The Mate Mistake(The Woolven Secret 3)(11)

“So, Q&A?”

“Mmmhmm,” she mumbled.

“Who is after you?”

It was hard to think with his hands on her. It had been so long she’d allowed herself a real connection with another being. She’d had sex, but it had been about the mechanics. With Parker Woolven, she knew it was something more.

Belle had to stop this before it went any further. She didn’t want her family to hurt him. They didn’t call groups of vampires a murder for nothing.

But she wasn’t ready to give up this touch, the sparks that tingled along her skin wherever he made contact.

It occurred to her again that his touch was like the sun. It warmed her from the inside out, starting in her bones.

“I can’t think when you’re doing that.”

He tipped her head under the water and continued to massage her scalp, rinsing away the soap. His body was hard, and slick, water beading off skin.

“It’s so strange.”

“What is?”

“That you don’t smell like a wolf to me.”

“You mean I don’t smell like wet dog?” He nosed at her neck, as if to punctuate that no matter what he smelled like, his nature was all wolf.

“No.” She took the bar from him and lathered it in her hands before pushing it through his hair, and returning the caress. “You smell like sunlight.”

He laughed. “And you, pretty fang, smell like chocolate.”

“Is that why you’re obsessed with having your mouth on me?” she teased.

“Maybe,” he said, his tone serious.

She scrubbed her fingers through his perfect blond hair, getting an odd thrill from making it not perfect. He turned his face into her touch and she playfully scratched behind his ear.

Belle found herself pushed up against the wall of the tiny shower, his hands cupping her ass and her legs wrapped around his hips of their own accord.

“If you keep doing that,” he said, even as the water streaked down his face, “we’re not going to get anything done.”

“Yes, we will,” she purred. “You’ll get to remember last night.”

Belle knew she was supposed to be thinking about how to disentangle herself from this mess, but he felt so good.

Strangely safe.

And she’d been alone for oh so long.

Parker Woolven knew what she was now, and there was a freedom in that, too. She hadn’t told anyone. She’d lived alone, on the edges of society. Always hiding that part of her. She hadn’t realized how much she missed letting her guard down.

His cock was pressed against her cleft and he leaned his forehead against hers, keeping their gazes locked as he pushed inside of her. He was impossibly deep, but it was more than his cock. Some metaphysical part of him was inside of her, too. It was if she’d always known him, from the beginning when she’d crawled from the ether of dark creation.

Belle wanted to break this connection because it was too much, too soon, but it fed the empty pitch inside of her that grew hungrier by the day and she’d thought it was the craving for human blood, but Parker filled it, sated it.

And oh my gods, they were in deep shit.

The water spluttered and ran dry, but Parker didn’t seem to care. He kissed her, his mouth hard and demanding, her fangs descended, but still he didn’t stop.

Not even when his tongue scraped against her incisor and she tasted his blood.

That single drop of his blood sated another hunger she hadn’t realized she’d been denying. If she’d thought he smelled like sunshine, tasting him was like drinking a volcano. It burned, it was fire, but made her strong.

“Mine,” he growled against her lips.

This was the part where she was supposed to say no. She couldn’t be his. She was a vampire. He was a werewolf. Never shall the two join.

Like, ever.

But here they were, joined in the most intimate way possible.

His body got bigger. It was a subtle growth there in the width of his shoulders, in his height, and the spread of his palms as he gripped her.

“Say you’re mine, Belle.” The growl was lower this time and there was no mistaking his voice for human.

His beast was rising.

That should’ve scared her. Werewolves and vampires were mostly evenly matched. When they’d gone to war in the past, many had died at the hand of the other. He could hurt her. He could maybe rip her limb from limb.

But she felt no fear.

Only a sharp stab of lust that caused her to shudder around him, and her interior walls to clench and pull him deeper.

She opened her eyes and stared into his once blue eyes now gone amber. “Who do I belong to, Woolven? You, or the beast?”

“I am the beast.” He stopped thrusting, holding her there against the wall for a long moment.