Night Runner, page 13
She chewed her lip again, and I wanted to scoop her up and kiss her bulging red lip long and hard until she forgot about everything other than me. She peered at me. “Is it like being married? Is that what this is?”
“I don’t know how to answer that, kitten. I’ve never been a part of a fated mate pair, and I’ve never seen a fated mate pair in person.”
She studied me for a long time. “Then what do you want from me… and this?”
I reached for her hand and pulled her close. “Maury, I want you, and I want to learn all about you. Everything. But the fated mate bond won’t lessen until we consummate it. Of that, I’m sure. It can become the most exquisite pleasure or the most intense pain.”
She winced at that. “How can you be sure?”
“I just am.” It didn’t make sense since I had nothing, no reason to tout my words as truth, yet I knew them to be true all the same. Not from alpha intuition, but from my intuition of a part of a fated mate pair.
“Then what happens?”
“When?”
“After we consummate.” Her cheeks flushed at the word and reminded me once more how innocent Maury was in so many ways.
I stroked the back of her hands with my thumbs. “After that, I think we figure it out as we go.”
We stood there, naked together, as she danced into my brain while my dick was hard and throbbing. Time spun around us, and it was as though every moment had led to this. I was the alpha, and she was my mate. We were two halves of the same feline soul.
Slowly, she reached for my dick, circled my shaft with her hand and stroked me twice.
Groaning, I leaned over. “Maury?”
“I want to figure this out with you, Anthony, and you’re in my head, and I already know it’s never going to change. You’re there. Forever.” She moved her hand up and down again.
“Forever,” I said, gritting my teeth—barely able to hang on to my control.
“Then I want to do this and follow the path wherever it leads.”
At that, I pulled her against me, hard, and she jumped up into me and wrapped her legs around my waist. My dick strained toward her wet seam, and I fell back onto the mattress as her hands came around my neck, and I entered her in one intense thrust.
When her head fell back, her hair tickled my balls, and we settled together with me in her and under her. I moved beneath her, and she pitched forward, her hair falling over my chest. She pressed her lips to mine, and I touched her bottom lip with the tip of my tongue. Her mouth parted, and she sucked on my tongue, mimicking the way she’d mouth-fucked my dick.
I grabbed her hips and rolled until we traded places, and I buried my face in her breasts as she brought her upper arms together. My mouth worked her tits in slowly shrinking circles, first one and then the other, until I reached the tight bud and flicked it with my tongue.
She sucked in a breath and buried her hands in my hair. “Do that again.”
So, I did, relishing how she squirmed beneath me. The hum of her blood pulsing through her churned my desire into its own frenzy. Our hearts pounded in time with each other, and my dick strained to move. Yet I knew when I started, I wouldn’t be able to stop, and I needed Maury to be in control of everything.
She lifted her hips, smoothing the lips of her pussy against my tip, and then brought herself hard into me so I drove into her. “Fuck me, Anthony.”
“Soon, Maury-love,” I soothed and then gritted my teeth as she worked her hips up and down.
“No, now,” she demanded, tugging at my torso. “Shit, Anthony. Bite me.”
I brought my mouth to her shoulder and bit down.
She screamed my name, arching against me, and there wasn’t anything else in the world but her.
The metallic taste of her blood shocked me. Had I bitten her that hard? But my doubt was short-lived, and it felt so right, so perfect. When I released her skin, I dragged my tongue over her wound. Her pheromones changed, churning in the air between us, driving me forward in actions I didn’t quite understand.
We were two shifters, fated and mated for eternity, and I couldn’t wait anymore. We had to complete it. We had to finish it.
“Tell me, Maury. Tell me you want to mate, to bond,” I rasped. “You want to be linked to me forever as my mate.”
“I do, Anthony. I want to be yours forever and make you mine.” She lifted her head to my shoulder and closed her mouth in a bite, hard enough to drive me mad. When she dragged her fingers down my back, her fingernails sliced into my skin.
My dick swelled twice the size it had ever been before, the end engorged so wide inside her, and I held onto her hips as I slid my dick into her as deep as I could, until our pelvises ground against each other. She wrapped her legs around me and squirmed as though trying to drive me deeper.
“Anthony, mate me.” Maury arched, pushing her ass toward me as she moaned, maybe driven mad as I had been, but more than half-pained.
“Maury?” I whispered against her ear. “Am I hurting you?”
“Fuck no. Make me yours.” She bucked against me, slamming her pussy down on my dick, and I groaned her name. She dragged her fingernails down my shoulders until I hissed with the pleasure and pain. “Harder, Anthony.”
Again and again, I buried my cock inside her, and she lifted her knees, pushing me back then she relaxed so I drove into her with a wet slap. She flexed her legs and relaxed them over and over. Her juices slicked my dick and thighs. Reaching between us, I rubbed her clit, and she came, clenching and arching and writhing.
“Fuck, Anthony, fuck, yes,” she whimpered with her eyes squeezed closed. Her head rocked back and forth. Her eyes popped open, and she slammed into me again. “I want to feel you come, Anthony. Please.”
And then I was lost to the sensation of my mate around my dick, encouraging me, pushing me closer and closer to the edge we both wanted. Harder. Faster. Harder. Faster. Wetter and better than anything has ever been before. My dick was so big, so hard, and I knew it was different this time.
Our mating was imminent, our bond would be consummated. We barreled toward the finish line, neck and neck. Then we were there, together. We were in the middle of a black hole of pleasure. The whole of the shifters who had gone before, screamed in one long feral feline scream.
She twisted her hips. “You’re mine,” she snarled, showing her incisors, normally only long when she was a shifted cat. She brought her mouth to my shoulder once more. “Mine.”
Then I ran my tongue over my teeth, shocked to find my fangs had extended as long as hers, and I brought my mouth to her skin. “And you are mine, Maury.”
We bit together, at the same time, as our orgasms broke over us and swirled around us both. Climaxing together, at the same time, half-sexual peak and half-fate-mate-bonding. Still, higher and higher we went.
Her whole body flushed as she clamped her teeth tightly, screaming through her teeth as I thrust again, unloading the largest load I ever had. But it was more than a simple orgasm. Slicked in sweat and sex and pheromones, we were mated, bonded, united.
Her thoughts weren’t far from my own thoughts, and I could feel the warming pleasure coursing through her veins as well as the shock of my thoughts so close to hers in her head. It echoed and amplified everything I felt, too. Like experiencing a reflection in the mirror as though it was a part of yourself.
I peered down at her as she considered me. “Did it feel different?”
“It’s… It’s… more and better, deeper, and slower to disappear,” she said, awestruck.
For a long time, our minds remained linked and our bodies did, too. We breathed simultaneously without speaking again. Neither of us wanted to break the spell. Without breaking our physical connection, we moved until we lay side by side, facing each other, our legs wrapped together. We were in no hurry to lose… this.
An hour later, reluctantly, we parted, but remained tucked together.
I caressed her cheek and pushed the hair back from her face. “Is it different for you?” I whispered. “I mean… now… after.”
She gazed past me as she considered. “So different. Less…”
“Frenzied?” I grinned.
“Much less.”
Then she wrapped her arms around me and pulled me into her.
“What are you doing?” I spoke softly into her ear.
“Keeping you from going back to work,” she said and nuzzled my neck. “I know the pride is already enticing you from my bed.”
I chuckled. “Oh, fuck no. There’s not anything going to keep me from the best fucking post-sex nap I’ve ever had, and you’re staying here with me.”
“Good,” she said.
Then Maury rolled to her other side and tucked her ass against my dick and shimmied until it was cradled between her ass cheeks, and I couldn’t get over how she knew what I liked before I did, and I had to decide whether to chase the thoughts now in my head.
Instead, we snuggled like spoons, and I wrapped my arm around her middle, tucking my fingers beneath her. Before I could speak, Maury reached behind her and laid her hand on my hip.
“Do you want me to talk to them?” I whispered into her ear. “To the pride. About this.”
“No, not today,” she said. “Soon.”
“When?”
“When I’m ready.”
I tucked her against me harder. “When will that be?”
“Whenever it needs to be, but not yet.”
“What if they notice we’ve been in here for a couple hours together? Kobie won’t let that shit go,” I murmured and then yawned.
“Well, they can know we’re together and fuck like horny cats.” She yawned, too. “But the fated mate thing… Maybe that can wait.”
I didn’t argue with her. No way I could form a coherent thought as my brain muddled, readying for sleep. But I wasn’t sure I could accommodate her. Eventually, the pride would have to be told why Darius was such a danger… and why he wanted Maury so badly.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
maury
Anthony was snoring behind me, and I wanted to join him, should have been able to join him, since I’d spent all that time running around the safe room, wringing my hands and worrying. Exhaustion should have been imminent.
I covered another yawn as I tried to figure out why I couldn’t just go to sleep as easily as he had. It should have been easy enough after good sex, the orgasm that didn’t want to end, and consummating the bond between us. Should have been…
Instead, though, my brain churned itself into an over-thinking session about what we had just done. We fucking mated. Not just made love or had sex like mortals or regular humans do.
No, Anthony’s dick had gone gargantuan, and he’d planted something inside me that had linked our brains in a way I should have been frightened of. Instead of egging him on, demanding it, wanting it… wanting him like that.
Yet it had been what we both needed. We had mated, binding ourselves to each other in an ancient covenant from centuries earlier in cat shifter existence. Anthony was in the back of my head, but it wasn’t as unpleasant as it had been before. I could sense the bad and the good now. Maybe only in vague impressions, but they were there, and I knew the vague would become the specific. How did I know that?
Shit if I knew.
No, not true. I did know beyond a shadow of a doubt. What had Anthony called it? Instinctual. I was one part of a fated pair, and all I knew about it was instinctual.
I gasped as I realized another aspect of what mating Anthony meant. Our bond meant I would never change into a mortal again, even if we retrieved both parts of the ritual knife. I would die as Anthony’s mate and as a cat shifter.
I’d been mated, bonded, linked to another person, and I didn’t quite know how to process what had happened. The act had been more satisfying than anything that had happened in my life before, and I didn’t know how to articulate it.
Shaking my head, I smoothed my hand over Anthony’s chest, and he moaned, but he didn’t wake up. A month ago, I was stuck out in the bayou, barely keeping ahead of being discovered by campers, explorers, or the authorities.
Now I was tucked in a cushy bed, part of a pride, part of a family, with a mate beside me. It was a mind-blowing change.
Scooting back into Anthony as closely as I could, I kept him near as he slept. I never wanted to go anywhere else, except to sleep. I wanted to be at Anthony’s side forever. Anthony was still in my head, but it was less a driving force now. His presence had become a friend. I could sense the sheets on his skin, the contentment in his veins.
Our bond echoed and amplified my own feelings of satisfaction, of everything being right with our world. Darius and the impending doom didn’t matter. Him having the knife didn’t matter. Anthony and I were two parts of a whole, and nothing could stand against the power of fated mates.
Not Darius. Not any of his shifters. Not anyone.
My mind continued to churn, so I rolled over to face him, to appreciate him while he slept, to memorize the lines and planes of his face. Soon, I realized Anthony was staring at me, and I blushed under his scrutiny.
“Morning,” I said, not knowing if it was morning or not.
“You’re so beautiful,” he murmured, and he brought me close enough we were nearly nose to nose. “Maury, I’ve never seen anything so incredible.”
“I bet you say that to all the girls you fate-mate,” I said.
He belly-laughed. “Since you’re the only one, it must be true.”
My cheeks warmed, and I kept my chin tucked and my eyes on his chest. “I didn’t know you were awake.”
“Maury?”
Something in the tone of his voice brought my gaze to his, and I frowned. “What is it?”
But he wasn’t looking at my face, he stared at a place near my collarbone. He smoothed his hand over the skin above my left breast and below my collarbone. Was it one of the places he’d bit?
A raw sensation spread through my skin beneath his fingers, and I hissed. “Ow.”
“Look,” he whispered.
I glanced down at the patch of skin that held his attention. A mark had formed in the layers of my skin as though it had been carved into my flesh. It was a jaguar shape, almost like a hieroglyph. “What is that?” The more I stared, the more it seemed familiar. “Where have I seen that before?”
He pushed the cover back and leaned up on his elbow, exposing his own chest while he stared at mine.
“Anthony,” I gasped.
His eyes jumped to mine. “What?”
“It’s on you, too.”
He scowled and peered down at his chest. “I’ll be damned.”
I dragged my fingers over the grooves in his skin. It looked like something out of Mayan history, and it tickled my memory. “What happened? Why does it look so familiar?”
His mouth twisted, and he chuckled. “It was on the knife, Maury. It’s the symbol on the knife handle.”
“The knife?” At first, I didn’t understand what he referred to.
“The talisman.”
“Your talisman? The one I tried to steal?”
“Seems to be.”
“No fucking way. Oh, cats, it’s the jaguar.” My mouth gaped open, and I covered it with my hand. The Mayan jaguar had appeared on our skin. Magically. The word sent shivers through me. Had I not believed it all to be true until this moment? I wasn’t sure, but it was all much more real to me now. “I wish I understood how they knew about fated mates and had a knife connected to them. Like did they come up with fated mates somehow? All the magic in their temples or on certain days when certain stars and planets aligned… Do you know?”
He smoothed his thumb over my mark. “Maybe Joey the historian does.”
“Joey doesn’t sound like a historian name,” I murmured.
When Anthony chuckled, I shrugged. “Babbling strikes again.”
“It’s not as bad as it was before.”
“Well, I’m not at all who I was a month ago, and I’m not as nervous around you as I was. Do you think I’ll change now that we’re bonded?”
“Only time will tell.” He pushed his hand through his dark hair. “You know what it proves?”
“Which part?”
He gestured toward the marks. “These.”
“That fated mates and their existence have a connection to that artifact,” I said. “That the connection has something to do with Darius and why he wanted it.”
“And why he wanted you,” he added. “Maybe the part of the knife he has led him to you.”
“Anything’s possible.” I rubbed the place on my skin. “It’s crazy this symbol keeps coming up. I wish I knew where it came from. It’s on the part of the dagger you had, and now it’s on our skin. Do you think it will go away?”
“The mark on our skin?”
I nodded, smoothing my hand over his skin again, noting how they felt exactly the same in our skin. Two identical marks.
“No, I don’t think so. The three claw marks are gone, but I think one is here to stay. There were historical references to fated mates being marked, and with the new information with Darius and the two-parts of the knife… I don’t think it’s a coincidence.”
He made good points, but I couldn’t get over how everything was coming together like it had been organized. By all accounts, Darius had been tracking me for years, and now that I’d found Anthony, things were changing so quickly. Both parts of the talisman dagger were together now, and we’d bonded.
He cleared his throat. “I have to tell you about something, and I want to know what you think.”
I scooted up in the bed and tucked the pillow behind me, and he did the same. “What is it?”
His mouth tightened, and his eyes held no sparkle. “When we were out in the bayou, I received a voicemail.”
“A voicemail?” It couldn’t be good. I knew that much. “What did it say?”
“It said they, I’m assuming Darius and his pride, have Ty.”
