Mated By Fate by Christa Wick

Chapter Twenty-Four

Before Esme could even beginto formulate a response, his head descended again, his mouth delivering on both the promise and the threat he’d just made.

He was relentless. And far too good at doing such wickedly bad things to her. Courtesy of the years of practice he’d had with woman after woman, no doubt. She held onto that devastating reminder like a life preserver under a cresting tidal wave.

Still, neither her pained memories, nor her angry reserve, were any match for his skilled attacks.

Esme squirmed as he continued to nip, suck, lick her past sanity, her fingers unclenching to tangle in his thick hair and guide his mouth. Her head lulled back, wild, untapped magic flowing out of her from the deep within, growing in strength with each groaning, shuddering breath she released.

He sucked the hood of her clit, his tongue flicking over and over against the fleshy pearl hidden inside until Esme couldn’t help but climax yet again. This time in soft, jerking motions, her throat locked in a vibrato of dove calls matching the murmurs of affection Denver couldn’t seem to control either.

When her body eventually stopped trembling, Denver kissed a warm trail of kisses up her body, his tenderness effectively breaching the walls around her heart she’d erected a long time ago—in a way his unrelenting seduction had tried and failed.

"Baby…"

Esme gasped. He had finally abandoned those awful words, not-love, not-baby. Words she had goaded him into using. Words that had hurt, but had helped in keeping the distance she so desperately needed.

Cupping Esme's face, Denver stared into her eyes. "Ems? You okay?”

He moved to kiss her mouth, his body straining forward as his fingers manipulated her clit. She turned her head at the last second, her lips quivering as she evaded the kiss. She closed her eyes, tears escaping their tight press.

"Love—"

She shook her head and pulled away. "Finish it. Just…finish it.”

Pausing to stare at her for several more painful heartbeats, he didn't argue, not at first.

Finally tilting his head to acknowledge her whispered request, he lifted her legs, coaxing small movements from Esme until he had her positioned in the center of the bed, her body vertical.

He nudged her thighs apart, his torso lightly pressing against her breasts as he finally conceded, his voice low and throbbing as he told her, “Okay. But not without a kiss."

“We’ll follow your wishes…but on my terms. Definitely my pace.”

Esme looked at Denver, her eyes imploring him once more to just penetrate her and end the ritual. “Don't ask that of me,” she whispered, a soft hiccup punctuating her distress.

He exhaled raggedly, his expression sad but unyielding. Between her legs, she felt his fingers close around his thick shaft, felt the head of his cock nudge at her core.

His gaze grew deep with emotion as he said plainly, “Hiding behind your charms...do you think you were the only one aching all these years, love?"

No. But at least she’d been alone through the nonstop ache.

Denver hadn’t been.

His lips brushed the line of her jaw. She shuddered out a trembling breath, unable to remain unaffected by his touch, no matter how hard she tried. Though her confused, unsettled anger with him remained, unfortunately, so too did her arousal.

Somehow already knowing what she was only now beginning to realize, Denver shifted his hips, bringing his mouth closer to hers as his cock settled against the swollen entrance to her pussy.

He didn't wait for her reaction. The head of his cock pushed through her tight opening, more exploratory than penetrating at first. But no less incendiary.

His tongue slid along the seam of her lips, one hand cradling Esme’s face to keep her from turning away as he coaxed her to respond, teased her pussy with just the tip of his thick erection until she was soon fusing her lips to his and kissing him back with years of pent-up emotion.

“There you are,” he rasped throatily. “No hiding, no running. Not tonight.”

Battering past her last defense by staring at her as if he’d never get enough of looking at her, he thrusted home.

* * *

Denver hadto fight to keep a handle on his control as he pushed up on his arms and took her, hard and deep.

Gazing into the shifting depths of her sea-green eyes, he lifted his hips and drove forward. Again and again. He took immense pleasure in seeing she had even less control than he did finally, the last hour he’d spent trying to get her to stop fighting their connection nearly breaking him as well.

Lifting her hips to grind her clit against him, another plume of magic escaped her, twisting and twining all around them.

Distracted by the magic between them more than the one the witch council was after, suddenly, he felt the tug of energy at the same time her muscles coiled and whipped around his cock.

Instantly, the base of his cock started to pulse and thicken, a pressure from deep inside growing to violent proportions he’d never experienced.

Locked inside Esme, Denver groaned. "Baby…"

Now he was the breathless one, aching for the next throbbing squeeze of her body along his shaft even as he fought to hold back what was coming. "Not yet."

Esme moaned, arched, neither one of them in command of anything remotely close to control at the moment.

The air in his lungs seized completely, the skin on his balls pulling tight when she began shuttling her tight, wet pussy up and down his cock, the once virginal muscles tugging, wild and untamed, as she barreled them both to the top of a bottomless cliff.

She arched again, the unimaginably snug perfection of her pussy around his shaft and head multiplying his pleasure tenfold, her sexy cries of pleasure shaking something loose in his chest as her tight channel fluttered and squeezed, demanding that he come with her.

Groaning, Denver thrust to the hilt finally, the fat cum-leaking tip of his cock lodged against her cervix, every last inch of his cock embraced now by the hot rolling muscles of her pussy.

Beneath him, Esme cried out, panted and squirmed. Her hands grabbed his ass, her sharp nails threatening bodily injury if he dared slide back out of her. She kept him cinched him in place, denying his retreat, while she pulsating with pleasure all around his painfully stiff shaft, her sexy little whimpers only driving him to the brink faster.

"More…time..." Denver rasped, pressing a kiss against her neck as he fought his body’s total surrender to his mate.

He couldn’t unleash, not yet. He had to drive her to this point again and again until she admitted that she wanted him every bit as badly as he needed her.

Until she promised this would be more than just one night for them.

He had to possess her completely, had to leave her gasping and begging. If he finished now, she would force him from her bed the moment he unknotted.

That would surely kill him.

He wanted to see the sunrise on her naked body, watch its golden rays flicker approvingly inside her sea-green irises as he descended her lush body for a proper good morning kiss. Tomorrow, and every morning after.

"Now," Esme pleaded, her nails dragging along his flesh, her hips rotating to pull him deeper. “Denver, please.”

At the sound of his name on her lips, Denver came with a harsh moan, his mouth buried against his mate’s throat.

He pulled back as far as the knot would allow, then slammed forward, his cock pulsing, her sheath squeezing and jerking relentlessly along his length, delivering ecstasy from base to tip.

A long, seismic while later, the last pulse of cum finally left him.

Wrung dry, he nestled closer to Esme, his lips against her throat as his tongue sampled the salt of her smooth skin. Feeling the knot slowly recede, he remembered to breathe again.

But the moment Denver tried to wrap his arms around her, she resisted, shifting away and wiggling frantically until she was free of his hold.

Face turned away from him, she whipped the robe around her body, tying the sash in place as she went straight to the window and slammed her palm against the glass to signal Camille that it was over.

"Esme."

"Nothing has changed," she told him. "I don't want to see you ever again. All you have to offer me is the only thing you’ve ever made sure to be a constant in my life—your absence."

"Ems—"

"Go now, or I will. I’ll leave, far away from the clan, far away from any other clan or shifter. Is that what you want—to have me stripped of any protection against the Hunters?"

Denver jerked as if struck. His hands fisted at his sides. But eventually, slowly, he turned and did as she asked.

* * *

Eyes corkscrewed shut,Esme listened to Denver pull on his clothes and leave, not another word spoken.

She’d heard the depth of emotions in his voice when he’d said her name. Saw the pain ebbing from every inch of him when she’d asked him to leave. She’d very nearly reached for him, but forced her hands down to her sides at the last moment.

This was how it had to be. How it could ever be for them.

Camille entered a few minutes later to strip the linen from the bed, her attempts to draw Esme from the window ignored until inevitably, she gave up and left.

Another hour passed as Esme stared through the glass, her gaze on the stars in search of some elusive meaning to the night's events.

She found nothing.

The stars seemed indifferent to how many female shifters had prostrated themselves before their mates that night, their wombs quickening for the first time in a decade as they were mounted. The stars also offered no insight as to how many children were conceived across the clan as Denver finally surrendered inside Esme.

Or how, at the exact moment Denver had claimed Esme's virginity, a clot had lodged itself deep inside Jack Cooper's brain and began to grow…