Psy & Changelings 11 - Tangle of Need

all that was
need
. Such naked, raw need. Rising toward him, she met eyes glowing against the dusk. She wasn’t the least surprised by the warning growl, or by the hand he fisted in her hair to arch her neck. The bite along the sensitive slope where her neck flowed into her shoulder was hard enough to sting, hard enough to push her over.
    Even as she came with a scream, he pounded into her with such wildfury, the feel of him reverberated through her very bones. A brutal word in a masculine voice so harsh, it was almost unrecognizable. Her internal muscles spasming in erotic response. His hand clenching on her breast. The primal heat of him spilling into her.
    RIAZ lay on the grass, so angry with himself that he couldn’t look at Adria. But he could sense her pushing her bra and T-shirt back down into place. She didn’t rise to find her jeans, and he wondered if they were even in one piece. “I’m sorry.” His voice was coated with gravel.
    A pause. “Why?”
    “I’ve never hurt a woman like that.” He knew damn well she had bruises, and that bite on the smooth curve of her shoulder wasn’t going to disappear anytime soon.
    Adria sighed, stretching out under the twilight colors of the sky. “I wasn’t complaining, Riaz, and I’m strong enough to have gutted you if you’d been doing anything I didn’t want you to do.”
    “Damn it, Adria.” He lifted himself up on one elbow to glare at her, his body still pumped with adrenaline. “You deserve more than a fuck in the grass.”
    Her eyes widened.
    He went to say something else, lost the thought when his eyes fell on half-parted lips. Kiss-bruised and lush, her mouth was the most erotic temptation, the need inside him nowhere near sated by their frantic coupling. Breath coming in harsh gasps, he managed to get out a single word, the only question that mattered, “Adria?”
    “Yes.” Permission.
    Promising himself he would give her tenderness this time, even if it killed him, he sucked on her lower lip, played his tongue across the part, but didn’t push for entry. Instead, he licked and tasted and teased as he should have done earlier … until her hands landed on his shoulders, her claws releasing just enough to prick his skin in silent female demand.
    Smiling, he thrust one jean-clad thigh between her own and pushed up. She hissed. Breaking the kiss at once, he reached down to stroke one hand over her calf, her leg raised and bent at the knee. “Sore?” Hardly surprising since he’dshoved into her with all the finesse of the average eighteen-year-old.
    She nodded, lifting her fingers to his mouth. He held position and let her explore. When she tugged him back down, he claimed a kiss that was all tongue, deep and wet and an unashamed taste of the things he wanted to do to her, before removing his thigh and shifting so that he was on the bottom. “I think,” he said, holding her steady with his hands on her waist as she pushed herself up to straddle him, “it’s my turn to take the pounding.”
    ADRIA was caught by the playful smile tugging at Riaz’s lips, the harsh angles of his face relaxed to reveal an intoxicatingly attractive male—one who was playing with her just a little … but coming from a lone wolf…
    “No?” Riaz said when she didn’t move, his head angled in a way that told her his wolf remained very much near the surface.
    Leaning forward, she brushed his hair off his forehead. She knew it was a tender move, one that went beyond sex, but she needed to do it. The truth was, no matter what she’d said to him that day at the training run, no matter what she’d tried to convince herself because it hurt too much to do otherwise, she wasn’t a woman who could ever have sex for sex’s sake. It wasn’t in her.
    Home and hearth and family, that’s what you’re built for.
    Words spoken by Tarah long ago, so long ago that her sister had probably forgotten. Adria hadn’t. That woman continued to exist inside of her, and in spite of the cracks in her heart, she still wanted a family of her own; a home filled with love; a man who adored her and who she could adore in return. This lieutenant who held her with warm, strong hands, his heart already given to another, wasn’t the one with whom she would ever fulfill that dream, but that didn’t mean their joining had to be a cold, hard thing.
    Riaz didn’t pull away from the gentle touch, and one of the cracks deep within her healed a tiny fraction. “Let’s be friends,” she