Getting lined up took me a second, and then I was hovering over him, his cock pressing against my entrance.
I pushed down. And fuck, but it was big, and perfect, and hot, sliding into me.
I had to brace myself on his shoulders to lower myself down slowly enough, but my thighs were shaking, and my breath started coming in quick pants.
"Lucian," I gasped. "Can you — can you get the claws under control? I need —"
"No, but can I move now?"
I nodded jerkily, and in a dizzy instant he'd flipped us over, his cock still lodged inside me.
I landed on my back and the breath whooshed out of me. When my vision cleared, he was kneeling between my legs with his fists braced on either side of me, claws tucked into his palms.
"You're bleeding, you have blood on your hands —"
"Don't care," he grunted. "Long as it isn't yours."
He pulled back and then pushed, long and hard, entering me all the way in one smooth motion.
And then again.
And again.
And again, as I wrapped my legs around his hips, and again, as I dug my fingers into his biceps and squeezed, urging him on, pulling him as close as he could go.
This wasn't anything like the first time. This wasn't like anything I'd ever felt, not with Jared, not with my handful of other lovers. Fucking fuck, when had I lost control of this? Of myself?
It wasn't that he was a werewolf, or an alpha, or even that he was my mate.
No one had ever looked at me like that, with such piercing laser focus. Lucian's eyes still had that unearthly glow, neon yellow shining through the ice-blue, and they never left mine.
Every stroke hit me just right, pressing against my prostate and filling me so that I thought I might break apart from the strain. It was too much, I was going to fly into pieces...
"I can't touch you, you need to — come on, Landon, come on —"
His voice was barely human, either, rough and guttural.
"Don't need to," I whispered. I threw my head back and cried out to the rafters, and came all over us both.
Lucian let out a sound halfway between a groan and a howl; it resonated in my chest and echoed off the ceiling.
He stopped, shaking, his hips crammed against my ass, and his knot started to press inexorably against my insides.
The pressure wrung another shock of orgasm out of me, and then another, and I collapsed in total sensory overload.
With another groan, Lucian collapsed too, his sweaty chest crushing mine and his forehead on the pillow next to my cheek. His body was almost unbearably hot, and far too heavy. More or less the same drawbacks as wearing a bulletproof vest, but...basically the same pluses, too, because I'd never felt safer in my life.
I squeezed my eyes shut. I knew what came next. The bond hummed with satisfaction between us, like the living thing it almost was.
Fully recharged, it wasn't fucking with my magic anymore, and I felt healthier and fitter than I had in days — maybe in a lot longer than that, if I was being honest.
Lucian had to be feeling it too.
So there wasn't really anything else to be done here.
He'd hold uncomfortably still until the knot went down — and it was already a little smaller, so it wouldn't take too long — and then pull out and grumble himself off to the shower, or somewhere else I wasn't.
He pressed his mouth to my shoulder.
I froze.
What the fuck? He did it again, brushing his lips over the soft curve between my neck and shoulder, nuzzling under my ear, and then kissing me again on the tip of my earlobe.
My heart had settled down a little from its frantic rhythm, but it picked right back up again.
For a second, I started to panic. I didn't have the fucking manual for this.
What did a guy do when his hostile asshole werewolf mate started to, like, be nice to him? Sweet, even?
All the guilt from before came rushing back; this wasn't Lucian, this was the mate bond.
Maybe it was. And maybe I was going to hell for taking advantage of him to satisfy my need for a few minutes of
feeling like a lovable human being instead of an outcast.
Fuck it. I wrapped my arms around his back and turned my head a little, nuzzling him in turn, brushing my nose over his ear.
"Let's try and turn over," Lucian murmured, and kissed the side of my head again. "I'm too heavy for you. My claws are in, finally. I can hold you up."
I nodded, and with some awkward maneuvering, made a lot less awkward by his crazy super-strength, we managed to shift onto our sides with my top leg wrapped over his hip.
Facing each other, with our heads on the same damn pillow.
So maybe not less awkward after all.
We gazed at each other, the air between us thick with...something.
Not quite tension. Just...something that wasn't comfortable.
"Can you reach the blanket?" he asked after a minute.
The words were small and intimate in that little space between our mouths.
"No. You're not cold, are you?" No way was he cold.
He was never cold. And everywhere our skin touched, it was like cuddling with a furnace.
He looked away, not an easy thing to pull off when our eyes were three inches apart. "You're always cold," he mumbled. "Guess we don't need a blanket."
He pulled me in and tucked me against his chest, my face against his neck and his arms around me like steel bands.
"Hey, Lucian?" My voice came out all muffled, since my face was smooshed into his skin. "Are you lulling me into a false sense of security so you can murder me later when I'm off guard?"
"I think maybe you're projecting."
What the fuck? I started to shake, laughter catching me by surprise. "What are you, some kind of werewolf psychologist now? Did you buy a dictionary?"
If he hadn't been plastered all over me, his knot still stuck inside me, I might not have felt the faint tensing in his body. "Glad to see you're feeling better."
"Oh come on," I said. "What did you expect?"
There was a long, long silence.
Finally, he said, sounding a little strained, "No big deal. I like you just as much as I did before too."
I snuggled down a bit, getting my head at precisely the right angle against his shoulder, and closed my eyes.
Maybe this time I felt like napping after sex after all.
Lucian and his weirdness wouldn't be so, well, weird if I could sleep through it.
"Glad we're on the same page." I mumbled.
"Yeah," Lucian sighed, and then laughed a little. "Great." "Good."
A pause. "Do you seriously always have to get the last word?"
"Shut up, Lucian."
"Make me."
I thought about that for a second. "One more word and I'll tell Jace about that time you borrowed his car without asking so you could go buy cigarettes when you were sixteen."
I'd been at the gas station getting a candy bar when Lucian pulled up, and I'd been hanging on to that little piece of blackmail material ever since.
After that it was quiet, except for the slight gritting of Lucian's teeth, and I fell asleep with a smile on my face.