Chapter 728: The Mark Of A Mate

Lucian stayed still for a moment, forehead pressed to hers, cock throbbing deep inside her. Then he started moving her, rocking her forward so the head of his cock dragged against the spot inside her that made her gasp.

"Ride me. Just like that. Use me. I want to watch you fuck yourself on me." His voice was rough against her ear as she found the rhythm, lifting and grinding down. "Feel how deep I am? Every time you take me all the way, I can feel you tighten around me. You’re mine, River. Say it."

"Yours," she breathed.

"Again."

"Yours."

Their bodies ignited in gold, both glowing with his magic. Then she started to orgasm with a moan, spasming hard around him.

"That’s it. Cum on my cock. Let me feel it."

His grip tightened as he drove up into her harder, faster. He slammed deep one last time and came with a groan, his length jerking as he filled her. He held her down on him through the pulses, filling her while she was still clenching around him.

Before the last throb faded, he lifted her off him in one sharp motion.

She gasped at the sudden emptiness.

They were both still glowing gold. His chest was heaving.

He flipped her onto her stomach, yanked her hips up, and drove back into her from behind in a single hard thrust. She cried out, hands fisting in the sheets.

River’s face was doing something extraordinary. It was the face of a woman whose previous experience had established certain expectations, and whose expectations had just been exceeded so dramatically that her brain was filing new paperwork.

Fae were poets. Wolves were storms. The difference was not subtle.

He set a brutal pace immediately, one hand locked on her hip, the other coming down in a sharp smack across her ass.

"Fuck," he growled, spanking her again, harder, the sound cracking through the room. "Take it. You were made for this."

He gripped her hip tighter and fucked into her deeper, the wet sound of their bodies loud as he kept spanking her between thrusts, sharp, stinging slaps that made her jolt forward only for him to yank her back onto his cock.

A broken sound tore out of her. She pushed back hard, thighs trembling, and started coming around him with a sharp, desperate cry of his name. Her cunt clenched in fast, rhythmic pulses that made his thrusts stutter.

"You’re making me cum again too." His hand stayed fisted in her hair, holding her in place as he emptied himself with rough, shallow thrusts.

Before she could catch her breath, he pulled out, flipped her onto her back, and shoved her thighs wide.

River gasped again. Then gasped a third time. Then made a fourth sound that was in a register Fin was confident Tristan had never accessed in their entire marriage.

Fin grinned at the ceiling. He couldn’t help it. Tristan had loved her gently. Beautifully. The way Fae loved, which was with reverence and rhythm and the kind of deliberate artistry that made the act feel like a ceremony.

Lucian loved her like a goddamn Alpha wolf.

He drove back into her in one long thrust, pinning her wrists above her head with one hand while the other gripped her hip. The new angle made her yelp. He set a relentless pace immediately, fucking into her hard enough to rock her up the bed.

"Look at me," he ordered, voice wrecked. His eyes were still edged in gold. "You’re going to take every bit of it. Just like this."

He kept her pinned and open beneath him, thrusting steady, watching her face while he used her. Her hands flexed uselessly under his grip. Every time he bottomed out she made a broken sound he swallowed with his mouth, kissing her while he fucked her through it.

"Fuck."

His eyes flashed gold as the wolf surged up and took the reins. Before he realized what was happening, his teeth sank into her neck.

The bite was sharp, deliberate, claiming.

River gasped, body going rigid, then a white-hot rush of sensation tore through her, pleasure and pain and something older, something that locked into place between them.

"Lucian, it feels so good," she moaned.

Her vision blurred.

The last thing she felt was Lucian pulsing deep inside her, cock jerking as he came with a guttural snarl against her skin, arms gripping her like a vice while he spilled inside her and the bond snapped taut.

Her body went slack. Her head dropped against his shoulder. She was unconscious before the last pulse of his release finished.

His breathing was ragged. Slowly, carefully, he withdrew his teeth and licked over the wound, his wolf still controlling him.

He blinked a few times, his eyes turning from gold back to hazel. "River?"

She didn’t stir.

"Shit."

Fin was on the floor.

Not metaphorically. His ghost-knees had buckled approximately three seconds after the bite landed, and he was sitting on the stone floor of the chamber with both hands over his face, laughing so hard his ghost-body was shaking.

He knew exactly what had just happened. The bite. The matebond snapping into place on her end. The release. The immediate unconsciousness. He had been through it a number of times with Serena. Every time, actually. He knew the sequence. He knew the aftermath. He knew that River was fine, that her body was processing the mark, that she would wake up in a few minutes with a permanent claim on her neck and a matebond that now ran in both directions.

Lucian knew none of this. Fin knew Lucian knew none of this. It was fucked up to laugh at but it didn’t make it any less funny.

Lucian was fairly certain that he had just killed his mate during sex and was working through the stages of grief at an accelerated pace.

"She’s fine," Fin wheezed from the floor. "She’s going to wake up. This is normal. This is completely normal. Well, not really. But with her it is. You just marked her. You’ll do it every damn time."

Lucian couldn’t hear him. Lucian was checking her pulse for the fourth time.

"Every wolf knows this. You don’t know this because you’re the first wolf and nobody told you because nobody exists yet to tell you. Talk to your wolf."

Lucian shifted River’s hair and saw the mark and his face went white, which was the wrong reaction, which made Fin laugh harder.

"I’m going to hell," Fin managed between breaths. "I’m laughing at my past self having a panic attack because I don’t know what a claiming mark is. This is the worst. This is the best. I can’t breathe."