her nerves.
“Lyra,” he murmured, lost to his passion as he drove into her, sending her out of her mind.
She moaned in response, wasn’t sure she could form words as he thrust slow and deep, hit every part of her and had her breath coming faster still, her heart thundering. She gripped the furs and he drove deeper, harder, a soft grunt leaving him with each meeting of their hips, every slap of their flesh against each other.
It wasn’t enough.
She growled at him, demanding more.
He flashed fangs and snarled right back at her, plunged deeper and harder, faster. She clutched the furs and moaned each time he filled her, every powerful stroke that spoke of his strength stoking the fire inside her, the inferno that threatened to rage out of control.
More.
She arched back against him, earning a snarl. He pressed harder on her back, grasped her hip in a bruising grip, and moved faster still, his pants filling the bedroom as control slipped from him.
It slipped from her too.
She sank deep into her instincts as they rose inside her, demanding her mate satisfy her, served her and claimed her.
As if he had felt her need, his hand came down on the nape of her neck.
She shivered, anticipation rolling through her, need that had her growling at him, snapping and pushing him.
He growled and pulled her up to him, caging her with one arm across her breasts as he drove into her. He seized her hair with his other hand, tugging it up to expose her nape.
Gods.
She needed it.
Might die if he didn’t do it now.
She snarled at him, one last push she couldn’t contain.
A fierce demand.
He roared.
Sank his fangs into her nape.
Drove deep.
Pain exploded within her, but as it swept through her it became pleasure that stole her breath, had her shaking violently in his arms as she climaxed, stars winking across her vision and her heart stopping as she opened her mouth.
As she roared.
He growled against her nape, one long continuous rumble as he held her in his fangs and plunged his cock into her.
She quivered and moaned, trembled as he throbbed inside her, as his warmth filled her and the connection between them grew stronger, tying them together.
A link they could never break.
She wanted it stronger still.
She wore his mark.
He would wear hers.
The world would know he loved her.
And she loved him.
She twisted in his arms.
His growl of displeasure lasted all of a second.
The time it took for her to land behind him, reach around him to seize his cock, and sink her fangs into his nape.
He roared, arching in her fangs, his bliss rolling through her as he spilled in her hand, his length pulsing hard in time with the tremors that swept through her, a release born of the taste of his blood on her tongue and the pleasure she had given him.
When the final tremors had rocked her, and he was still in her hand, she managed to convince herself to pry her jaws open and release him.
Even though she didn’t want to.
She pulled her fangs from his neck, and lapped at the wounds, clearing the blood away and sealing them.
A contented purr rumbled up her throat.
She could feel him, all of him. She could feel his satisfaction, and the pleasure she had given him, and all the love he held for her.
He made a low coughing sound in his throat, one that called to her.
She rounded him, lifted her hair for him and gave him what he wanted.
He ran his tongue over her nape and the shivers that chased through her threatened to get her going again but there would be time for that later. Right now, she wanted to savour this moment with him, this start of a new beginning together.
When he was done, he gathered her in his arms, and twisted with her, bringing her down onto the bed facing him.
She stared into those beautiful blue eyes that told her everything.
Never had been able to hide his feelings from her.
He loved her, and that love was eternal.
He would protect her, to the end of time.
And he would never stop looking at her as if she was everything to him, as if she was his entire world and he couldn’t live without her.
She had been through hell, and so had he, but now they were together.
And she silently swore that she would love him eternally, would protect him no matter what, and she would never stop looking at him as if he was her everything.
She would make him feel the way he made her feel.
Treasured by her tiger.
The End