Daddy’s Mail Order Mate (Twilight Meadows Wolves #3)

Chapter 16 - Gwen

“You—... do?”

The words stumble breathlessly out of me, absolutely dumbstruck. A more lucid line of thought tries to scold me for sounding like an idiot and making a fool of myself. What if I ruined the compliment by seeking clarification? What if he takes it back or makes some sort of additional comment that makes me feel so much worse, when I could have just been happy with what crumbs he threw me?

Thorn hesitates at that, and I feel the urge to flee begin to pierce through me. I don’t know if I make some sign of it in my body language, because he reaches out and grasps a hand around my wrist. My breath audibly catches in my throat, and my eyes whip between his hand to his face in a silent startled question. His grasp twitches—it almost seems to loosen at the same time as his expression darkens and seems to withdraw. My arm starts to carefully twitch back as though I’m trying to coax it out of a trap, but then he holds firm.

“I do.”

I breathe out shakily. What am I supposed to make of all this? Of all the people I’ve ever known, he is the one who’s hurt me the most. He rejected me in every way possible. And yet here he is now holding on to me and admitting something so intimate . My lips press together and I stare down at our feet to find some escape from his eyes and find some relief from the confusing, embarrassing loveliness of this fragile moment.

“There’s so much about you that is just… Irresistible, Gwen,” he murmurs. “Every detail. The way you smell… The way you move… Just the sound of your voice, even just your breathing makes me…”

The way he mirrors my own thoughts with each slow, breathy utterance seems to weave some sort of spell through me. By the time his thought drags off, I’m helplessly hungry for more. So I wet my lips in a slow, nervous way, and gradually lift my gaze up to his once more.

“Makes you what?”

I see a subtle twitch move through his features and a darkening of his eyes. The next breath from him is raw and ragged, and the animalistic quality of it makes me shudder. His other hand comes up to trace calloused fingertips along my jaw, and I delicately tilt my head up at the touch, welcoming it fearfully. The man before me looks like he’s in some sort of trance, with how his eyes have grown hooded and the intoxicated quality to his expression. It’s too obvious to the point that even I can’t deny that at least in this moment, he wants me .

And god damn it, do I want him.

Thorn leans in closer. I can feel his breath on my flushed face, heat on heat. My mouth feels so insanely sensitive now, every nerve ending alive with anticipation.

We hover there, barely an inch between us. His hand on my face begins to settle in; it’s no longer an exploratory, leading touch. Instead, he starts to cradle my jaw in a way that makes me feel coveted in a way I never thought was possible. It makes me feel like I’m his. His thumb caresses my cheekbone and that sets off a choked whimper that’s deafeningly loud to my own ears. But that sound seems to pull away his last reserve because right after, he grips my arm and his lips collapse onto mine with a ravenous hunger.

I moan into his mouth with such desperation that I might normally feel ashamed after. But there’s no room for me to think twice about it because he pulls me into him and buries his hand into my hair, and that just leaves me lost to whatever this has become.

My hand uncaptured by his possessive grip goes to wrap around his neck in turn, and I savor the feeling of how the powerful tendons there taper down. I follow down to his shoulder and the sensation of fabric against my hand sets off a strange infuriated urge in my mind—there should be nothing between us. I crave the feeling of his skin again, raw and real. I want to run my hands over every inch of him to the point I could traverse his body blind and recreate it from memory, down to every last curve of muscle and ridge of scar tissue.

He appears to feel a parallel instinct, because he runs his hand up my arm in a way that feels as though he is savoring the feeling of my skin. It feels like being worshiped . As we begin to interlock and mold into each other, his coat slips from my shoulders and falls onto the porch with an airy thud. But neither of us respond or care. The fresh wash of cool night air just sharpens how sensitive my whole body feels and urges me closer into the delicious warmth of his body that radiates through our clothes.

I don’t know if it’s one long kiss or a hundred different ones blurred together. All I do know is that our mouths mingle in wordless passion ceaselessly, as though we are both starved. It feels almost like both of us have some sense that if we pull away, we will never get another chance—so we have to get an entire lifetime’s worth of each other right here, right now. Lips press and slide indiscriminately. There’s a clattering of teeth here and there, but neither of us are deterred. His tongue is invasive and almost cruel in how it assaults me, forcing me to keep up with his ferocious pace and fight for every inch. When I manage to slip myself properly past it to taste the silky interior of his mouth, Thorn groans in a way that makes me dizzy and suddenly both of his hands are gripping my hips and hoisting me up into him.

I blindly oblige and spread my thighs to hook them around his hips. His belt digs painfully into me for a moment, but then I slide down and through our respective pants I feel him hard and ready against me. His mouth pops off of mine with a trail of saliva and a noisy growl. I’m whirled around and find myself pinned up against the wall of the house, trapped in by his body. I couldn’t escape even if I wanted to.

But I don’t. I want to always be like this. I want to be his —

My hands scour down his shoulders, follow his sides, and start tearing his shirt out from where it’s been neatly tucked in utter desperation to touch him. He seems to understand my intent, because in one smooth act he presses me higher into the wall with his hips and uses one hand to start messily slipping the buttons out in a blind urgency. Our faces linger close to one another, panting in each other’s air, neither of us saying a word.

Thorn pulls back from me just long enough to tear both the button up and the undershirt off, and I ogle at him with delirious desire. He really is the most gorgeous man I’ve ever seen. And now I’m here, getting to touch him, feeling him touch me…

I slide my hands along his torso and he watches in panting silence. When I graze over his heart, I feel how his pulse is hammering away. My eyes flicker back up to his, and we share a wordless look before he pounces me again.

I’m better prepared this time, and with a whetted appetite. I arch into him and wrap my arms around his shoulders, which gives me a better vantage for writhing my hips with very insistent intent against him. He groans in answer and pulls me off the wall, which lets me get my legs back under me. We don’t stop kissing, but our hands move in an instinctual scramble to each other’s lower halves. I fight his belt for a second before I get it slid open, and a sound of need escapes me when he unbuttons my jeans at the same time.

Without words, purely from intuition and chemistry, we work in tandem to get every scrap of cloth off of me and even my boots chucked off to join his coat on the wooden deck beneath us. If I was in a more clear-headed state, perhaps I might have felt self-conscious about being completely naked on his front porch, but maybe I’ve gotten used to it these days. He still has his trousers on, but his belt is invitingly split open and allows for the eager bulge to show through his boxer briefs.

There’s a moment where he just seems to take me in, and rather than shy from his gaze, I let myself feel admired, even beautiful . You don’t look at someone like that if you don’t think that they’re beautiful.

He reaches towards me and I lean into the touch, gasping slightly when he cups my breast between his palm and my ribs. We both breathe in enraptured silence together as he strokes my nipple with his thumb in a gentle rhythm. It feels so lovely and unexpectedly tender that my eyes nearly start to burn with unshed tears.

But then his hand roves down, and in one burning path it wanders over my skin to cup between my thighs. I gasp at the contact and brace my hands on him to keep my balance; if I don’t I might just fall from the dizzy pleasure that alone causes.

“I’ve got you,” he murmurs in a way that’s somehow comforting and darkly thrilling at the same time.

I nestle forward into him with a nod and tuck my face in the dip of his neck and shoulder. His fingers run a slow line between my lips, coaxing them open. Then they start to curl in an explorative, coaxing rhythm, their movements smoothed by how wet I already am. He isn’t even inside me but I can feel just how soaked his fingers are. My hips do a little seizing jerk when he starts to put pressure on the sensitive little nub there at the same time—it’s maddening, just how perfectly controlled his movements are.

“Good?”

I mewl out a noise that I mean to be some sort of affirmative response, and the fact that he continues implies that he somehow understands me. My hands fight for purchase around his back to keep me upright, and when he starts to slide inside of me my nails start to curl and dig into him.

There’s the briefest pause in his movement but I just grip tighter.

“ Don’t stop ,” I urge.

A husky noise of lust and longing is his answer. That and the fact his fingers suddenly hilt in me to the knuckle. I gasp and whine, overwhelmed yet desperate for more, to the point that I rock into his hand like an animal in heat. Thorn’s hand quite quickly goes from its sensuous approach to something far more passionate, with the deep and merciless pace he takes to seamlessly match the maddened movements of my hips. It doesn’t take long before I feel myself clenching rhythmically around his fingers, and as good as they feel, I need more .

“Please , ” I whisper into his neck. “Thorn, please. ”

I’ll lay myself bare before him, I’ll offer my neck, my life, my soul—

I’ll submit in any way he or his wolf wants, if it just means I get to feel him inside of me, get to be claimed by him, anything, everything—

Thorn holds me close with one arm and keeps ruining me with the other, and I hear how he’s already panting. It’s not from exertion, no; it’s the sound of a beast over a kill. I’m too far gone to feel any shame about how loud it sounds when he moves his hand against me. I can feel my eyes roll back into my head and with how potently my body’s getting away from me and how urgently I need him to truly take me…

I give in to a wild, primal urge and bite into his shoulder. The feeling of resistance beneath my teeth makes something click and unfurl in my brain and I know that I’m in for it. My wolf’s instincts drove me to do it, knowing that it was both a challenge and claim. He growls and rips his fingers out of me, but before I can complain at my emptiness the whole world whirls. By some lucky reflex I manage to brace my hands on the railing as I’m turned around and bent over by his viciously controlled manhandling.

And before I can say a thing, Thorn’s body shadows over mine and I feel the tip of him line up just where I’ve been craving him. An urgency overwhelms me to make sure we follow through, my body keenly remembering just how narrowly I’d missed the chance for this before. I jut my hips back and try to force our union, but he just locks one hand with what feels like almost bruising force around my hip and forces me still. And as if that wasn’t enough to have me completely gone, I then feel him lean in behind me, our bodies going flush.

“ Mine ,” he seethes out, his deep voice resonating through me.

Then, he plunges in.

I practically scream out in bliss and grip onto the railing so tight I know I might give myself splinters. He holds that for just a moment before moving into a firm rutting pace that leaves me swaying in place, trying with all my might to stay upright. I dully notice my nearly full bottle of beer and the baby monitor shifting just a little bit during his more fierce thrusts, and I reach out to try and grab the monitor thanks to some shred of practicality cutting through the lustful fog enough to know it’d be a bad idea if that fell.

But that just ruins my delicate balance and I lose my steadiness—

Only to have him immediately wrap his arms around me, and I just surrender into his hold and let myself go limp. It’s such a release, to give into him entirely, to trust him in this profound and primal way.

He grunts every few gyrations now, and I love hearing his voice betray just how good he feels fucking me. I lose all trace of time; it all feels so short yet like we’ve been joined for an eternity. But there is a build of pleasure in me that robs me of all of my faculties, and even though I have a million things I’d love to cry out to him, all I can do is moan and pant to try and fill my burning lungs.

Thorn’s pace doesn’t slow. It just grows more powerful as each drive of his body practically bullies me off of my feet. If he wasn’t holding me, I probably would have fallen by now. And just as I start to feel myself go senseless, I feel him throb inside of me, and that sets off a thousand different buttons I didn’t know I have.

I try to beg him to release himself inside of me, but all that comes out of me is a wild, needy call. But just as before, he seems to understand. Thorn just growls and bites down into my own shoulder, and as I shout through the twin pain and pleasure, I feel him burst and drain inside of me. The pair of us dim into a long quiet then, just bracing through the wake of the powder keg we’d set off. His hands softly rove my body and he kisses my neck and shoulders in a dreamy way. As these silent affections go on, I try to get my bearings as best I can. Once I’m able to tune back in to the world around me, I notice that the crickets are still loudly singing on.

Right, we’re outside… Well, I hope Mother Nature enjoyed the show.

But then I feel him twitch again inside of me, and I know we’ve got an encore on the way.