“This claiming. What does it involve?”
He growled, then tugged at my nipple. While he was saying he wanted to take things slow, his body had other ideas. Maybe it was his beast. In this moment I was liking his beast quite a bit.
“You would be mine. Permanently. There would be no going back. There is none of this Earth divorce. We would wear my mating cuffs as an outward sign of our union. I would put them on your wrists and fuck you per Atlan custom. Up against a wall, your arms over your head, wrists restrained.”
“Holy shit,” I whispered. I’d seen up-against-the-wall sex in movies but never done it myself. I hadn’t done a whole heck of a lot besides missionary. The idea that this was an actual thing that he wanted to do with me had me squirming, which had his cock pressing more insistently into my thigh.
“Bahre. I’m not ready to be claimed. As you said, we just met and that’s a big step, even if you know I’m the one for you and your beast. But I don’t want to stop either. Can we do something in the middle? It’s definitely a way to get to know each other.”
His eyes brightened as if he were a little kid and I’d told him Santa was coming. “Yes, that is an excellent idea. I can fill you with my cock and give you pleasure without claiming you.” He glanced down between us to look at his hand as it cupped me. “I do not wish to stop touching you. I wish to hear your throaty moans. The gasps. The way you feel beneath my hands.” He gave my breast a gentle squeeze. “I wish to taste more of you than your mouth.”
Oh yes. I wished for that too.
“Okay,” I whispered.
I thought his gaze had been heated before, but now… now I could be scorched by that dark look.
“I am big,” he said.
I wanted to say duh because… yeah. Seven feet tall? As broad as a barn?
“I do not wish to hurt you.”
“You won’t,” I said immediately. I hadn’t known him long, but this I was sure of. Why I was reassuring him now was ironic. I’d been fearful of men for long enough that I jumped at shadows, steered clear of any type of date or pickup. And yet with Bahre, he really could snap me like a twig. So why was I the one telling him I was safe?
It made no sense.
While Atlans were raised from birth to hopefully find their one perfect mate, they didn’t know who she was. Even though Bahre had come to Earth for the Bachelor Beast program, I doubted he’d expected to find her here. Yet he had. So he’d only had a mate for the same amount of time as I’d known him.
It had to be a little overwhelming for him too.
He lowered his head and kissed me again but didn’t linger, moving to slide his lips along my jaw, to the spot behind my ear, down my neck.
Goose bumps rose on my skin, and not because I was cold.
Lower still did he go, kissing my collarbone, then the deep V of my top.
“You wear too many clothes,” he said, glancing down between us.
I had to agree.
He tugged at the sash on my robe, and it came undone. He pushed the silky fabric off my shoulders, and I helped him work it down my arms. Even with the robe on, he’d gotten my top pushed up and over my left breast.
He worked the little buttons open down the front, but his fingers were too big. He growled in frustration as he sat back on his heels and straddled my legs.
I pushed up to sitting and yanked the top over my head and dropped it to the tile floor.
He stared. And stared. I wasn’t even sure if he was breathing.
Then he pounced—if a huge alien could do that. I was on my back once again, the soft couch behind me. His mouth latched on to my nipple and—
“Holy shit,” I said, staring up at the ceiling.
Arching my back, I pushed more of my breast into his face. His tongue. The suction. My God, he was good.
There was a direct line between my nipple and my clit, and he was tugging and pulling and… I was going to come from this. Shit.
Only when I was so close that I tugged at his hair mercilessly did he lift his head, barely, and switch sides.
My fingers relaxed slightly and held him in place.
He growled as he feasted on my breasts, then moved lower still, licking a circle around my navel before his fingers curled into the waistband of my pajama bottoms.
He looked up at me, his chin brushing my belly. “I wish to taste all of you.”
“Yes,” I breathed, shimmying my hips to help him slide my little shorts off.
He moved off the couch and onto the floor so he knelt beside me. Grabbing an ankle, he lifted one of my legs up onto the back of the couch, the other he pulled toward him so my knee was bent and my foot barely touched the floor.
I was spread wide. Open for him.
There he was, looking again. I didn’t wax myself bare like some of my girlfriends did, but I groomed. I’d gotten a few crude guys to ask if my cuffs and collars matched, which they did.
Bahre ran a finger to my copper curls, then slid it along my slit, parting me.
“Your beauty, it’s… blinding,” he groaned, then got busy.
My knees came up at the first brush of his tongue against my clit, but his big hands settled on the inside of my thighs and held me open.
He was voracious. Thorough. Generous. When he got his fingers involved, combining some magical swirls with his tongue and some expert curls with his fingers that he’d slipped inside me, I came. I’d never had a guy get me off before. Usually my fingers would
