****
Raul let Keira’s throat drop from his mouth and pulled back, willing the transformation to ripple through his body once more. He felt his bones shifting and changing inside of his skin, the muscles twisting and moving, colors coming up in his eyes that he hadn’t been able to see before. Underneath him, Keira trembled and shivered as her own change worked through her body, and fur disappeared, only to be replaced by beautiful, breathtaking naked skin.
As his mouth assumed human shape once more, Raul licked his lips. “I pinned you,” he said, his voice still rippling with a wolfish growl. “I won the contest.”
“You cheated,” Keira countered.
“I did not cheat,” Raul insisted. He stared down into her eyes intently, torn between amusement and annoyance. “I used strategy.” Raul buried his face against her neck, growling lowly. “Just like you did when you went for me at my weakest-seeming point.”
“You just…” Raul nipped sharply at Keira’s throat—a mixture of dominant threat and affection—and she moaned, her body heating up against his. “You just want to mate me.”
“Maybe I do,” Raul murmured against her skin. “Maybe I want to take you as my mate and mark you and tell everyone you’re all mine.” His cock was already rock-hard, his arousal white hot, flowing through his veins. From the moment that Keira had mentioned fighting for dominance, the challenge that she required from her mate, Raul’s lust for the shifter female had built up inside of him.
“Why?” Keira looked up at him in confusion, and Raul smiled slowly, pulling back to hold her gaze.
“You wanted to hold out for the male who could best you in combat,” Raul said. Keira nodded, shrugging slightly in admission. “I’ve been holding out for the female who is a match for me.” He brushed his lips against hers, nipping her bottom lip. “You can’t tell me that you don’t feel it, Keira.” Raul nuzzled Keira’s neck, breathing in the scent of her pheromones. The heady musk of her arousal filled his nose, vying with the stable scent that clung to her at all times, spurring a deeper arousal in Raul’s body.
“I feel it,” Keira said, her voice low, almost purring. “But we—should we…”
“Absolutely,” Raul told her. He touched her everywhere, forgetting the pain from his wounds, forgetting everything but the desire—the need—to take Keira. “We absolutely should. You need to make good on what you told your Alpha, don’t you?” He rocked his hips against hers; Raul shuddered at the feeling of Keira’s soaking wet labia brushing against his erection. “Submit to me, Keira. Let me take you.”
For a moment, Keira lie beneath him, tense and uncertain, even with the arousal pheromones radiating from her body filling his nose. Then she relaxed against him, her pupils dilating, her heart fluttering at the pulse point in her neck. “Neither of our clans is going to be happy with us.”
Raul leaned in and claimed Keira’s lips with his own, kissing her hungrily. He nipped and nibbled at her bottom lip, growling lowly as his hands trailed all over her body. Keira’s arousal intensified moment by moment, and Raul felt his own desire rising to meet it. In moments, the air was thick with their pheromones, and Raul could barely hold himself back from thrusting into her just as she was, lying underneath him, her soaking wet folds tantalizingly close.
“Say it,” Raul said, pulling back enough to look down into Keira’s eyes. “Say it, you know you want to.” Keira panted, her hips twisting and shifting underneath him, her body pressed against his, and Raul clenched his teeth to hold the animal part of his consciousness at bay.
“Take me as your mate,” Keira said, her voice tight with desire. “I submit to you.”
Raul lifted himself off of Keira’s body, his hands trembling slightly from pent-up desire. He kissed her throat, her breasts, nuzzling against Keira and marking her all over with his scent. He kissed a path down from her full, lush breasts and along her abdomen, breathing in her heady aroma, growling low in his throat, the urge for possession coiling the muscles in his body, driving out some of his most human impulses.
He spread her legs wide at the hip, and Raul nipped sharply at Keira’s inner thigh. You have to do this right, he told himself, taking a quick, deep breath. It wasn’t enough to mouth her, to deliver the marking bite; he had to bring Keira to a height of pleasure that she hadn’t experienced with any other partner. He had to make her truly and completely submit to him, give into him, bond with him.
Raul buried his face against Keira’s soaking wet pussy, nuzzling his lips and cheeks against her, his tongue darting out to taste her fluids. He sucked and licked, devouring her, drinking down Keira’s arousal as if it were honey. Keira’s body came to life underneath him, electric; her hands closed on his head, on his shoulders, her fingers tangling in his hair, and Raul smiled to himself as he heard her moaning out, the sound cut through with her distinctive panther growling purr.
Raul teased Keira relentlessly, worshipping her with his lips and tongue. Spurred by instinct, he brought her to the edge of orgasm again and again, flicking his rough-edge tongue against her clitoris and then darting down to the well of her pussy, sucking and licking along her inner labia as Keira pitched and arched in reaction. Raul could feel, could sense Keira’s pleasure mounting, the tension building between her hips as he worshipped her.
When he knew that Keira couldn’t take even a moment more of teasing, Raul pulled back, licking his lips clean of all traces of her fluids, and quickly reached underneath her to flip her onto her stomach. Keira growled and purred, lifting her hips, rising up onto her elbows and knees on the grass, presenting her body to him, submitting to his dominance.
Animal instinct, coiled deep inside of Raul’s body and mind, sprung free, and he covered her body with his own, lining his hips up with the curve of Keira’s ass. She spread her legs wider, and Raul reached down between their bodies, guiding the tip of his cock up against her soaking wet folds. He thrust into her all at once, filling her up in a single movement, and Keira cried out in pleasure, pushing her hips back to take him deeper.
Raul began moving immediately, thrusting deeper and deeper inside of Keira’s body. He held her hip with one hand and balanced himself on the other, pressing his face between her shoulders, growling and moaning as his own pleasure mounted. He held himself back, feeling Keira’s body, reading her reactions as they moved together as one. He knew she was getting closer and closer to orgasm; he knew that if he was going to take her as his mate—really take her, truly mark her—he had to do the right thing at precisely the right moment. Raul kissed along Keira’s spine, lapping the sweat from her skin, feeling the ripple of her inner muscles tightening in convulsive spasms around his achingly hard cock.
Raul knew the precise moment when Keira reached her orgasm; he groaned, bringing his mouth up to the nape of Keira’s neck, struggling to maintain his self-control as her body tightened around him. She gave into the orgasm, moaning and purring, and Raul continued to thrust hard and fast into her, riding the wave of her climax for several moments. Finally—when he felt the panther underneath him reach the peak of her orgasm—Raul opened his mouth, sinking his teeth in the nape of her neck carefully. Keira cried out, shuddering against him, and Raul tasted her blood on his tongue.
It was too much for Raul to hold back any longer; he released Keira’s neck and threw his head back as wave after wave of pleasure washed through him in crackling jolts. He howled, proclaiming his ownership, his mastery of the woman he had taken, to the world at large, the call of a wolf claiming his mate. For several moments that felt like an eternity, Raul howled again and again as his climax continued, his cock twitching as his come flooded out of his body and into hers. When the last of the spasms began to abate, he collapsed against her, panting and gasping for breath, pleasure still dancing along his nerves throughout his body. For better or worse, she is fully mine now, he thought idly, as the haze of his pleasure wiped out the last of his ability to think.