“You’re really not leaving? Once I’m—once you’ve finished the job?” I whispered. He’d told me so, but—shit, maybe it was only for the promised stipend after all? If he knotted me now, held me close to his heart while I called him my mate and my alpha and spilled my longing into the night, and then wanted me for my money after all, it might break me. “Why do you want to stay? I was going to offer to—ask you to stay. Offer you whatever you wanted, but—”
“Shut up,” he growled, and put a hand over my mouth to ensure it. I kissed his palm, and his eyes brightened and darkened all at once, shining gold over pupil-blown black. “If you offer me money again, I’ll—fuck.”
“You’ll what?” I mumbled into his hand, wriggling on the thick cock buried in me, smiling when his eyes shut for a moment and he slammed his hips against me helplessly.
“I’ll nothing,” he said, after he’d sucked in a deep breath. “That’s the problem. I won’t hurt you. I won’t leave. I won’t stop cooking for you. I got nothing.” His chest heaved, and he opened his eyes, fixing me with that gaze again. “I only want you. That’s it. Don’t offer me anything else.”
“You have me, you have me, always, now fuck me. Dimitri!” He thrust so hard he shoved me off the jacket and onto the grass, damp and prickly against my spine. I didn’t care. “Harder, I’m yours, God, please, you feel so good inside me…”
I trailed off into an incoherent litany of begging and endearments and demands, and Dimitri answered each one by taking me apart, stroke after stroke, filling every empty place in me, body and soul.
By the time I came again as his knot forced the orgasm out of me, the words flowing out of my mouth had gone beyond any possibility of control.
“I love you,” I gasped.
He didn’t reply, simply groaning his own pleasure into my ear as he shook in my arms, hips jerking in a staccato rhythm, his knot punching into me with every movement.
What I’d said sank in as my heartbeat started to slow, as I gazed up at the stars, Dimitri’s panting breaths hot on my neck and the night air cool on my legs where they weren’t heated by his. I stroked his back through the shirt he hadn’t managed to tear off all the way, tracing his muscles with my fingertips.
Dimitri lifted his head. I didn’t want to meet his eyes, but I had to when he took my chin in his hand and turned me to him, gently but inexorably.
“Did I just hear what I thought I heard?” I couldn’t read his tone at all, as if he was keeping himself neutral through sheer force of will.
I swallowed hard and nodded.
The smile that broke out across his face lit him up more than any moonlight ever could’ve, brighter than his eyes. “I love you too. In case you were wondering. Anyway, if you were, don’t ever wonder again. I love you, and you’re mine.”
No one had ever told me that before. No one, not my parents, not a boyfriend. No one at all.
Dimitri had been worth the wait, because those words in his deep, raspy voice flowed into me, around me, soothing and comforting me in ways I’d never even imagined.
Would this be what my life would be like from now on? His, and only his, and never alone again? Taking the job I’d worked so hard for, finally getting the recognition I deserved for all those hours and weeks and years of slaving away…but the vindication of that paled in comparison to this.
I shimmied my hips, biting my lips against a moan when it rubbed his knot against all kinds of interesting places.
“I think you’ve staked your claim,” I said hoarsely, unable to find words for everything in my mind and my heart. “I don’t think I’m going anywhere.” And then, helplessly, because I couldn’t keep it in, “I love you.”
“Never going to get tired of hearing that.” He nuzzled my cheek, nipped at my jaw, licked and nibbled me until I squirmed and laughed and tried—and failed—to shove him off.
“Fine! I love you I love you I love—stop tickling me—Dimitri!” I protested as he went for the curve of my throat again.
We didn’t manage to get up off the ground, collect the grass-stained remnants of two beautifully tailored suits, and go home for another hour. Or more? It hardly mattered, because the moon and the stars wheeled above, and the crickets chirped, and an owl hooted at us, and we had nowhere else to be besides together.
I spent the drive stark naked with half a jacket draped over my lap.
Dimitri laughed at me, even though it was his fault, grin flashing in the darkness.
And then we went home together, and he carried me over the threshold just because he could, and from there—straight to bed.
My mate. My alpha.
And I didn’t do any work at all on Sunday.
Epilogue
I’m Ready
Three months later
