Danae’s POV
The Maybach waited at the end of the path, black and silent as held breath.
Caspian placed me on the backseat with the same unhurried certainty with which he did everything—settling me against the leather as if returning something to its proper place.
“This,” he said, before I could ask again.
And then his mouth was on mine.
The kisses became more urgent.
His hands found the hem of my shirt, tracing slow patterns against my lower back—a question and a demand in the same touch.
My body answered before my mind could form a policy.
Heat gathered at every point of contact: his fingers against my hip, his chest against mine, the warmth radiating through his shirt like he’d been carrying summer inside him all evening.
A sliver of rationality cut through.
I pressed my palms against his chest.
“Wait.” The word came out steadier than I felt.
“We can’t.
I don’t want to get pregnant, and I’m not taking those pills.”
“Danae.” His voice had dropped to that register that did unfair things to my thinking.
His eyes, gone dark in the car’s dim interior, searched my face.
“You genuinely want to stop.”
Not quite a question.
“Yes,” I said.
Firmly.
While my pulse said something else entirely.
“I have to be rational about this.”
He held my gaze for a beat that stretched.
Then, without a word, he leaned forward and opened the glove compartment.
A box of condoms.
Untouched.
I stared at it.
Something complicated happened behind my sternum.
“So you often bring women to your car?” There was a pointed edge in my voice that surprised even me.
That almost-smile, wolfish and warm.
“Don’t worry, little deer.” He set the box on the seat between us.
“I bought those a few days ago.
Just in case.”
Heat crawled up my cheekbones.
“You planned this.”
“Not planned.” His voice dropped lower still.
“Hoped for.”
Two words that shouldn’t have done what they did to the defensive architecture I’d been building all week.
Two words, and a small piece of it fell quietly away.
What followed was urgent and cramped and electric in a way that had nothing to do with elegance.
Clothes pooling on the car floor, the creak of leather seats, the fogged windows that turned the backseat into a sealed world.
Caspian’s hands were on me before I could fully register the cool leather at my back.
His palms, rough-textured and radiating a heat that felt like a low-burning fire, slid beneath my shirt.
His fingers brushed against my bare midriff, and my skin buckled, prickling with a sudden, sharp tremor.
I fumbled with his buttons, my fingers uncharacteristically clumsy as I tore his shirt open.
My palms flat against his chest, I mapped the hard, rapid drumming of his heart beneath the dense expanse of muscle.
When his shirt slid off his shoulders, exposing the broad, powerful planes of his back and chest, the sight in the dim light of the Maybach made my mouth go dry.
It was a physique engineered for dominance, raw and unyielding.
My nails dug involuntarily into his shoulders, sinking into the burning flesh as he bent to kiss my collarbone, his teeth grazing the sensitive skin until a breathless whimper slipped past my teeth. You are reading on novelping dot com, the official source.
“More beautiful than I imagined,” he said, his voice ruined and heavy with the wolf’s rough timber.
His eyes, now burning a deep, molten gold, moved over me with a possessive, territorial focus that made me shiver.
It was closer to reverence than I’d ever expected from a man like him.
It made me feel incredibly vulnerable, yet fiercely powerful—wanted down to the very marrow of my bones.
He lifted me, his strong hands framing my waist, fingers sinking deeply into my hips as he guided me onto his lap.
The confined space of the backseat meant there was nowhere to go.
My knees braced against the edges of the seats, the cool leather pressing against my shins, while the bare skin of my inner thighs rubbed against his hard, heat-soaked legs.
When our bodies connected, when I slowly lowered onto him and met the thick, stretching fullness of his weight, the sheer physical overload drew a sharp gasp from me.
My hands clutched at his hair, pulling him down as my back arched against the leather.
“Look at me, Danae,” he growled against my mouth, his fingers tightening on my hips until I knew they would leave dark, bruised crescents.
I opened my eyes, my vision blurred with a sudden, sweet heat.
I moved experimentally—cautious at first, then bolder as the mate bond flared to life between us.
Each slow, grinding motion sent a heavy, liquid pulse of pleasure cascading from my spine down to my core.
The air in the car grew thick, heavy with the sharp scent of his ozone-and-pine musk and the sweet rain-soaked honey of my own arousal.
We were trapped in a private universe of fogged glass, the only sounds our ragged, synchronized breathing and the wet, heavy friction of our skin sliding together.
“God.” Caspian’s composure stripped completely away, his throat letting out a raw, guttural groan as he pulled me tighter, burying his face in the crook of my neck, his fangs grazing my pulse point as he mirrored my rhythm with heavy, upward thrusts that completely filled me.
“You’re perfect.
You’re so tight, Danae.”
And I forgot, for a little while, to be ashamed of how much I wanted this.
I forgot the contract, the bills, and the betrayal.
There was only the heat of him, the heavy friction of our bodies, and the golden, thrumming light of the bond that bound us together in the dark.