Melyssa was going to kill him.

That question was like a knife, and the genuine panic on her face only twisted it in deeper.

“Baby, no.” Jurin sounded rougher than he should have. Part of him was so angry he wanted to jump up, find a boat, and go visit a little well-earned slaughter across the dumbshit mainland that made a woman worry about the very things she should love.

But he didn’t move. He might be pissed, but he wasn’t stupid.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” he told her, very distinctly. It was another vow. “Nothing I ever do to you should hurt you, do you understand?”

He knew she didn’t. She couldn’t. But still, she was brave enough to pretend. She nodded, once. Fiercely.

“Good girl,” he told her.

And he didn’t miss the way she smiled at that, then hid it in the next breath.

“I’m going to open up your trousers and take a look,” he said, as if this was all very serious and possibly a little clinical, besides.

She looked alarmed, but she stayed put. He could see her pulse kick up in her neck. “Uh . . . Okay. I guess.”

But Jurin still didn’t move, much as he wanted to. “Are you afraid? I told you I wouldn’t hurt you. I meant it. I’m not going to do anything those douchebags did to you in the past.”

“I believe you.”

He thought it was probably closer to the truth to say that she wanted to believe him. Either way, he’d take it.

He shifted, keeping his hands in contact with her as he crawled his way back down her body. Her lush, curvy dream of a body that he wanted to eat up. She was supple and round, curved generously to fit his big hands, and so ripe it hurt.

When he got to the opening of her trousers, he could see the telltale mark her sweet juiciness had left on the fabric. It made him want to roar. It made him want to celebrate.

He knew just how to do both.

Jurin fought to keep his feral desires off his face as he slowly, so slowly it hurt him, unbuttoned her trousers and pulled them wide.

He could scent her arousal in the next second, and he had to take a breath before he forgot all his good intentions. He worked her trousers off her hips, then pulled them down her legs and off. He tossed them onto the floor and when he looked back, it was like every wet dream of his youth was lying there on the bed before him. Sweet, sexy Melyssa in a set of long sleeved shirts that only emphasized her breasts and her hard little nipples, and nothing else but her little scrap of panties.

For a minute, Jurin didn’t know if he could handle it. That’s how ridiculously hot she was.

But he sucked it up. He tamped the wild thing in him down, hard.

As he moved toward her, gently pushing her legs apart so he could kneel between them, he watched her pull her lower lip between her teeth and worry it a little. He’d never seen a woman do that when it wasn’t a game, when they weren’t trying to be sexy and cute to make whatever was happening hotter.

But he knew for a fact that Melyssa had no idea how to try to be either one of those things. And the sight of her teeth in that plump little lip was one more bolt of sensation that went stampeding through him. It was yet one more way she was ruining him for any other woman.

Something he tried not to think about. Especially not now, when she was finally beneath him.

“What are you going to do?” she asked, and she looked so genuinely fearful that he almost wanted to stop what he was doing and gather her up in a hug.

A hug.

You sad motherfucker, he gritted out at himself. He was a brother of the clan, ferocious and deadly. He didn’t hug.

“I don’t want you to worry,” he told her, and maybe his voice was a little too intense. But just like before, she responded well to his command. Maybe too well. She settled back down against the bed and the single, thick fur laid out across it, and watched him with those soft, dark eyes of hers. “Let me do my job.”

“Okay,” she whispered.

Because everything about her was perfect.

Jurin took his time with her panties because they were pretty, like everything in this cottage, and he didn’t want to destroy them. Or her. He was good at wrecking things. Hell, he was great at it.

Melyssa was something he was determined to leave in one piece.

Because there were a whole lot of things he still wanted to do to that particular piece. Nine months of imagination and plotting how best to indulge himself, and he needed her whole and happy to get through the list.

So he took his time tugging her panties off her, rolling them down to her mid-thigh, then lifting her legs, one and then the next, to pull them free.

And then it was finally happening. He was finally looking down at Melyssa’s sweet pussy with nothing between them but need.

His mouth watered.

But once again, he couldn’t throw himself on her like a fucking wolf. He had to take his time. He had to rock her whole world, because he wasn’t going to stop until she begged for his cock.

Which he had no doubt she would. He could almost hear it now.

He settled himself down and got comfortable. He wrapped his arms around her hips and tilted them up to his preferred angle, and then he took a big, deep breath, letting the sharp, sweet sugar of her fill his head.

A glance up told him that she was still worrying that lower lip, and that made everything in him pull tight. This was going to be good.

And then he focused his attention on her pretty little cunt. At last.

She had a sweet V of dark, thick curls, those pouty lips that stuck out beneath, and her proud little clit peeking out. Jurin bent his head, and got to work.

Melyssa jolted when he licked into her, making a surprised sort of sound that went straight to his head.

He didn’t stop. Not when she tugged at his braids, not when she called out his name. Because he could taste her need. She was sweet and molten hot when he started, and the more he licked her, the more he learned her.

The more he ate at her, the wilder and wetter she got.

Jurin ate pussy with total abandon, and he’d never wanted anything or anyone as much as he wanted Melyssa. He couldn’t get enough. He ate her up. He toyed with her, making her sob and rock against him over and over again.

And when she was good and agitated, he sucked that pretty little clit into his mouth, and made her scream.

That was only the beginning.

He lost track of how much, how hard, and how many times he made her come all over his face. He lost track of all the different ways she cried out his name.

Her soft little hands were in fists in his braids and she panted as if it might kill her, but every time she came, she learned. How to lift her hips to meet his mouth. How to grind herself against him, arching her back and using her whole body in sweet, exultant preparation for his cock.

He taught her how to ride him and she didn’t even have to get off her back to do it.

He threw her over that wild edge one last time, and then crawled up her body as she lay there, limp and sobbing, as if he’d run her dry.

But he knew better.

Jurin knelt beside her and gently pulled her up to sitting. He tugged off one shirt, then the next, and was unwrapping the sheet of wool wrapped around her breasts when she became aware of what he was doing.

“Naked?” she asked. She blinked as if she couldn’t form the words she wanted. “Are we getting naked?”

“I want to see you.” He was losing his grip, clearly. He could hear it in his voice. Stark and raw and a little bit crazy.

But she didn’t seem to mind.

“Why am I naked if you’re not?” she asked, as if it was an injustice she felt keenly.

Hell, maybe it was.

Jurin bit back a smile. “I’ll be honest, baby. I don’t think you can handle it.”

Her dark eyes, still wild from all that coming, narrowed.

“I’ve practically seen you naked already anyway,” she told him, with a spark of that temper he’d seen earlier. The temper that reminded him that whatever else she was afraid of, it wasn’t him. “You’re always stripping off most of your clothes on the practice green and then running all around as if that’s normal.”

“I’m so glad you’ve noticed, Melyssa.”

She flushed at that. But if she was working up to getting mad, she forgot to act it as he pulled off his harness. She just stared as he dropped it over the side of the bed, hearing the familiar clank when his blades hit the floor. Then he was peeling off his shirt, working hard not to seem as desperate as he actually was. The same with his trousers, after he kicked off his boots.

And then he let her look at him.

They were both sitting up on the bed. She’d shifted while he’d undressed, going up on her knees so she could watch more intently. Now she was kneeling there before him, which was just what he wanted. He moved so he was kneeling in front of her too, face-to-face, separated by a few inches of bed and a great many more inches of his desperate cock.

Jurin gritted his teeth, and told himself that warriors did what mortal men could not, and then he reached over and took her tiny hands in his. Then he very slowly, very deliberately, drew them to him and placed them on his cock. And somehow didn’t come from that alone.

“Oh.” Her hands tightened around him, which was pure torture, as she looked down. And then she looked up, and that was a different kind of torture altogether, because her eyes were so bright with wonder. “I had no idea it would feel so . . . “

He made himself sound lazy. Easy. And hoped she couldn’t see that he was sweating. “So . . . what?”

She tried to make her hands into fists around his girth, but her fingers didn’t quite touch. She moved her hands, up, then down. Together, then one at a time. She slid one fist to the base of his cock, and stacked her other one on top, as if she was measuring the distance between the top of her fists and the plump, red head of his dick.

He’d wanted her for so long, he didn’t know how he was holding on. But he did. Even when a little pre-come eased out from his slit, and she stared at it in fascination.

“I knew it would be hard, of course, but I did know would also be so soft. Like silk,” she said, her voice filled with that same wonder. Then she looked at the pre-come. “What’s that?”

He called on the part of him that had fought so hard to make him a brother. Fierce and ruthless and almost impossible to defeat. The years of brutal training in all kinds of weather and hideous battle conditions. Mind over matter, again and again, until he’d crafted himself into the ferociously lethal warrior he was.

“Taste it,” he suggested.

And to his delight, she did.

Still holding him in that sweet little death grip, Melyssa bent over and licked him. And if that wasn’t bad enough, after that first, uncertain lick she went back for more, taking his desperate cockhead in her mouth as all that soft, sweet hair of hers slithered all over his lap.

Jurin squeezed his eyes shut, gritted his teeth, and tried his best to survive.

Her mouth was hesitant and hot and the sweetest thing he’d ever felt in his life.

It was over too soon, but that was probably a blessing. She sat back up, smiling at him, and it was as if they both fell off the same great cliff then, turning end over end, and Jurin had no idea where or if they would land.

He didn’t fucking care.

“Salty,” she said.

He pulled her close, hooking a hand around the back of her head and pulling her mouth to his. He was a little wilder now, a little rougher, and she met him. He could taste them both—him, her sweet cunt, and the particular tartness that was just Melyssa beneath it. And he ate at her mouth the way he’d taken her pussy, as if he couldn’t get enough. As if this was all he’d ever get.

She moved closer, wrapping her arms around his neck and holding on tight as she kissed him back with an equal ferocity, and he moved his hands to her round ass. He put a palm on each cheek and held them there for a moment. Then he picked her up, wrapping her around him so her legs were around his waist and her pussy was on him. Right on him.

His cock slid through her folds like she was butter, and he worked that. He lifted her and lowered her, so she was riding the line of his cock up and down, though he never quite let his cockhead hit her clit with each pass and he didn’t twist his hips and drive inside her, either.

Because the point was to drive her crazy.

And she knew what she was missing now. She knew that there was more. She worked herself against him as if she was trying to suck him into her pussy somehow, but he didn’t let her do it.

He kissed her, and he worked her, and he waited.

In retrospect, the nine months seemed like nothing. This was the real test.

And with every moment it dragged on, Jurin was less and less sure he’d make it.

But then, finally, she wrenched her mouth from his.

“More,” she gasped, like music at last. She was panting, almost sobbing, and it was the sweetest sound he’d ever heard. Worth every moment of this last, long winter. “Please, Jurin. Please. I need more.”

“Then take more,” he gritted out.

When she didn’t move, as if she wasn’t sure what to do, he reached down between them. He took one of her hands with him, and together they worked his cock up and down that sweet cunt one more time.

And then, on the next slick glide, he let his cockhead rub over her clit as they went. She hissed in a breath, and then she helped him guide himself where he wanted to go, straight toward the place she was hottest and wettest.

Jurin let go when he was at her entrance, but she kept her hand wrapped around him. He shifted so he could hold her higher, so it would seem like nothing at all for her to press the head of his cock into her own sweet cunt like this had all been her idea from the start.

And it nearly took the top of his head off when she did.

Because he was inside her.

At last.

She’d come so many times that his size was nothing, just a little hitch here and there as she worked to stretch enough to take him. But she took him. He slid in slow, deep and sure, and because she was the perfect woman, she took him all.

And when he was buried inside her, root to tip, he held her there.

“Tell me, baby. Is this the kind of touching you don’t like?” he asked.

Her teeth were on her lip again and her hands were in fists on his shoulders. Her eyes were so full and so dark with need he almost came right then.

Almost.

But then Melyssa smiled, and that was better.

“I hate it,” she whispered, teasing him. Actually teasing him.

And then she rocked herself against him, and blew his mind.