Baring the Thorn (The Mountain Tribe #3)

Chapter 26

Thorn

M y Samara and I do very little sleeping that night.

We are starved of each other’s bodies, of the joy of kissing and touching all the soft, warm skin the other has to offer. She is like a feast that I could not possibly get enough of. She is a fountain of the sweetest, freshest water that will never quench my thirst.

I take a long time simply enjoying cleaning her, swiping wet fabric between her legs where my seed coats her tender flesh, thrilling in the quiet gasps and fevered pants that I can produce when I am slow, when I take my time exploring her.

By the time I am done, my hunger is dizzying, and I seat myself into her, balancing my weight on one elbow so that she does not chide me for hurting my arm again.

In this, I am less patient, and I thrust into her with quick, urgent slams of my hips against hers. I wait for her to claw her release into my back, to arch her delicate body against mine and scream my name into the night, and then follow with my own.

We sleep lightly, nude due to the heat rolling off the pool, and I rouse once more before the sun has risen. I do not want to wake the beautiful female and hold back to watch her sleep. But instead, I find Samara awake, her dark eyes sparkling through the black cave. Her hands trails over my stomach and lower, lower, where she guides me back into the scorching heat of her cunt.

We mate slowly the third time, sometimes stopping our rhythm for long minutes of searing kisses or delicate exploration, before giving into the pounding demand in our bodies.

I discover that with us on our side, or her above me, my ruined arm is able to reach between us and pluck the delicate bundle of nerves above her cunt that make Samara cry out and shake against me, that make her channel tighten around me like a hot, little fist.

This arm was not useless as I once thought, but rather, is still strong enough to bring us up a slow climb towards our release together, long and drawn out and breathtaking.

I tell myself that we make up for lost time, that we are mating to catch up for the two months we had wanted to but held back. Yet every time our bodies come together I merely hunger for more, more of her, more time, more night so that we can stay in the cave for hours longer.

Now I know the truth.

I know that I will never tire of her, that I will always seek the aching pleasure of her body below, above, and around my own for as long as I live, with this same hunger, this same insatiable need.

And Samara seems to share my thoughts, as though our bodies are made of the same matter, woven from the same needs.

I do not tire her out, and still, she longs for me as desperately as I do her.

She is my match in every way.

She is the most perfect female. She is a revelation in my small, quiet, miserable life. She has stormed in and swept away all the hopelessness, the broken bones that never set right, the rot deep in my blood that her presence has sucked out, the scorched fabric of my soul, and in place she has made a home for herself, between my ribs. She has seen the thorns that are deep inside of me, sharp, twisted, gnarled, and she has plucked them out, one by one, with each easy touch and smiling kiss she gives me.

In the early morning, we bathe once more and pack up our camp, with a wistful sort of sadness.

If it were possible, I would keep her here always, naked and warm and content, and we would live in this tiny steaming cave. But we have duties that call to us, a fact that I think must weigh on her too when we begin our walk back to Hawk and she seems unusually quiet.

With a free hand, I reach out and take hers, across the small distance between us. I smooth my thumb over the ridges of her knuckles, and she jerks as if from some deep dream to smile up at me.

Her grin is dazzling, heart-stopping, and I am helpless not to return it.

“My female thinks too much,” I tell her, playfully. “Perhaps I did not mate her well enough.”

Samara’s cheeks darken. “Impossible. You were very thorough. I just…I’m thinking about how it’s all ending now.”

My heart gives a miserable thump. “What do you mean?”

“This journey,” she gives a sad shake of her head. “So much has changed, and now we have to go back to camp as if not that much has. I don’t even feel like I’m the same person anymore. Don’t you?”

I shrug. “I am not the same person. Parts of my arm still reside in the belly of that bear.”

Samara snorts. “Ass. I mean it… You’re not the same. You might be Thorn, leader of the tribe, bossy know-it-all, but you’re different now. You have to go back to camp and tell them about what changed. What will you tell them?”

This worry is an unpleasant one, one that is like a bramble against my skin each time I think on it.

I will need to return, and I will need to tell the truth to my people, but it may not end well. I would not be surprised if they left, if some of them went north to seek out Hawk’s tribe, if some of the females despise me for the rest of their lives, and if the hunters never forgive me.

I will ruin their image of their leader, just as Hawk’s father did to me when I was a boy. And it makes me sick.

But I am not alone, as I was when I was a boy. No matter what, I will have Samara, and now the future does not seem bleak even if my entire tribe were to leave me.

“I will tell them the truth,” I vow to my female, knowing how much it means to her to hear me say it. Her eyes watch me wearily, and I know that a part of her wonders if I’ll really confess. She has every right to doubt me, knowing that she had to force the truth from me, that she had to stumble upon evidence of it before I admitted it to her. “I will explain everything. But... the females may hate me. They may want you to be on their side. You should be on their side. I can survive on my own for… some time. I will be patient. I do not want you to lose your females, my Samara.”

She stops walking, and the tug on my hand stops me too.

Her eyes are wide as she stares up at me, “You want to… take a break?”

“No,” the word rushes out of me on a hard breath. “I want you with me, always. But I know that your females are your tribe, and I do not want you to lose them. If you must avoid me while their anger is fresh, I will understand.”

Yet instead of patient understanding or calm acceptance, my Samara glares at me hot enough to burn my skin, tearing her hand from mine so she can cross her arms over her chest.

“That’s not an option. The other women will be pissed at you, they might even hate your guts, but I’m not going to lie to them either. And that means telling the truth about everything, Thorn. Including the fact that I’ve carelessly, stupidly, fallen in love with you.”

A surprised smile splits my cheeks wide, and relief pounds through my skull.

Despite her anger, I reach down and swing her into my arms, ignoring her shriek of protest as I pin her against me. “My female…Tell me what this love word that you use means.”

Samara relaxes against me, with a begrudging smile. “It’s a big, serious feeling in my time. It means that you’re my favorite person here, that we’re partners. I’ll have your back in front of the camp. And that I can’t get enough of kissing you and touching you.”

My chest tightens. “I think I understand. It is like when I call you my heart. Or when I think that you give life and meaning to everything, that I would have nothing without you. It is like when I think that I will go mad if I have to pass another night without feeling your tight release around my cock.”

“Something like that,” she says, breathless.

I hold her against me, her feet still dangling above the ground so that our faces are at the perfect height for me to kiss her, hungrily, happily, until she wriggles over the strain of my cock in my leathers.

“I want to taste you, little female,” I grunt against her flushed, plump lips.

I do not even sound like myself to my own ears, but rather like some starved, grasping beast. My low voice must be pleasing to my Samara, or perhaps the promise in my words, because a shiver creeps up her spine, just beneath my hand.

I let her back onto her feet, tucking her between my body and a thick tree, and a laugh shakes out of her.

“What- now?”

“Yes,” I chuckle at her surprise.

She is not resistant to the idea. I can tell from the flush high in her cheeks and the breathless quality to her voice. Did she think my hunger for her would run out once we left the cave? That I would not want to continue my patient exploration of her body once we left the steam?

“Will you let me?”

She catches her bottom lip between her teeth. “Where? Here?”

So many questions, I wonder if she is suddenly nervous now that we are in the open again. But we were in the open when I first explored her cunt with my fingers weeks ago, so I do not see how this would be any different.

“Lean against the tree,” I tell her, my voice low.

Samara swallows, the slender column of her throat so beautiful in that little gesture that I almost forget what I had wanted to do.

But she backs against the tree, leaning her shoulders against it, and she looks delicate and strong, fragile and powerful all at once, and in a rush, I know that I must have her now. I pull the pack off my shoulders to leave it and the rest of our belongings in a heap, before coming to her.

She leans her chin up to kiss me, but I enjoy the pretty pout that she makes when I do not give her what she wants.

Instead, I go to my knees in front of her and place my hands at the ties of her leather bottoms. Samara watches me, her lips parted, her chest rising and falling with each rapid breath.

I know that when I expose her to the forest, I will find her wet already, with the same certainty that I can feel my cock pulsing over my thigh.

But it will have to wait.

I have been starved to put my mouth to her since I watched her do it to me, and I have wanted to taste every part of her since the first moment she stood beneath me, fiery with rage, telling me she needed more blankets for the females.

I go to pull her leathers down but stop when I hear a little gasp. I look up at her from my position, quirking an eyebrow at the sheepish expression on her face.

“What if Hawk’s nearby? What is he sees?” Her hands flutter at her chest.

A huff of amusement escapes me, but I smother it with a dark, hungry look up at my female. “Then he will see Thorn, leader of the mountain tribe, on his knees before his female. He will see me tasting your sweet little cunt.”

That silences any of her worries, and Samara steps out of her leathers when I pull them off of her, so that she is naked from the waist below.

I am at the level of that entrancing thatch of dark hair, and the decadent, mouthwatering scent of her greets my nose and makes my cock thrust against my leathers.

I take a deep breath, inhaling the clean musk of her arousal, and release it on a long groan. Above me, Samara’s breath kicks up, and her hands grip the tree hard enough that she will find bark beneath her nails after this.

She has seen me breathe her in, she knows how much it moves me.

I sweep a hand up her long calf, dragging it between her thighs, right up to her core, where moisture greets my fingers.

“I knew that you would be dripping, little female,” I tell her gruffly. “I do not think anything makes you more needy than when you are frustrated with me.”

Samara’s laugh ends on a moan when I move my fingers through that moisture, slowly spreading her folds around my knuckles. Still, she says, her voice breathy, “Or maybe it’s seeing you on your knees, leader .”

This power play between us thrills me, makes my cock stand so hard that I am dizzy with it.

Samara and I are equals, but when it comes to mating, we scramble at power together, taking it from each other back and forth in an endless battle between our bodies. I will never grow tired of it. I will always enjoy her submission, moaned softly against my neck, or the delight in her eyes when she thrusts over me and my usual deep groans are replaced with choked, desperate noises.

I might be on my knees, but I will still lead in this instance, against this tree.

When I tell her, “Lift your leg over my shoulder,” she does, without a second thought, and I have to smother my grin of triumph against the muscle of her inner thigh, tense against my cheek.

I did not shave as I had planned to in the cave, too distracted with my willing, hungry female, and my beard scratches against Samara’s thigh with the turn of my head. I feel the flesh leap at that touch and hear a sharp intake of breath above me. She enjoys my beard, I think to myself, perhaps I will have to leave it for longer.

I kiss my way into her smooth leg, following the pull of her delicate smell, the heat that throbs off her cunt, until my tongue replaces my fingers and I begin a careful exploration of my female with my mouth.

Samara’s hands fly to my head, and her fingers thread through my hair, the sharp tug on my scalp making my cock jerk in response. There is nothing… nothing better than the taste of her on my tongue, and I moan my delight against her hot flesh.

“…taste so good…my Samara…cannot get enough…” my words are slurred, sloppy and wet, around her cunt, and my praise is barely audible beyond the two of us. I know that she must hear me, because she clenches around the tip of my tongue, trying to pull me into her tight heat. “Needy female…”

I push a finger into her grasping channel, because I cannot deny my female anything. But I keep the thrust of my finger slow, teasing, while I continue to discover her with my mouth.

I kiss her the way I did her lips, the same way she taught me, tongue lapping in deep, lips sucking on her slick folds, jaw working beneath her.

All the while, Samara moans above me, desperate and loud and careless now of anyone who may hear. Pride fills my chest that I have distracted her from her worries of Hawk.

I would hear him approaching, hear the footsteps that would not yet register to her, and even if he did stumble upon us, I think of the exquisite scene my female makes with her body bared to the woods, her hands thrust into my hair and her cries filling the trees.

He would be lucky to even catch a glimpse of her now.

She begins to rock against my face, my chin and my mouth soaked from her desire and my own spit, my beard wet with it, and I know that she needs more to find her release.

I suck on the tender lips of her cunt as I spread her open with another finger, moving my hand faster between her legs while my other grips the rounded curve of her bottom, securing her against me.

Then I give her what she needs, kissing my way up to her little pearl of nerves and sucking it into my mouth the way she did my cock head, the way that made me see stars.

I know this must be right, because she throws her head back against the tree, and her fingers dig into my hair so tight that I wonder if she will tear any out.

Her thrusts against my mouth lose all sense of rhythm and patience, and her cries are ragged, torn out of her between panting breaths.

She comes with a scream of my name, her release flooding my tongue and her cunt clenching, gripping my fingers tight enough to hurt. I swallow her down, reveling in the heady taste of my female, the blissful feel of her, and the perfect sounds that she makes.

I do not release my mouth from her until her chilly hands push me away with a breathless plea, and still, I am starved for more.

I stand to crush her lips under mine in a scorching kiss, one that sets my body on fire and blocks out the wind and the forest and the very sun above us, one that tastes of her cunt and her sweet mouth and myself.

I find myself hoping that Hawk did see, for just a split second, that he saw a moment of her above me, of me pleasuring her from my knees, and that he knew, just as everyone else will, that she is mine.