“Are you ready for me?” he asked, fisting his cock.
“Mate me,” she whispered. “I’m clean and on the pill. Do me bare. I want to feel everything this time.”
Kai swallowed. “I’m clean, too. God, Ember. Just you saying that is making me wild. I’m not even inside you yet—”
“Then hurry up and slide it in, Kai. I want to feel you come inside of me.”
“Fuck.” He gripped her hips as she spread her legs, giving him the space he needed to position himself at her entrance.
Their eyes hooked, a flurry of love and lust. His cock speared her in one smooth thrust, making her gasp in pleasure. She arched into him, desperate for him to move. He eased his hips back a bit before slamming into her again.
“Slow, love. You feel—” his muscles strained as he kept a slow rhythm. “Fuck it. I can’t control myself. Hold on, love.”
She squealed in delight as he plunged fast and deep, his hands gripping her hard. His pace was wild, inhibited. His teeth, his kisses, were everywhere, her neck, her cheeks, her chest. Her pussy walls fluttered against his cock, clenching around him, tightening in desperation to keep him inside of her.
“Ember.”
She looked up into his eyes. He didn’t want to say anything. He just needed to say her name. She dug her fingernails into his chest, over his heart, her breath hitching as the orgasm whisked into life, making her tremble.
“Yeah, love. Come. Come for me.”
His hands tilted her hips, his angle shifting made her cry out. “Kai, I’m—” It was there. The release, the pitch into blissful waves.
Kai didn’t relent, but he drank in her climax, taking it all, giving it right back. He continued pistoning his hips, fucking her in a primal way that was everything she needed from him at that moment. His grip on her hips tightened. Ember clenched hard, moving to meet him, thrust for thrust. She wanted to feel him. She wanted to feel his seed filling her. The thought alone flared another wave of pleasure to life.
It was too soon after the other. She was sensitive but desperate to follow Kai over the edge.
He nuzzled into her neck, and she knew why. She could feel it. He was close. He was about to mark her, mate her for life. She would do the same. His teeth, the same ones that plucked pained pleasure from her nipples, dug into her neck, and she was gone, lost to a flurry of pleasure. Kai pumped his hips fast, coming hard inside of her, his jet of semen going deep inside of her. Her nails dug into his back, and she scratched down, hard, leaving marks to match the one at her neck. Kai was still emptying himself inside of her as she went over the edge again, screaming his name.
Neither of them moved, laying still after the momentous event that had transpired. Inside of her pussy, his cock softened, slowly slipping out, but she didn’t want him to move. She needed to feel him everywhere.
“You’re my mate,” she panted, tracing the scratches down his back.
He kissed her neck, over her mark. “You’re mine.”
They held each other, their eyes drinking in each other’s flushed features. Kai eventually leaped off the bed to grab a washcloth to clean them up, but he was quick to return to her side, huddling close on the bed.
“Remember earlier, I asked you to slow down?”
“You did? When?”
His chuckle was warm. “Before we got naked.”
“Right. You were teasing me.”
“Not quite. There was something I wanted to ask you.”
Ember sat up to get a better read on his features. Kai interlaced their fingers.
“Ember, you turn me on about as often as you infuriate me. You’re just the right kind of sweet and spice, which makes sense since you’re the world's best baker. You’re my mate, but that is not the only reason why I love you. I love you for all of the little things you do. Like, use spoons as bookmarks or how you use twenty spoons when you make icing because you need to taste-test everything. I love your passion and determination, even when it makes me a little crazy. You complete my life in a way I could have only hoped for.”
Ember blinked back happy tears as Kai echoed exactly how she felt for him.
“We’re mated now. Our bond is complete, and it’s an eternal commitment. So why not make another one.” Pinched between his fingers was a sparkling diamond ring. The diamond, an oval shining with clarity, was flanked by two small pink gems. Pink. Bright colors. Because he knew her. Because he knew she liked splashes of flashy colors. Hot tears rolled down her cheeks. “Marry me, Ember Brady.”
She nodded, holding out her shaking hand. Kai slipped the ring on her trembling finger and kissed her knuckles. “I will marry you, Kai Mason.”
He hugged her close. Her mate, her future husband. Her head leaned onto his chest, where she could hear his heartbeat. Somewhere in the thumping, she heard the low purr of his lion.
Everything was settled. Completed. In fact, there was only one thing missing.
“I’m going to bake triple-chocolate cupcakes,” she said.
“Show me how to pipe icing again,” Kai whispered into her hair.
“You just want to get some icing in some interesting places,” she chided with a giggle.
“Yup, all over my fiancée.” He nipped her shoulder. “I love you.”
“I love you, too. Now let’s get baking.”
“Bakers gotta bake,” he teased, holding her close. “Five more minutes,” he pleaded, nuzzling her.
“And lions gotta lounge,” she laughed.
Ember nestled into her man, placing a kiss over his heart. “Mates gotta love,” she whispered happily.
The End
Keep reading for a preview of Chasing Sparx, the next book in the Pride of Alphas series.
Chasing Sparx
Chapter One
I can totally do this.
Yup, Sparx Brady, the best soap opera actress of her generation, was talking to herself. Out loud and alone in her dressing room, pacing like a caged animal, she was giving herself the pep talk to end all pep talks. She really needed all of the courage she could get. After fifteen years of playing Samantha Arden's role on The Town, she should have enough clout with the network to demand a better storyline. It’s time the producers stopped seeing her as the child on the show and as a woman who wanted to expand her career.
Better yet, she was well within her rights to demand to be written off the show for a few months. She could take a filming hiatus or sabbatical, or whatever the hell they wanted to call it. The show’s executives had let a few male leads be written off to go film other shows and movies many times over. They wouldn’t treat her differently. They just wouldn’t. She had to believe that. The gut-churning stress was entirely unwarranted.
It’s going to be perfectly fine.
Her dressing room was full of flowers, cards, and a bunch of random knickknacks she got from well-meaning fans of the show. The closet, which was nothing more than a line of racks, was almost crumbling under the weight of all her character’s clothes. Samantha Arden never wore the same thing twice, which she blamed the writers for since her on-screen parents never refused Samantha anything. The woman was a snob and a fashion icon. Many trends had started in this very room. Sparx took pieces home with her all of the time. It was wasteful to let the garments die alone in here. She’d tried to ask the writers and other staffers to repurpose some of the items, but her suggestion had been met with outrage. It was all very dramatic. All very soapy.