Zev kept Sasha back, knowing Lhars and Kyelle would move more quickly. So if they only waited a couple of minutes, they could travel back to the City alone. Then he snuck her in the main gate and up the stairs, hurrying past the males who called after him with brisk instructions that they had important Alpha tasks and couldn’t be disturbed.

When they reached the Alpha bedchamber, he tugged her inside, then kicked the door closed behind her and barred it.

As he turned to face her, Sasha raised an eyebrow.

”Just making sure,” he said with a grin. “The Chimeran boundaries are… a little different.”

Then he took her in his arms, cupped her face in his hands, and kissed her.

Sasha sighed into his mouth and he felt some of the tension she’d been holding seep out of her as she leaned into him and wrapped her arms around his waist. He dragged his hands up her sides, under her furs, and didn’t even bother with the buttons, just pushed up to slide the whole jacket up and off. Sasha stretched up to allow him to do it, shaking out her hair when he tossed the fur aside with a growl of approval when she was bare from the waist up.

Sasha’s eyes sparkled and she smiled up at him, working on his buttons too. He wanted to watch her, but he was so overwhelmed with the need to be close to her that he just took her mouth, open and deep, teasing her tongue and exploring her body with his hands while she undressed him with trembling hands.

Once they were both naked, and urged on by her shivering, Zev deepened the kiss, his strokes clawing into her back as Sasha dropped her head to the side to encourage him to kiss her neck, and sighed happily.

Trying to make sure he wasn’t too rough despite the battle he was waging with his own desire for her, Zev ran those clawed fingers from her crown, down the back of her neck, fisting her hair and tugging her head back until she arched and her throat was entirely bare.

A growl of possession puttered in his throat and Sasha groaned. “I love that noise.”

But Zev opened his mouth on her throat, letting his teeth graze her skin, while he soothed it with the flat of his tongue.

Goosebumps prickled down her neck and back, and her entire body shivered.

”Are you cold?” he rasped against her throat.

”No,” she sighed. “I just want you so badly, Zev. It’s crazy. I need you all the time right now. I don’t even understand—”

”I do,” he growled, then pulled her hair even tighter and began to suck on the skin that had been pulled taut.

Sasha gasped and shivered again.

Humming in his throat, Zev walked her back towards the bed and when her legs bumped against it, he didn’t wait or check in with her, he just dropped to pick up her legs and tip her backward onto the furs.

Sasha gave a playful little shriek, and immediately began crawling back, her eyes hooded and mischievous, the red mark on her neck calling him like the brand he’d left on the back, under her hair.

Fuck he wanted her.

And she wanted him. He could smell her desire, and see her eagerness. Despite the cool room, her skin was flushed and she crawled almost the whole way up the bed, biting her lip and tipping her chin for him to follow.

Follow he did, leaning down on the furs, his fingers fisted in them as he prowled towards her like the animal that inhabited his heart.

Sasha’s eyes widened and her breathing picked up.

”Your eyes are so **ing amazing, Zev,” she whispered, breathless. “So piercing and intense, like you’re hunting me… but in, like, the best way.”

”It’s because whenever they’re on you, I just need more,” he rasped. He’d reached her legs and crawled up her body, pressing her back against the pillows.

She went willingly, staring at him with a smile on her face he could only describe as joyous. It humbled him and made his cock twitch. Fuck she was beautiful.

He was trembling now, his desire for her so intense it was overwhelming. All the stress of that day—the short night, his tension, waking up without her, and the fear… it was all fuel to the fire inside his skin that burned only for her.

He’d reached her feet and kept crawling, his lips parted to let him breathe more easily. Sasha opened her knees to let him crawl between her legs and the trust in her face, the utter abandon she gave him… it put him on his knees.

Cupping the underside of her calf, he slid his hand up her leg as he crawled up her body, leaving kisses from her knees to her thighs, to her stomach, until he reached her breasts and opened his mouth over the peak of one.

Sasha arched under him, gasping and her hands flew to his hair, holding him against her as he moved from one to the other, sucking, laving with the flat of his tongue, until her fingernails were digging into his scalp.

She clung to him like his mouth was the answer to every question her body asked and he wanted to tell her that it was, it was. But he kept going, kissing his way up her chest, back to that redness on her throat, whispering his love to her and trying to contain the desperation that only grew within him.

He’d intended to wait, to go slowly, but he reached her mouth and took it in a frantic kiss, as their hips come together and she tilted hers against him, it was too perfect. He could feel how she welcomed him and he couldn’t resist.

With a moaning call, he entered her in a single, slow slide.

It was an unexpected invasion and Sasha’s voice broke. She cried out, but with pleasure, her skin pebbling under his hands.

For a moment they drowned in each other, rocking together, clinging, neither of them breathing as their bodies shuddered with this gorgeous pleasure.