Baring the Thorn (The Mountain Tribe #3)

Epilogue

Thorn

I return to my tent weary and drained from the long, difficult night, thinking only of the softness of my furs and the quick tumble into restless sleep that awaits me. It is so far into the night that in just a few hours the sky will grey with early morning light, and I will have to rise to begin my usual chores, even if I am not wanted as a leader right now.

Yet, when I stumble past the tent flaps, I find that my usually chilly furs have already been claimed.

Samara.

My brave, incredible little female, lies curled beneath some spare furs borrowed from the supply tent, tossed around her in disarray. Her hair fans over the pillow, curly and dark and enticing, her plush lips parted in sleep.

Her long arm reaches across the empty space meant for me, as if seeking out my body, my warmth, even when she is lost to the world.

The sight of her, sleeping comfortably in my furs, moves me. As if I am drawn by some invisible rope that binds me, tightening over my heart, I fall forward and collapse to my knees beside her. There is no better balm to a difficult day than her in my bed, in the tent that I used to fill lonely nights with, in the very spot that I would lie awake, aching for her, longing for her, for a whole month of silent misery.

It is even more moving that I did not expect this, that I had thought she would join the females, and her presence is a complete surprise.

That fierce tug of tenderness rips me in two, making my eyes swim with wetness.

Tomorrow I will think that I was overtired, that there was dust in the tent that caught in my eyelash, or that the chill in the air brought on the moisture. But for now, I hold onto the feeling that she evokes, and smile down at her.

Unable to stop myself, I reach out a hand and stroke a knuckle, big, brutal, scarred, down her perfect cheek. How at odds we are. How different we still seem sometimes.

Yet she is my match in every single way.

At my touch, she rouses, her eyelashes fluttering before she fixes her dark eyes on me. She stretches her arms up, tilting her head back in the most entrancing gesture of contentment.

“I tried to wait for you,” she murmurs. “I must’ve been pretty tired.”

“Do not apologize.” At the slightest curl of her fingers, I thrust off my leather top and boots and crawl into the furs with her. I pull her into my arms, falling into her endless warmth and softness, the sweet smell of sleep and female. “I am just happy you are here.”

She quirks a brow. “You still expect me to run away with the other women? To turn my back on you?”

I consider this. “Not expect… But I would not be surprised, after everything I have done.”

“Oh, Thorn,” the softness with which she says my name soothes even more of the pain of the day behind us, and coupled with her gentle touch over my chest, I feel like the whole memory is left outside the tent. Inside, we have created a little den of comfort that nothing can penetrate. “How many times do I have to tell you we’re sticking together?”

I smother a smile in her forehead. “At least once more.”

“I love you,” she says, fixing me with an impatient look. “Stop being stubborn for one minute and listen to me: you’re not getting rid of me now.”

“I love you, too,” I prove this further by capturing her mouth with my own, parting her soft lips and lapping over her tongue.

Pliant in my arms, even as my already painfully hard cock prods at her stomach, Samara releases a happy sigh against my mouth.

She pulls back to smirk. “As if I’d sleep cold and uncomfortable in a tent full of other people. I much prefer it here.”

“Is that so?” I trail kisses down her jawline, pressing them into the space where her neck connects and her pulse thuds and flutters beneath my lips.

Perhaps someday I will feel bad for keeping her awake with my desire, perhaps tomorrow when I return to the real world outside our tent, but for now I simply accept the fact that I will always want her fervently when she is fresh from sleep, smiling, soft, warm, and deliciously close to nude.

In the heat of the tent, she is wearing pieces from her past life, a thin length of fabric around her torso secured by two little straps over her shoulders and something that the females call underwear, which leaves her athletic legs to tangle with mine now.

“Hmm, yes,” her words turn heated, breathy, above my kisses. “Much cozier. Warmer. Harder.”

She says this with a jerk of her hips over mine, that flimsy fabric over her cunt doing little to hide the heat between her legs.

I groan against her neck.

I had meant to tease her, yet she has switched things completely. I glance up at her face, and the self-satisfied smirk I find there tells me that she knows this too.

The delicate balance of power is heady in all my interactions with my thrilling female, and I level her with a wolfish, hungry grin.

Perhaps it is time for me to show her that she is not always the one in control.

But first, “Do you wish to sleep, or will you let me remove these strange clothes from you, my Samara?”

She takes plenty of time before answering. Teasing little female. “I think I’ve slept enough. Aren’t you tired?”

“I will be once I am done with you.”

Armed her permission, I pull the ridiculous fabric over her shoulders. So thin, so small, and it does not even cover her arms. Surely it has no purpose. And yet, the thrill of removing it from her makes my breath quicken, so it does have some power after all.

Her underwear is next, which I duck down beneath the furs to help her out of.

I enjoy my time exploring her, under the furs where it is pitch darkness and her delicate smell surrounds me, where the air is so warm from her body that it feels hot in my lungs.

I undress her, and then kiss my way back up her, pressing my mouth to her ankle, the short hair of her shin, the thin skin over her knee, and the liquid heat between her thighs.

When I press my lips here, Samara’s sigh is pure contentment and relaxation above me, so I decide to tease her back. I hold my mouth nearby, letting her feel the rush of my breath over her core, and then, when she is squirming in anticipation, I resurface from the furs.

She pouts. “Tease.”

I grin at her, capturing her wrists in my weaker hand, and turn her onto her back.

I can hover over her now, supporting my body weight on the undamaged arm and gazing down at the long stretch of her body beneath me, completely bared. In the light of the moon outside, blue and white highlight skin so dark that it appears almost black, and she is so achingly, searingly beautiful that, for a moment, I can hardly believe my luck.

“Are you just going to look, or will you get naked too?” She quirks an eyebrow, and her arms give halfhearted little jerks under my hand, as though she merely feigns wanting to escape my hold.

“I will undress- when I want to.” I grin back, and the female’s cheeks darken.

She likes it when we fight for control, too, when the balance between us is so delicate that we constantly tip from one side to the other.

Tonight is my turn, tonight is for proving to her my devotion just as much as my possessiveness.

She arches her back under my hold, putting her breasts on display, her nipples peaked either from the cold or arousal, I seek to find out.

I dip my head and pull one into my mouth, swirling tongue and nipping teeth on the sensitive bud until she gasps and writhes against me. Her hips buck, her stomach hitting my shaft with each needy thrust, driving my desire higher and higher. I did not want to rush, but my body has other ideas, it aches and tugs towards her as if the blood roaring in my veins needs her to flow.

I release her nipple and switch to the other one, enjoying the impatient cry over my head. With the other, I am rough, alternating firm bites with hot brushes of breath.

I continue this teasing torture until she is panting hard above me.

Leaning back to sit on my heels, I reach my free hand down to circle a finger over her clit, gentle, too-light, nowhere near enough for her to find release. Samara arches off the furs, her heels digging in behind me and her look thunderous.

“Damn it!” She hisses, “Just fuck me already, Thorn.”

I reward her anger by removing my hand altogether. “My little female grows impatient.”

“She grows pissed off.” With that, she raises her hips over me again, and her cunt drags over my cock in a slow, delicious roll that has a groan escaping my lips. At that sound, she appears victorious beneath me. “Look at how hard you are, I bet you’re holding back so you don’t come right away.”

She’s goading me now, in this game we play, but I will not fall for it.

I might be starved for my female, always, like a bottomless pit in my belly that cannot be filled, but I never let myself release before she has. If I were fast, then she would be faster.

I nip at her jaw, hard enough that she sucks in a breath through her teeth, letting her know exactly how I feel about that insinuation.

I tug down my leathers enough to free my aching cock without releasing her wrists.

“Perhaps I should use my hand to make myself release in front of you, instead of giving you what you want,” I emphasize this bluff with a rough drag of my hand over my length and watch as her eyes widen beneath me.

Drawing out the stroke, I release a hard groan of satisfaction to further anger her.

“Tyrant,” she curses. “Asshole. Impossible man. You woke me up to fuck me, so will you do it or not?”

A surprised laugh bursts out of me at the names she has called me. “Even now you argue with me?”

She glares furiously. “I’ll argue with you inside of me if you deserve it!”

Well, I must find out if that is true.

I align myself with her entrance, and my frustrated Samara is so wet that I glide into the hilt on one stroke.

We gasp together, the pressure so immediately blissful, so intense, that it steals our breath from us.

She grips me like a tight fist, dripping wet and scalding hot, and the sudden pleasure makes sweat break out across my neck. I cannot give her the satisfaction of filling her with my seed so quickly.

“Is this what you wanted?” I pant above her. “Is this what you were so needy for?”

“It would be… better if you moved,” she returns.

But her voice is breathy, her chest heaving below me. Her hands are pinned still under my own, but I think that she enjoys the pressure just as much as I enjoy her spread out like a decadent feast, like I have brought home the finest hunt.

She writhes beneath me, as if trying to bring her own release on my cock, working herself up and down my groin, her pants purely of frustration and effort.

I cannot deny the pleasure the sight brings me, the sweet pressure of her little movements on my shaft, each roll of her hips tightening her core around me.

I grunt, hungry, perhaps even angry, as I hold her down harder. It is like wrestling the wild beast again, like trying to pin rushing lake water beneath me, and the effort makes my breaths come quicker too.

“You cannot move,” I snarl down at her, “can you?”

It is not a question so much as a statement, and while my growl only heightens the red of stubbornness in her cheeks, I plead with her to meet my eyes, to understand my meaning.

Please let her know how badly I need this, now, how desperately I must have her pinned, hungry and needy below me, so that for just a moment I can forget the furious stares of my tribe, my people who have lost their faith in me.

And Samara does.

Of course she does.

She understands me better than I understand myself sometimes, knowing what our bodies need before I can even piece it together.

She goes still, suddenly, her belly shaking with each breath.

“No… I c-I can’t. I couldn’t… leave if I wanted to.”

“Ah, Samara,” her words hit me like a wound to the chest, flaying me open, pouring out all of my blood and my guts onto her.

I can hide nothing from her, I am nothing unless she has me.

Everything I have, she can see.

Still, I demand, “You are mine, aren’t you?”

With this question, I pull out, until the very tip of my cock is kissing her entrance, and then slam all the way back in, possessing her tight sheath as I want to - as I need to - possess all of her.

It would only be fair.

It is what she has done to me, from the very start, from that very first day I saw her.

Samara gasps out her pleasure at the hard drive of my cock, the brutal ecstasy I demand from her with each powerful thrust. “God-… Yes, Thorn, I’m- I’m yours.”

There is no more arguing, there is no more stubborn remarks or battling for control.

Instead, Samara gives it to me, and her submission is so sweet that my teeth ache with each pound of my hips against hers, each groan of pleasure I gasp over her, only to be returned by her moans, far higher and needier than I have ever heard.

She gives herself to me in a way that she never has, in a way that she could not in the cave when she was above me, or afterwards when she was worried I was frail or broken with my arm.

Now my arm is the last thing I think about.

I plant my ruined hand next to her head and if there is any pain lancing up from my wrist to my shoulder, I do not feel it.

All I feel is the searing pleasure of her under me, her brows pressed together, and her mouth opened with each desperate gasp, her body so tight and hot that I swear she might incinerate me.

“You cannot leave. You cannot leave me.” Each word is on a thrust, and it is equal parts a plea as it is a command.

I do not hide anything in this moment. I show her how her touch spreads flames across my skin and my muscles and my very heart.

I show her how it felt to face such rejection and anger and disappointment from my people, and how I would be nothing - no one - if she had joined them.

I show her that without her, there is nothing.

“Let them leave,” I seethe, lowering my head so that the words are growled against the long column of her throat, so that they are only for her ears. “Let them turn away. But if you left, I would cut down the forest to find you again.”

“Thorn-” Samara chokes out, her eyes wide at my words. But I vowed never to lie to her again, and I speak only the truth. I could bear to lose any of them, all of them, except for her.

“And if my hunters stood in my way-” my brutality, my violence, and the sharp snap of my hips against her own drive Samara higher to her peak. I know it with the same certainty I can sense my own rushing towards me. “If any of them stood between us- I would cut them down to reach you.”

“Fuck…God…” Freed suddenly, she rakes her hands down my back, her nails tearing across my skin, her thighs taut around my hipbones, pressing down hard enough to bruise both of us by tomorrow.

“You are mine,” I growl, sounding more beast that man, more furious than tender. I tuck my hand beneath her, cupping the delicate curve of her bottom, so that the tip of me will reach even deeper, so that I plow against that internal spot within my female that makes her not even able to form words against me. “Mine.”

Samara quakes below me, and with a desperate cry loud enough to wake all the nearby tents, she comes around me, her tight sheath gripping and milking me.

I bellow with my own release, feeling the hot spray of my seed fill her so much that it overflows, that it drips out of her and coats the furs below us.

There is some primal pleasure in the fact that she could not even take it all, that it stains my bed, that it will be a reminder of our mating until I wash the furs, only to dirty them again the first chance I get.

My release is so powerful, so shattering, that I collapse over her.

It takes long moments for the world to come slowly back into focus, for our breathing to calm and for my heart to stop galloping.

In the silence of our mating, shame creeps in, fear that I could lose everything, that I have been too rough, too demanding, too dominating with Samara.

Did she not say she hated when I was bossy? Has she not told me time and time again that she grows angry in the face of my domineering?

I grip her to me, my cock still inside of her, still twitching from my violent release, my arms tight enough around her that I almost constrict her breathing.

I turn us on our sides, however, so that I do not crush her with my weight.

“Thorn,” she cuts through the quiet, her fingertips shivering against my collarbone, her whole body still shaking. “It’s over now. No more lies, no more secrets, everything is how it should be.”

“You did not want to be here,” I point out. The darkest part of me, deep down, the fearful, weak, shameful part that is cowardice and swirling nausea, worries that I have trapped her here, that I must drown out her worries with mating, distraction, and by providing everything so that she will not leave me. So that I will never again be in the woods, with no family, no tribe, and no future. I cannot feel that way again, and I cannot lose her. “You were not supposed to be here.”

“Maybe, at the start.” She shrugs. “It was completely accidental that the bunker stalled, and our pods broke. It was a one in a… ten million chance that I would wake up in time to run into you. And we fucked it up at first, more than once. But I’m here. And I… I do believe now that I’m meant to be here.”

In shock, I pull back so that I can look down at Samara’s face, and I’m even more surprised to find that her eyes glisten with moisture.

But she is not unhappy, and she is not sad, instead she gazes at me steadily, tenderly.

“I think that I was meant to wake up now, and that we were meant to find each other. Across all that time, all that distance. I’ve started to think that I’m meant to be right here, with you, teaching your silly healer how to do his job, bickering with you and loving you all the same, taking care of these people together,” she tells me. “And building a home… a family.”

I cannot cry in front of her, so I bury my head into her hair, and pretend that the wetness I feel on my cheeks is morning dew creeping through the cracks of my tent, spattering over our heads while we lie together.

“Could you be happy, here, my Samara?”

“Oh, Thorn,” my female presses her lips above the racing heartbeat at my throat, as if she seeks to kiss my heart itself. “I’m happy now . You make me happy. You don’t need to convince me during sex - I promise that there is nothing that could pull us apart. And there is nothing you could do or say would make me leave you. I know the man - the leader - you are, and I love that man with everything in me.”

Her confession takes my breath away, makes me feel that I am whole, that even my arm is healed as if the fabric of my skin has been sewn back together with her words.

Her musing comes as a surprise in the wake of her vow, “The only thing strong enough to separate us is a 700-pound bear.”

“Ah, little healer,” I chuckle into her glorious hair, smelling Samara, and me, and the smoke of the fire that I built with my hands so long ago when I had no hope and when the world seemed dark. Now it lightens with her laughter, just as the morning sun rises over my camp and over my people still asleep in their tents, the golden glow matching the glint of pure delight in her dark eyes. “That is where you are wrong. A bear came close, but it did not succeed.”