28.Mate

Elle

Dominic stripped off his shorts without looking away from me.

He let the shorts fall. Water tracked over his chest beneath the royal crest, and every careful rule he had made for himself burned in his eyes.

I took the condom from his hand and rolled it down his cock myself. His stomach tightened whenever my fingers brushed him, but he did not rush me. He let me look. He let me choose.

“Lie back,” I said.

Dominic obeyed.

Power still crowded the air around him. It lived in the breadth of his shoulders, the gold in his eyes, and the way the old wards had followed him from the pool, silver light pulsing beneath the stone floor. None of it changed the fact that he waited with his hands open at his sides.

I climbed over his hips.

His palms closed around my thighs, warm and rough, but he did not guide me. I rubbed myself along him once, slicking the condom, then positioned him and sank down.

The stretch stopped me halfway.

Dominic’s fingers flexed, ready to lift me off if I asked. “Slow.”

“Don’t start ordering me around now.”

“I’m trying not to hurt you.” His voice broke when I took another inch.

I breathed through the sting and watched his eyes close when I seated myself fully over him.

“Fuck, Elle.”

I stayed there until my body loosened around him. His hands moved to my hips. I caught both wrists and pressed them into the cushion beside his head.

“Thirty seconds,” I reminded him.

His mouth curved, but his wolf burned in his eyes. “You’re going to regret teaching me patience.”

“Probably.” I lifted my hips. “Not tonight.”

I rode him slowly at first, taking time because I could. Dominic let me set the pace, though every muscle in his body fought the command. The city stretched below us, royal towers and ancient shrines watching while their king lay beneath me and lost the polished control he wore for everyone else.

He said my name when I rolled my hips. Not a title. Not a command. Just my name, roughened until it sounded like something he had been denied.

I moved faster.

His patience ended. Dominic freed his hands, gripped my hips, and met every drop with a thrust that drove him deeper. The lounge shifted beneath us. Water ran from my hair onto his chest, and he dragged me down to lick it from my throat.

My wolf reached for his.

The contact struck hard enough to make me gasp. His animal met mine without the violence I had expected from an Alpha stronger than any wolf I had known. He surrounded her, power pressing from every side, but he did not force her down.

He held her.

My throat tightened with the stupid, dangerous urge to trust him everywhere, not only here.

“Dominic.”

He rolled us before I finished saying his name. My back met the cushion, and he came over me, driving in with the rough rhythm he had held back. I locked my legs around him and took every thrust, nails digging into his shoulders while pleasure gathered low and brutal.

His mouth found my breast. The pull of it sent heat through me, and I clenched around him. Dominic swore against my skin. One hand slid between us, his thumb finding the place that made my hips jerk.

“Look at me,” he said.

I did.

The distance he kept promising to rebuild had vanished. He looked hungry and confused, with a tenderness in his face he seemed furious to possess.

“Tell me you chose this,” he said.

I caught his jaw. “I chose you.”

His wolf surged at the answer.

The old symbols beneath us flared bright enough to silver the roof. Dominic’s mouth moved down my throat. I knew where he was going before his teeth touched the place a mate would mark.

My wolf threw herself against my ribs.

Dominic froze inside me.

His teeth pressed harder without breaking skin, and a word slipped out against my pulse, too low and rough to belong entirely to the man.

“Mate.”

I went rigid.

He thrust again before I could ask. Pleasure tore the question away, and I came around him with a cry. Dominic buried his face against my neck, holding the bite back while my body clenched around him. He followed with a hoarse sound, my name breaking against my skin.

For several breaths neither of us moved.

His mouth remained over my pulse, but his teeth were gone. He kissed the unmarked skin and pushed himself up enough to look at me.

He appeared hungry and dazed, not shocked. If he knew what he had said, nothing in his face showed it.

I had misheard him. I must have. The wind and water were loud, and our wolves had been crowding too close. I could have turned a growl into a word I had no business wanting from him.

“What?” Dominic asked.

The question gave me my answer. He did not know.

“Nothing.”

His eyes narrowed, but he did not press. He withdrew carefully, disposed of the condom, and wrapped me in two towels before lifting me from the lounge.

“I can walk.”

“I know.”

He carried me downstairs anyway.

The house woke ahead of us. Lamps brightened along the stairs, the west-suite door opened, and the moonstone at my wrist warmed. The old magic knew where he was taking me.

Dominic turned on the shower. I expected him to leave, but he stepped in with me and worked the chlorine from my hair.

There was no hunger in his hands now. He washed my shoulders, my back, and the places where his grip might leave marks. Dominic had touched every part of my body, but no one had ever stood behind me in silence and taken time with the parts that gave him nothing.

When we were dry, he found the ointment Mrs. Vale had left for my jaw and smoothed it over the bruise Soren made. His thumb followed the edge with a restraint I no longer believed came naturally to him.

“You don’t have to keep looking after me,” I said.

Dominic met my eyes in the mirror. “I know.”

The care in those two words hurt worse than it should have. I looked away before he could see it.

My phone showed a message from Mom. They were inside Moonlight’s boundary. Franz was asleep, the doctor was with him, and Dad had stationed half the pack outside his room. I read it twice before handing the phone to Dominic.

He read every word, then kissed my temple. “Sleep. I’ll take you home when you wake.”

I should have chosen the bed prepared for me. Instead, I opened the connecting door and climbed into his.

Dominic followed without comment. He lay behind me, pulled me against his chest, and covered the moonstone bracelet with his hand. The house quieted around us as though it had been waiting for exactly that.

Mate.

The word returned in his voice, soft against my neck. I shut my eyes and told myself again that I had imagined it.

The contract downstairs promised us one year. Dominic had written rules for the money, the secrecy, and the ending. None of them explained what I was supposed to do with a house that knew my name or a wolf that kept reaching for his. None of them touched the worst part: I was starting to want his tenderness as much as his body.

That was where women like me became stupid. Not beneath a powerful man, but afterward, when he held them gently enough to make temporary things feel permanent.

I had already wasted one life mistaking pain for a mate bond. I would not waste this one mistaking Dominic’s care for a future he had never promised.

I would not fall in love with him.

When the year ended, I would walk out through the door he had taught to open for me.

The house would let me leave.

I wasn’t sure my wolf would.