Chapter 51: No Returns on the Giant Boyfriend

"If I choose you," Dove asked, "what happens when I make you angry? Not cute angry. Actual angry, when you think I’m wrong and I don’t want to hear it."

Thorne’s hand stopped at her back. He thought before answering, which made her listen more closely than a quick promise would have.

"We argue," he said. "I still bring dinner."

She laughed once, then pressed her lips together because dinner should not have been such a good answer. Outside, something loose knocked against the loading door. Inside, his arms stayed around her while she worked out how to ask the rest.

"And if I want another mate someday? Women do that here. More than two, apparently, since the woman at the Warren could run a small football league."

"Most females have several. I know what choosing you means."

"Knowing and liking aren’t the same thing."

His thumb moved over the blanket. "No. I’d still want you to choose for yourself. I won’t promise never to feel jealous."

That answer she could believe. She had no use for a perfect man who became somebody else as soon as the correct words stopped working. She wanted this one, scars and difficult history and terrible timing included, which was a deeply inconvenient development for a woman who had planned to be left alone.

She told him she wanted to think until morning. He kissed her forehead, shifted them carefully onto the covered bench, and kept her tucked against him without treating the wait as a rejection.

The forehead kiss was the final blow for dove, that yeah there was no going back from that, and her heart was still fluttering from the earlier make out session.

Thorne started kissing her like he was trying to memorize the shape of her mouth.

It started slow. It is not slow anymore.

His lips move against hers, unhurried despite the way his whole body is wound tight as a snare trap, and Dove kisses him back.

Thorne’s hand finds her waist, broad and warm even through the thin fabric of her shirt, and he pulls her closer until there’s no space left between them, until she can feel the solid wall of his chest against hers and the thunder of his heartbeat, too fast for a man who looks this calm.

"You’re shaking," he murmurs against her mouth.

"It’s cold," Dove says, which is true, and also not the reason.

He pulls back just far enough to look at her, gold eyes catching what little light bleeds through the shattered skylight above them, and for a second she thinks he’s going to stop, going to pull away, going to remember all the reasons he should hate the face she’s wearing.

Instead he nuzzles into the curve of her neck, breath hot against her skin, and says, low, "Yes of course. Are you okay? I’ll stop whenever you need."

Something in her chest cracks open at that. Not the words—the fact that he means them.

"Yes," she breathes. "Please. Take me."

Her hands find the front of his shirt, fisting in the fabric, and she pulls him down into another kiss before she can second-guess herself.

He groans against her mouth, low and rough, and the sound does something traitorous to her insides.

He shifts his weight, pressing her back into the blankets, and she feels the hard line of him against her hip, unmistakable even through layers of fabric, and heat floods her face despite the cold biting at her exposed skin.

"It’s my first time," she admits, voice barely above a whisper, because apparently honesty is the only thing she has left to offer him. "Be gentle."

Thorne goes still for half a second. Then he laughs—a real laugh, low and surprised, the kind she’s never heard from him before. "Me too," he says. "Don’t worry."

That shouldn’t be comforting, but it absolutely is.

He kisses her again, deeper this time, and his hips roll against hers in a slow grind that makes her gasp into his mouth. She can feel him through his pants, hard and insistent, rocking against the her thighs, and every drag of friction sends sparks up her spine that have nothing to do with the cold.

Dove’s hands slide up into his hair, gripping, and she bites down on his lower lip when he hits a particularly good angle, earning a growl and a grind that’s less controlled than the last.

"Careful," he warns, though there’s no real heat in it.

"Make me," she says, and surprises herself with how steady it sounds.

Thorne’s eyes flash—something primal and pleased—and his hands start moving. One slides up her side, thumb tracing the curve of her ribs, while the other finds the hem of her shirt and begins working the buttons loose, slow enough to be maddening.

Dove arches into his touch, impatient, and he chuckles against her jaw.

"Patience," he murmurs.

"I’m fresh out of patience," she shoots back, breathless.

The last button gives, and her shirt falls open, and the cold air hits her bare skin at the same moment his gaze drops, hungry and reverent all at once.

He doesn’t say anything. He just looks at her like she’s something precious and impossible, and then he lowers his head and his mouth closes over one breast.

Dove’s back arches clean off the blankets, a moan tearing loose before she can stop it.

His tongue traces slow circles, teeth grazing just enough to make her gasp, and his hand comes up to palm her other breast, rough thumb brushing over sensitive skin until she’s writhing beneath him, fingers tangled in his hair, holding him there like he might disappear if she lets go.

"Thorne," she breathes, and his name sounds foreign in her own mouth, too intimate, too real.

He switches sides, giving the same attention to her other breast, and the drag of his tongue combined with the hard press of him still grinding against her thigh has her squirming, desperate for more friction, more contact, more of him.

His hand finally slides lower, past her navel, fingers hooking into the waistband of her panties.

"Ah," he says against her skin, voice rough and low. "So wet for me, are you?"