She had to get out of here.
Her stomach curdled and soured at the thought of leaving this place, these people, Mason. Today had felt good, freeing, and she’d owned who she was. She’d owned her inner animal right in front of Mason. But that wasn’t enough to capture a man’s heart, and she was in way over her head with this.
Affairs of the heart couldn’t be trusted with someone whose heart had been fractured like mirror glass.
Beck shoved open the door to 1010. Maybe it was this old trailer’s fault she’d fallen so unexpectedly hard. Cora had told her it was magic, and she hadn’t listened. Instead, she’d gotten drunk on feeling a part of this place and clawed up Mason! He would never forgive her for doing that without his consent. Hell, she would never forgive herself.
Stupid owl thought she knew all the answers. She thought instinct trumped logic, but she didn’t understand how the real world worked. Beck wasn’t just an animal! She was a person, too, who’d just slashed an illegal claiming mark into the shoulder of a man she barely knew.
Facing Mason again couldn’t happen. Not when she was this horrified by her reckless behavior. She would tell Cora something had come up and she needed to do her publicist duties from Saratoga, not from 1010, which was apparently akin to one of those cute little naked cupids shooting love arrows into everyone’s asses.
She yanked her suitcase from the closet and rushed to the built-in set of drawers.
“Where are you going?” Mason asked.
“Aaah!” Beck screamed, clutching her chest as she spun on him.
He stood in the doorway, arms crossed over his chest, muscles bulging, eyes blazing a brilliant blue.
“I’m leaving,” she squeaked out.
Mason blinked slow and raised his dark eyebrows. “Why?”
“Because I don’t belong here! I don’t have any control over my actions, which is insane because I’m a grown-ass woman. I’ve felt old and drained to emptiness for years, and then I come here and I’m making all these mistakes I can’t afford to make. And I’m mortified by what I did to you.”
Mason approached slowly, backing her into the corner as she countered him step for step. “What did you do to me?”
She couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t draw a single full breath into her lungs, and he was too close, too dominant, too riled up. A submissive snowy owl did not belong with a beast boar! Unable to force enough air past her voice box, she circled her finger in the general direction of the bloody tears in his shirt. When he stared at her like she’d lost her mind, she rasped out, “I marked you.”
Mason shrugged flippantly and said, “Woman, it didn’t hurt for more than a couple minutes, and it’s already forming into a scar.”
“How can you be so calm about this, Mason? It’s a big deal! I never marked anyone before.”
His face went completely slack as a spark of understanding lit up his eyes. Slowly, he dragged his gaze to his shoulder and pulled the tattered material to the side, exposing four perfect, deep, half-healed wounds. “You marked me? Like…marked me?” His voice jacked up in volume. “You claimed me?”
“I tried to stop my animal, I did, but I was angry, and my owl thought I was ruining things between us, and she really wants to keep you.” Beck swallowed audibly and dropped her gaze to his scuffed work boots. Softly, she corrected herself, “I really want to keep you. I shouldn’t have done that without talking to you about—”
Mason’s lips crashed onto hers. The wind was knocked out of her, not because of his heavy dominance, but because he was squeezing her against his hard body.
Her back hit the wall hard, but she didn’t care. She didn’t feel the pain or have that trapped feeling anymore. Mason was touching her! More than touching her, he was giving into her completely!
His hands gripped her shirt roughly, and she tossed her head back and whispered his name as he ground his hard erection against her. His beard scratched at her sensitive skin as he dragged his lips down her neck and bit her hard. Not enough to draw blood, but hard enough that she felt his teeth sink into her skin by millimeters. “I didn’t know,” he rasped out as he pulled the backs of her knees up around his hips. “Boar people don’t do claiming marks like that. I didn’t even give a second thought to your talons on me, woman. Fuck, Beck, say it again. Tell me you claimed me.”
“I claimed you,” she chanted in a desperate murmur. “Mason,” she groaned as the roll of his long, thick erection pressed her just right.
Mason settled her roughly on her feet, gripped her shirt, and then ripped it down the front, popping her buttons all over the laminate flooring. Desperately, she clawed his shirt upward and over his head, and the second he was free of the confining material, his lips were on her again.
Her breasts bounced to freedom as Mason yanked her bra off her arms. She raked her nails down his muscular chest, down the mounds of his taut abs. Damn, she’d never seen someone as perfect as him. Even the long scars on his ribs were sexy as hell. When she leaned forward and clamped her teeth against the raised scar, Mason hissed, then gripped her hair and pulled her in closer, as if he liked the pain. Rough, sexy, snarly beast. She’d had to carefully control her animal with Robbie and act submissive, but Mason could handle her appetites, and right now she wanted to feel him. She didn’t want him gentle—not when both of their animals were riled up like this.
“I want you,” she whimpered, fumbling with the fly of his jeans.
The rumble in his chest grew louder as he shoved his jeans down his hips, unsheathing his thick shaft. Just the weight of it when he pressed it against her belly made her knees buckle with longing. She’d never wanted a man like this. Never wanted to be filled like this. Sex had been about desperation to feel a connection before, but now, it felt like a vital link to touching Mason’s soul. Is this what it was like to actually find a mate?
Gasping when his teeth found her neck again, she rolled her eyes closed and wiggled her hips, helping him shimmy her jeans down her legs. The second she was free of the fabric, their bodies crashed together, and she moaned at how damn good it felt to be pressed up against him. Warmth. Safety. Belonging. All the things she’d craved her entire life was right here for the taking.
Mason dropped sexy biting kisses to her breast, and worked her with that clever tongue of his until her sex pulsed once in delicious anticipation. God, she wanted him inside of her now.
But he had other ideas. Mason dropped to his knees, one hand on her breast, massaging with the perfect rough pressure as he sucked at the skin right over her pelvis, then lower and lower. By the time he pushed her knees wider apart, she was gripping his hair, guiding him, begging him, mewling out helpless pleading sounds. His teeth touched her left inner thigh, and then he clamped harder onto her right. Beck’s knees gave out, but Mason gripped her shoulder in a blur, kept her pressed up against the wall. As she clenched his hair harder, the snarl in his throat sounded damn near like a purr, and the vibration touched her inner thigh. And when Mason looked up at her with those ice blue eyes and that wicked smile, she knew she was done for. As punishment for his tease, she gripped the claiming mark so he would feel her. He winced, but his naughty smile grew wider. And the next time she rocked her hips toward him, he drew her clit into his mouth and just about buckled her over the erotic sensation.
And good gracious, that man knew how to draw an orgasm from her. He worked her into an inferno until she was loud, bowed back against the wall, hips rolling with the pace he set. And as if he knew she was right there, he slid his tongue deep inside of her. Three strokes, and she screamed his name as pulsing release drummed through her, more intense than she’d ever experienced before.
Mason stood, taking her with him, and tossed her on the soft mattress. He pushed her knees wide open as she lifted up to nip at his throat. And that big, dominant razorback boar shifter let her have his neck. If that didn’t show complete trust, she didn’t know what did.
Now her man wasn’t playing around anymore. He wasn’t readying her for his massive size or teasing. Up on locked, muscular arms, Mason settled into the cradle of her hips, trapped her in a fiery gaze, and slammed into her.
“Fuck,” she gasped at how good he felt filling her like this.
Mason drew back slow, and then rammed into her again. He smoothed out his pace and bucked into her gracefully, keeping the pressure building in her middle until she was arching her spine against the bed, begging for more with her body.
“I’m gonna come again,” she warned him breathlessly.
“Wait for me,” he gritted out in a sexy, gravelly voice.
“I can’t, I can’t. Mason!”
He slammed into her faster, deeper. There was a strange feeling in her chest, as if Mason had touched her soul with a hot poker. She closed her eyes and gritted her teeth against the pleasure and pain. She knew what this was. It was exactly what had been missing with Robbie. Mason was bonding her to him, and after this she would never be the same. She wouldn’t be able to leave and rip her heart away from him.
Mason winced, and she knew he felt it, too. Her mate. Hers.
He groaned out her name and froze as the first jet of warm seed pulsed into her, heating her from the inside out. She clawed at his back as her second orgasm slammed through her, even more intense than the first. She was falling…or flying. Weightless as pleasure pulsed through her body, warring with the ache in her chest, and then in an instant, the hurt was gone. Mason’s dick throbbed inside of her as he emptied himself.