MATED TO FATHER, FATED TO SONS-Chapter 23: COLLATERAL DAMAGE

RYKER

She tasted addictive and I already knew that was going to be a problem.

I worked my mouth against her core, learning her body the way a man learns a weapon, what made her breath stutter, what made her thighs lock around my head like she wanted to crush me and pull me closer at the same time.

My hands flat against her hips pinning her down because she kept bucking and I was not done with her yet, and I could feel her fighting to stay quiet, the sounds tearing out of her in short broken bursts, her fingers white-knuckled in the sheets because she wanted to grab my hair and was holding herself back, and that restraint was the most interesting thing about her and I was going to dismantle it completely.

I moved one hand up and palmed her breast, squeezing hard while my mouth stayed on her, and she broke, my name ripping out of her throat ragged and loud and stripped of every careful composed thing she carried herself with in daylight, and my body responded to that sound in ways I was forcibly ignoring because I had a point to make first.

Her thighs shook against my face and her hips rolled and I felt her chasing the edge, her whole body pulling bowstring tight, and I pushed harder, tongue working faster, hand squeezing her breast rough enough to match, and she gasped my name again, louder, "Ryker, I can’t, I can’t take it."

I pulled back.

She made a wrecked broken sound at the mouth and I sat up and looked at her, flushed and undone and spread across my sheets, and dragged my thumb slowly across my bottom lip, tasting her on it.

"You are right there, Amaris," my voice came out gravel and heat, "your whole body is begging and your mouth is using the wrong word."

She pressed her thighs together and turned her face away.

Two fingers caught her jaw and wrenched it back, "Eyes on me." My grip tightened when she tried to pull away. "I will not repeat myself."

Her eyes came back to mine, wet and furious and burning with desire I am sure she detested herself for.

"Your body is soaking and shaking and screaming the answer," I rasped, thumb pressing into her jaw, "and your stubborn mouth keeps getting in the way, that is your only problem right now."

"Ryker," she croaked.

"Wrong word." I dropped my hand from her jaw and dragged it down her throat, fingers wrapping loose around it, feeling her pulse slamming hard and fast against my palm.

"You are going to go back to that room tonight and lie there alone and that heat is going to eat you alive and you already know it, you knew it before you knocked on my door, bare feet and that robe and all that pride you walked in with that lasted about four minutes."

Her fingers curled into the sheets.

"You came to me," I pressed, leaning in until my mouth was at her ear, my breath hitting her skin, "not the other way around, so stop pretending your mouth and your body are telling the same story because I have had my face between your thighs and I know exactly what your body is saying."

She turned her face sharply away and said nothing.

I let her have the silence and put my mouth back on her.

She lasted thirty seconds before her back bowed clean off the mattress and her whole body locked rigid and she gasped, "Stop."

I pulled back and sat up and the frustration that moved through me was sharp and real.

She was off the bed before I registered the movement, knees buckling the second her feet hit the floor, grabbing her underwear and yanking it up her shaking legs, pulling the robe around herself and knotting it with fingers that fumbled twice.

I watched every second of it.

She would not look at me.

I stood and crossed to her in three steps and took her chin in my hand, forcing her face up, "Look at me, Amaris."

Her eyes were wet and blazing when they hit mine, "I don’t want to ever do this again," she said.

A laugh moved through my chest, low and genuine, "You are my fated mate," I said, my grip on her chin firm, "as long as I have not rejected you, you are mine, and you will keep coming back because you physically cannot stop yourself."

The tears broke then, spilling hot down her cheeks, her voice cracking small and raw, "Please reject me."

I looked at her, at the ruined mascara and the swollen mouth and the shaking hands knotting that robe like it was the only thing holding her together.

Then I pulled her in and kissed her, hard and thorough, my hand fisting in her hair to hold her exactly where I wanted her, and she did not fight it, her hands grabbing the front of my shirt and gripping it even while she cried, and when I pulled back I kept my thumb pressed against her lower lip and watched her breathe.

"That," I said, my thumb dragging slow across her mouth, "is your taste on my tongue, so tell me why the fuck I would reject that."

She swallowed hard, throat working, "You will ruin me."

I held her gaze, jaw tight, eyes direct, "I know," I said, "and I don’t mind, now get out of my room, and when you are ready to take more of me you know where I am."

She stared at me for one long beat and then turned and walked out, the door clicking shut behind her, and I stood in the middle of my room and listened to her footsteps down the corridor, fast and unsteady.

I dragged a hand through my hair and exhaled hard through my nose.

I was not the villain here, I had repeated that enough times that it had become structural, load-bearing, the thing the whole plan rested on, this was vengeance, clean and targeted, and she was collateral damage in a war she did not even know existed.

But she tasted sweet and filthy all at once and she made my name sound wrecked and desperate and I was going to be thinking about that longer than I wanted to admit.

I dropped onto the edge of the bed and stared at the ceiling.

She would come back.

The fated bond would make sure of it, would gnaw at her every hour she spent away from me until coming back felt like relief, and she was too honest in her bones to pretend otherwise, and when she walked back through that door I would be right here.

Collateral damage.

I almost believed it.