A flash of bewilderment raced across his features. "No one?"
She shook her head. "Only you."
"Ah, God." He closed his eyes for a moment, and when he opened them again, they were blazing with a newer, fiercer light. He wasn't happy. Not at all. "Ah, Christ, Mouse. Damn you for that. Damn both of us for not having the sense to let go."
With a growl through gritted teeth and fangs, he pushed inside her on a swift, deep thrust. Mira cried out as he filled her, biting her lip as the sharp, initial sting of his invasion gave way to a glorious completion.
Oh, f**k.
He felt so good.
She felt so good, holding him buried within her.
She knew this dance with him, every instinct within her responding like it had been only yesterday that she'd last kissed him like this - na**d and breathless, skin on skin, melting with pleasure and hungry for more. Their first time together had been branded into her senses, a memory she'd carried all this time. It had been all she'd had left of him, and she'd clung to it as she would her own soul.
And now she had Kellan with her again. Inside her.
His name was a ragged whisper on her lips as he increased his tempo, each long push going deeper, stoking the fire that was already roaring inside her. His mouth covered hers as the first broken cry of her cl**ax curled up from the back of her throat.
He showed her no quarter, but then, she hadn't wanted any. Not like this. Not when her need for him was still so raw and unsated.
But her orgasm was building swiftly. It raced up on her with his every stroke and retreat, every kiss and caress carrying her higher, closer to the edge. Kellan drove into her with relentless purpose, pushing her mercilessly toward the cliff.
"Oh, God," she gasped as the first hot waves crashed into her. "Kellan."
Mira held on to him and tumbled headlong into the pleasure of the moment.
The pleasure of this reunion, no matter how fleeting her heart feared it might be.
Chapter Eleven
ONLY ONCE IN HIS LIFE HAD KELLAN FELT THE TIGHT, WET bliss of Mira's body sheathing him. Only once had he known the sweet clench of her womb around his cock, the tiny undulations of her cl**ax milking him, wringing him out. He'd remembered that one time with vivid clarity - or so he'd thought, until the sight of Mira coming for him now, clinging to him and gasping his name in heated frenzy, made everything he thought he knew seem pale and dry as dust.
Christ, she was beautiful.
Her blond hair was a wild tangle on his pillow, her porcelain-perfect skin gone pink with the rush of blood to her cheeks and across the lovely mounds of her pert br**sts. Her eyes were heavy-lidded, dark lashes at half-mast. She sucked in a sigh through parted lips that were bruised a dark red from his kiss, her rosebud mouth trembling with each rising pant of her breath. She clutched at him as another deep shudder racked her.
Transfixed, triumphant, Kellan watched her orgasm sweep over her. It gripped him in its hot fist as she trembled with the force of her release. His c**k twitched, leapt, ready to explode, his own cl**ax building to the point of torture.
But it was a delicious agony. A pain so good, he wanted to keep it going forever. Mira began to shatter again, her small body going tense beneath him, her breath racing, pulse thudding hard against him everywhere they touched. He coaxed her higher, rolling into her with deep, penetrating strokes, fanning the flames of her pleasure.
"Don't stop," she whispered brokenly. "Oh, God, Kellan . . . please . . . don't ever stop."
He growled in agreement, male pride swelling inside him like a tidal wave.
She was his.
Again.
Still.
Always . . .
It was that last thought, the lie of it, that stuck him like a barb. Always wasn't theirs anymore. No matter how much he wanted it to be true.
And it had been unfair of him to take this from Mira - her pleasure, her surrender, her undeserved fidelity and affection - knowing that it wouldn't last. It couldn't last, not with the grim future that awaited him.
But it was hard to feel the dread of that fact right now. Hard to feel anything but pure masculine satisfaction as he held her sweat-sheened, na**d beauty against him and reveled in the pleasure she was taking from him.
He kissed her as the last of her orgasm ebbed, caressed her pretty face as her bliss-drugged gaze lifted up to meet his amber eyes. When he spoke, it was with a gravelly depth that sounded more animal than man, even to his own ears. "I knew we'd end up like this, na**d together in my bed."
He wasn't proud of it. But he sure as hell couldn't muster much regret.
Part of the reason he'd held out so long with her in the first place, before his life took the detour he was currently on, was that he knew giving in to his desire for Mira - consummating it - would only make him crave her that much more. Loving her like this only made him want to taste her. To bind her to him. Things he had no right to want anymore.
Years ago he'd resisted his temptation for her with a rigid will he could hardly fathom now. What a fool he'd been to hold her at a distance, to push her away. Now all he wanted was to keep her close. He couldn't keep her close enough.
He gave a slow thrust of his hips, groaning at the delicious, wet friction of their bodies. He caressed her face, brushed a damp lock of hair from her forehead. "I knew when the call came in from my crew at Ackmeyer's place, and I made the decision to bring you here . . . I knew if I saw you again, I would not be able to resist touching you, kissing you." He pressed his lips to her brow, tracing his thumb over the outline of the Breedmate mark that rode at the hairline of her left temple. "And I knew that if I let that happen, if I touched you, kissed you, there'd be no stopping me from eventually getting inside you again too."