Lian Roch (Bayou Heat)(29)
“Tell me.”
“We didn’t get to make our cub this way…”
Pain, beautiful pain erupted within her. “Oh, Roch,” she said on a sigh. “The next one. Our next one.”
“Yes, but…” He eased out of her and thrust back in.
She gasped with pleasure. So filled. So desperate for more. Him. All of him.
“Can we pretend that we are?” he asked, lowering his head and nipping at her bottom lip. “Can we pretend that when I come inside you, when you cry out and take your release, and I follow you there, that we’re making our—”
“Son,” she said, tears pricking her eyes. She nodded. “Oh god, Roch. I love you. Yes.”
He said nothing more. His mouth covered hers, and as he kissed her deeply, lovingly, he thrust inside her. Taking her to heaven. Building the heat and intensity within her.
Lydia wrapped her arms around him and held on tight. She wasn’t going to last long. Roch was so big, so hard, the head of his cock rubbing deliciously against the spot inside her pussy that triggered her climax.
And when he ripped his mouth from hers and buried it in her neck, suckling, scraping his teeth against her pulse point, she exploded.
Crying out, she came. Her walls milking him until he too snarled and bucked and took his release.
It was moments—minutes, hours?—until he stopped thrusting inside her, until they cooled. But when they did, Roch eased to his back and pulled her in close. Satiated, Lydia snuggled against him. On the soft carpet. She smiled against his shoulder. On the floor of their cub’s bedroom.
“Tell me you’re not going back to New Orleans,” he said with a possessive rasp to his tone. “Except to get your things.”
Her heart stuttered. “You know about that?”
“Tell me, Lydia. Please. Before I lose my mind. I’m in love with you. I think I have been ever since you offered me your beignet.”
She smiled and kissed his shoulder. This male made her deliriously happy.
“Tell me,” he growled.
“I’ll stay,” she laughed. “Of course I’ll stay.”
He heaved an enormous sigh. “Christ, I’m glad. But you know, it’s not enough.”
She lifted her head, her heart jumping in her blood now. “What do you mean?”
He looked calm, satiated, tousled. Gorgeous. His eyes connected with hers and held. “You know about mating. Ashe and Julia and others too, I’m sure, have explained our ways.”
She nodded, breath held. “It’s like a human marriage.”
He shook his head. “No, Lydia. It’s deeper than that. Truer. It is a bond that lasts not just a lifetime, but beyond.”
“Well, that’s a good thing,” she said with genuine feeling. “I love that.”
His eyes moved over her face. “And I love you.” He reached around her naked ass and yanked her to him.
She squealed.
“Will you be my mate, Lydia Page?” he asked in the most serious tone she’d ever heard from him. “Live with me, sleep with me, make love with me, laugh with me?” His eyes flashed with sudden humor. “Let me share in diaper duties for our son?”
It wasn’t possible to be any happier than she was, but with that question—no, that proposal—she truly thought she’d died and gone to heaven. She was deeply and truly loved by the male who had given her a son.
“Is that a yes, Ms. Page?” he said with playful ferocity.
She smiled. “That, my gorgeous Pantera male—my mate—is an absolutely, definitely, love you, yes, yes, yes.”
He kissed her, soft and gentle, then eased her onto her back.
“What are you doing? she asked with a girlish giggle.
Up on his hands and knees and headed for the lower half of her body, looking as near to his puma as possible in his male form, Roch snarled sensually at her.
“I say we seal this with a kiss,” he uttered, his breath near her belly now.”
“My lips are up here, Roch,” she said breathlessly, watching him, waiting.
His eyes went heavy lidded as he grasped her inner thighs and splayed them wide. “Not the lips I’m hungry for at the moment.”
And as he proved that statement, all Lydia could do was sigh.
Epilogue
Three days later
“Rosalie is home, but Mercier is dead,” Raphael said to the small group of Hunters, Suits and Nurturers who were gathered in his office at Diplomatic headquarters. It was night, and they’d been at it for hours. “And our Hunters inside Haymore haven’t reported back.”
Sebastian cursed. “This new enemy is worse than the last.”
“But what is it they want?” Genevieve asked, nonplussed.
“Our DNA,” Roch said, glancing around the dimly lit room with its half empty plates and endless water bottles. “We don’t know why yet. What they hope to use it for. But it has something to do with that Stanton Locke and the mysterious man he cares for. As you know, my mate is an attorney and she’s calling all her contacts, trying to get a hold of Stanton’s financial dealings. What, how much, with whom.”
“Please stop saying that bastard’s name,” Keira ground out from her spot on the edge of Raphael’s desk. “Do you know what he said when the cops hauled me away? ‘Pantera are dangerous creatures.’ He wants us all rounded up so human society can be safe.”
“That piece of shit will come to know how unsafe we are,” Xavier muttered. He turned to Raphael. “What do we do?”
The leader of the Suits looked at each one of them and sighed. “Maybe it’s time to get on camera and speak. Tell the truth. Let the humans see us.”
A slate grey puma burst into the room and snarled at the lot of them. In seconds, it shifted and revealed a very pissed-off Parish.
“What is it?” Raphael demanded.
“The elders are with Hiss, as he asked,” the leader of the Hunters said with a sneer. “They are giving him the chance to confess what he knows.”
“The three are visiting a prisoner?” Keira exclaimed, coming to her feet. “What the hell is happening?”
“Oh,” Parish continued. “And we have photographers at our borders.”
Calmly, every bit the formidable Diplomat he was, Raphael stood up and walked out from behind his desk. “Roch, I’ll need to borrow your tie. Looks like our time on camera has come sooner than we thought.”