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long as you promise.” She leaned closer and slipped her hands under his shirt.
    Impertinent creature. His growl caught in his throat as he worked his fingers deeper in rocking thrusts. He wanted her insensible. Starving, begging, as desperate as he’d be soon enough.
    He wanted her need to match his own.
    She stared at him, her gaze locked with his. Then she shuddered, her eyes drifting shut before she snapped them open again. “Give me more,” she urged, scratching her fingernails over his back. “Please, Merrick.”
    More. The new moon was a day away, but he’d never felt this pull outside of it. The feverish glee as he crooked his fingers in search of the spot that would send her flying. “Say it again.”
    “Please.” Her head fell back, and she shuddered again. “ Please , darling, pl—” Her begging stopped short, replaced by a helpless cry and a renewed rocking that left her shaking.
    Once wouldn’t be enough. Once barely took the edge off his hunger. He wanted her cunt gripping his fingers, her body clenching and desperate. Three orgasms, at least, and then maybe he’d fuck her, bring her to that peak again, this time around his cock. “Come for me, sweet Paralee.”
    Her cries intensified, interspersed with unintelligible words that sounded like pleas, until she arched and went rigid. She gripped his shoulders, her nails piercing his skin this time as she breathed his name.
    He snarled against her cheek and stroked her through the climax. “It’s not enough. Give me another.”
    “Fuck!” She shivered and bit his jaw. “Merrick—”
    He liked her like this. Soft and trembling, and so wet around his fingers. “Can you do it, love?”
    “Can you?” She scratched him again, the back of his neck this time, and pulled his hair.
    She was still close to that edge. He could read her body already, read the swell of her pleasure in the furtive shifting of her hips, in her short breaths. He chased it with careful touches, skill learned in thousands of moments that now seemed like rehearsals. Training for this moment, when it mattered.
    His mate mattered, and he’d show her how much.
    He’d show her everything.
    Paralee hid her face against his neck and rode his hand faster. When she came again, her lips parted on a cry that she muffled by sinking her teeth into his shoulder, and that was so good he almost followed her.
    Almost. Gritting his teeth, he eased her through the pleasure, stroked her down until the trembling faded and the last of her body’s helpless flutters had subsided. Tomorrow there’d be no stopping him. He’d chase her pleasure until she couldn’t take another drop.
    Tonight he had to have mercy. “You all right, sweetheart?”
    She made a vague, unintelligible noise and shuddered before lifting her head to blink at him. “Wait, what?”
    Yeah, that could turn a man smug right quick. “Nothing, gorgeous.” He drew his hand from her pants and wrapped both arms around her. “You just cuddle on up against me.”
    Her head lolled against his shoulder again. “Dinner,” she mumbled. “I’ll just…rest my eyes ’til it’s ready.”
    “You do that, my sweet girl.” This was the moment that mattered. Her naked trust, all of her prickly barriers gone. He hadn’t been the first man to feel her body shake with pleasure, but he’d bet all the years he had left that not many had seen her like this, soft and sleepy. Open. His. “You do that.”
    “Mmm.” She lifted one hand to his cheek, a warm caress that vanished as swiftly as it had come.
    At some point he’d have to deal with the soup and the fire and all the other practicalities of a camp in enemy territory. For now…
    For now, he wanted to hold his woman. His mate.
     

Chapter Four
    Paralee never thought she’d be so glad to see an abandoned trading post.
    That wasn’t truly what the old building was, though, she assumed. They might have kept a ready supply of goods on hand to do business with trappers and