Mate Marked(32)

“Erika! You can’t go! You…you didn’t bring a bathing suit!” Chelsea protested. “It’s not ladylike!”

“Aw, the heck with ladylike. There’s no place for being ladylike out here,” Leland snorted, and Erika beamed, and Chelsea reluctantly found herself really liking him.

Except that now Erika and Leland were leading the happy gang of children and shifters away.

“But…but…” she protested. Everybody was already heading out of the camp.

“You didn’t eat breakfast!” Chelsea yelled after them.

“We’ll hunt our breakfast!” somebody yelled back.

Son. Of. A. Bitch. Her carefully thought-out plan was going down in flames. She could not possibly have failed any harder.

“Why aren’t you going with them?” she demanded of Roman.

He grinned at her fiercely. “Somebody’s got to watch our prisoner.”

Okay, so apparently it was possible for her to fail even harder.

“Prisoner? But…come onnn!” she groaned. Talk about adding insult to injury.

“Hey, sorry, but this was clearly another arrest attempt. On my property. I don’t make the rules, I just enforce them.”

She scowled at him. “Um, you did, in fact, make that rule.”

“Oh, right, so I did,” he said with a laugh “And I could break it if I wanted to. But I’m not going to. You know why?”

“Because you have to prove what a macho badass you are?”

“Everybody already knows that, trust me. It’s because I like your company. Now, let’s make coffee. And by the way, do you want s’mores for breakfast?”

“But you don’t have the ingredients,” she protested as they walked over to the pack’s supply tent.

“I got the ingredients. I knew you’d be back.”

Despite herself, Chelsea found that she was flattered. He hadn’t forgotten about her after all.

“Should we eat all that sugar this early?” she wondered.

“Better eat them before the kids get back and gobble up the rest of them.”

“Stealing candy from children,” she said, shaking her head chastisingly.

He laughed. “Hello, have you met me? Alpha asshole here.”

Minutes later, they were sitting by the fire-pit, setting marshmallows on fire. Roman watched in admiration as she built a gooey s’more sandwich and handed it to him. He bit down deeply and a look of bliss appeared on his face.

“Right?” she said.

“How have I lived without this in my life?” he asked, looking straight at her in a way that made her heart stutter.

She knew he was talking about the s’mores.

Wasn’t he?

“Now I get to make you one,” he told her. He stabbed a marshmallow with a piece of tree branch and shoved it into the fire, and together they watched the flames turn the marshmallow’s shell bubbly and crispy-brown.

Then he built her a s’more, and fed it to her, and she leaned forward, biting down until melting chocolate oozed from her lips.

The sticky sweetness invaded her senses, but even the richness of the chocolate was not as intoxicating as the sensation of his fingertips, slightly rough from manual labor, lingering on her lips. She caught her breath as a trickle of wetness escaped from her core and shivers of sensation danced up her spine.

Roman’s eyes were dark and intense as he slowly drew his fingers away from her lips and replaced them with his mouth, kissing her with slow, drugging intensity. She parted her lips on a sigh and his tongue tangled with hers, her senses overwhelmed by the flavors of chocolate and marshmallow and Roman’s musky, masculine scent. He wrapped his arms around her, drawing her close, and she could feel his heart hammering fast and hard in his chest in counterpoint to the lazy self-assurance of his kisses.

He tumbled her back onto the ground, one hand cradling her head to protect her from the impact, and ran his hands down her sides, over the plump outer curves of her breasts, the dip of her waist and her soft, generous hips.

She was achingly aware of the rigid length of his erection pressing against her core, and found herself rolling her pelvis against him, seeking the heady friction her body yearned for, cried out for. She flushed, feeling wanton, but she couldn’t help herself.

Roman drew back and deftly unbuttoned her shirt, slipping it from her shoulders and weighing her heavy breasts in his big palms. He lowered his head to suckle on the pale, creamy flesh where it spilled over the top of her lacy bra—the one hidden touch of frilly femininity she’d allowed herself when donning her practical, no-nonsense sheriff’s outfit that morning.

His low groan, almost a growl, rumbled through her, making her nipples furl and bud against the fabric of her bra and lighting up her nerve endings. White-hot licks of lust ignited and tumbled through her like shooting stars.