All Chapters of Knotting the Hunter: Chapter 171 - Chapter 180

Noah"You can still put the candle back in the truck," Dax says."The candle is coming inside."We're standing on his mother's porch, a week's worth of new snow banked along the rail, and I'm holding wine, flowers, and a candle that smells like cinnamon. I panicked at the store and couldn't pick one.I’m wondering now if this is inappropriate, considering it’s one of the top notes of my aroused scent."It's Sunday dinner, snookums. Not a parole hearing.""Fuck off with snookums. I was raised to never show up empty-handed." I adjust my grip on the flowers. "It's one of maybe three polite things I got out of that house, so let me have it."He looks at me. Really looks, the way he does when I say something true while pretending it's small."Okay," he says, softer. "Then just so you know, you look great and the candle's perfect."The door swings open before we're up the last step.Werewolf hearing.I'm still not used to a world where nobody gets to compose themselves on a doorstep."Flowe

NoahWe're flying along the east boundary, snow spraying off every stride, when my wolf slams the brakes so hard I nearly leave the body.'Voices,' he says. 'By the old logging road. Nobody walks there in winter.'Dax's wolf has already wheeled, a wall of white cutting through the trees ahead of us, nose up.'Three humans,' Dax's wolf reports. 'No guns.'Ever since Ezequiel left us a present zip-tied to the gate, strangers idling near the boundary get looked at.House policy.We angle for the nearest of Reena's caches, and I shift back in the clearing behind the deadfall.I’m not at Dax’s level of effortless yet, but it’s a far cry from how it used to be. I barely wince anymore.Dax is already stepping into his sweatpants by the time I've got the sealed bag open, all that warm skin steaming in the cold, and the mission loses me completely.We have sex constantly.Constantly.And that stretch of stomach still does it."Eyes on the mission, stud muffin.""You're doing it slowly on purpo

NoahHe said please.The Alpha of the Tsintah pack, stretched out naked in a den I built, blindfolded by choice, saying please.To me.Freely.'He asked nicely,' my wolf breathes, awed. 'Reward him. Enormously.'That's the plan."Since you asked so nicely." I press the first finger in slowly, and he exhales one long, shaking breath.I fuck him with one finger for a minute, watching every tiny expression crossing his face, hoarding each heavy breath and soft moan."Right there," he begs when I stroke his prostate, pre-cum dripping from his perfect cock. I add another finger, thrusting deeper, curling them to keep hitting that spot going in and pulling out.His hips chase my hand shamelessly as he fucks himself on my fingers. The man who runs this whole territory, rocking down onto my knuckles in the candlelight.He can't see me watching him, and it's ruining me.Every reaction on his face is unguarded, nothing performed. He thinks there’s no audience, but he’s wrong.There's an audienc

DaxThe sky hasn't decided whether it's doing a sunrise yet, the roads are salted and empty, and my mate is in my passenger seat wearing my sweatshirt like it’s his own, with the sleeves shoved up his forearms.I'm supposed to be watching the road.The road's been here my whole life. He hasn't."Eyes front," Noah says without looking up from his phone."They are front.""They're on my throat.""Your throat is front. It's ahead of me and slightly to the right."He tips his head, letting the stretched collar show me the edge of my mark riding his pulse.He absolutely did that on purpose.The whole cab smells like warm apples wearing my laundry.Him, wrapped in me.He knows what wearing it does to me, and he put it on anyway, at dawn, on a work day.Also on purpose.And I love him for it.'Ours chose our clothes again,' my wolf notes, enormously pleased with himself. ‘He’s showing everyone he’s ours. He wants the whole town to know.'The town's still mostly asleep. Nobody out but us and

Dax"You didn't sleep," I say, glancing at the dark smudges under Noah’s eyes."I’m fine. I lay down for six hours, that’s half of what sleeping is."Last night is the first time since the claiming bite that we didn’t spend half the night making love.We just held each other, trying to give comfort we couldn’t dredge up for ourselves.We pull up outside the gym and Noah’s out of the truck immediately. I follow just as fast.The police tape's still up back there and I don't want him standing at it alone.The lot's empty. My closed sign is taped inside the front door, displaying a message I don’t want to look at again.Yellow tape runs from the plow piles to the first tree and sags in the middle where somebody's ducked under it.Somebody's also left flowers at the mouth of the trail. Grocery-store carnations still in their plastic sleeve, two more bunches beside them, and a candle in a jar that was probably lit when they put it down but went out hours ago.Noah’s crouching by the candle