Free Furyous Ink by Saranna DeWylde Page A

protector. The Alpha. I was the Alpha and now I’m the Beta.”
    “You have all the power here, Meg. Remember in the cave? It was never more clear who has the power in this dynamic.”
    “That was just sex. I’m not strong anymore.”
    “Megaera, it is my honor to shield you, to protect you. To fight for you. Not because you can’t do it for yourself, but you shouldn’t have to. Would I be a fit mate for you if I couldn’t do those things? If you didn’t trust me to do them for you?”
    “Would you trust me to do them for you ?” she tossed back.
    “Of course I would. Again, the cave. You unchained me in so many ways. You saved me.”
    Meg hadn’t seen it that way. She hadn’t realized that’s what it had meant to him. He was so honorable, so noble. So fucking perfect. It was on the tip of her tongue to tell him that she loved him, but it couldn’t be love. Not so soon.
    And yet they were bonded, marked. Bound together by an ancient magick that ensured supes would survive. They would mate, bear children and stay together to raise them.
    But Meg couldn’t say it. It was too big. Too much. So instead, she kissed him. She twined her arms around his neck and tried to tell him with her lips all the things her voice wouldn’t.
    His response wasn’t the visceral animal claiming they’d shared before, but something softer. His mouth was hard, but his kiss wasn’t brutal and claiming, it was a dance between them, like the Seven Veils.
    Each joining of their lips was another revelation and somehow more intense than it had ever been before, yet still unhurried and languorous. She loved the taste of him; it was always like sweet mint.
    He broke the kiss and buried his face in her hair. “Gods, Meg.”
    She didn’t know what to say, so she kept silent and threaded her fingers through the short crop of his hair.
    Marcus rubbed his cheek against hers, the light stubble scratching the softness of her cheek, but she found she liked it. Her nipples tightened and she wanted to feel his cheek everywhere on her body…her breasts, her belly, her thighs.
    She took his hand and led him upstairs to her apartment above the shop.
    Meg pushed the door open but was suddenly shy. She almost laughed at the incongruity of it. She’d invited him into her body, he’d had his tongue in her cunt, and she was shy about showing him her apartment? That seemed more intimate somehow.
    Meg led him down a hallway and into her room, her boots sounding ridiculously loud to her ears.
    “I’ve never done this before.”
    He arched a brow.
    “No, not this. But this,” she said, indicating the space around her. “I’ve never had a man here.”
    “And since Esme, I haven’t been with a woman I didn’t pay for.”
    His confession shocked her, but it shouldn’t have, not with all the guilt he’d carried. He didn’t want to hurt anyone else, so he didn’t get attached or let anyone get attached to him.
    “It’s you and me, Marcus. From here on out.”
    “Forever,” he said, his amber eyes bright with intensity.
    She put her arms around him. “That terrifies me but comforts me at the same time.”
    “Me too.”
    “Really? I didn’t think anything could terrify you.”
    He leaned his forehead against hers, his long lashes brushing his cheeks as his eyes closed. “Even after everything, I still think I’m going to fuck this up. That I’m going to hurt you. Or that this was all a fevered dream and I’m going to wake up and Esme is really dead and, worse, so are you.”
    She’d thought he was unaffected by what had happened to them, their marking. But he was as vulnerable as she was. He had doubts, fears. Pain. But he kept coming back to her, stayed strong for her. Respected her needs, her strengths.
    “This is real. We’re real. We can be happy.”
    “We can be happy.” He repeated it like a prayer.
    “We can.” She brushed her lips across his and when he kissed back, it was that same tender joining of their mouths. It still