“Stop asking me for permission and just touch me,” I practically growl, feeling that need swirling inside.

I mean, a girl can only take so much edging, really.

He watches my face as he lets his fingers slip inside the front of my pants, tucking them under the elastic band of my underwear—which I’m remembering have pictures of cartoon kittens holding little fish on them, but I’ll worry about that later. Right now I’m just trying not to let my eyes cross as I feel the calloused pads of his fingers dip into the already-too-wet crease between my legs. I bite my lip as he lets the thick length of his index finger part me. He circles my clit experimentally before he dips lower to do the same thing to the opening, where slick is already starting to stream from me copiously.

“I’m not”—he pushes only hard enough to let the tip of his finger dip inside me, and I feel my skin thrum as I shiver—“prepared. For this.” He looks sort of pained as he says it. “I don’t have anything.”

“I take the pill,” I tell him a bit too quickly. “Like, religiously. Like, you could set your watch by it. I’m so prepared.” He cocks an eyebrow at me, but there’s humor to it, and I know he’s silently teasing me. “Shut up. Not in a weird way. In a totally normal way. And my last panel was all clear. I haven’t been with anyone since.”

Hunter actually laughs a little. “You’re the first woman I’ve touched in…a very long time. So it’s safe to say the same.”

“It’s been a long time for me too,” I manage. “I mean, not that I’ve ever touched a woman, but—Ah.”

My hips cant upward when he pushes as deep as his finger will reach, twisting a little as he withdraws, only to do it all over again. “You’re so slick for me,” he practically hums. “Tell me how to touch you. I want you to feel good.”

“I mean, you’re off to a stellar start,” I pant. “Oh. Keep doing that.”

He presses the heel of his hand against my clit again, rubbing it slightly as his finger continues to pump in and out of me. When he adds a second, I think I actually shout a little. I can’t be sure, since Hunter chooses then to slant his mouth across mine, swallowing down the sound.

I can feel his cock pressing on my stomach, hard and positively throbbing through the soft flannel of his pants, his hips tilting back and forth a little so he can rub himself against my skin. It’s a little clumsy, the way I grab at his waistband to try to pull him free, and it definitely takes a second longer than it probably would if his tongue weren’t occupying my mouth and his fingers weren’t occupying…other places, but somehow I manage to wrestle him out of the confines of his pants to feel the hot, velvety length of his cock as it thumps (yes, I said thumps) against my belly. There’s already a sticky wetness at the head that dews well above my navel, and my hand is unable to fit around all of him, so I settle for running my palm along the underside before fisting the tip.

His hand stills as I feel his arm shake against me, his entire body shuddering as his lips trip across mine, like he’s forgotten what he was doing. “Don’t—I don’t—Jesus, Tess. I want to come already. I could come all over you.”

Wow, okay.

I love that when he touches me, it’s bye-bye to the quiet, reserved Hunter.

Hello, axe-wielding sex lumberjack.

His head falls to rest on my shoulder as he pulls his hand from my pants, and I whine in protest, which he effectively ignores. When he wraps his fingers around my wrist to pull me away from him, I can feel my own fluids all over his fingers.

“Give me a second,” he grunts into my neck. “I want to be fucking you when I come. I want to feel you on my knot.”

The cartoon wolf inside me is beating the table right now. It’s howling at the moon. It’s hitting itself over the head with a comical-looking mallet. Because I want it too, I realize. Desperately. I haven’t the faintest idea what it feels like to have his knot, but something in my hindbrain is begging to find out.

I squirm impatiently—because let’s face it, I am impatient—shifting my weight to try to entice him to hurry up. My bad foot taps against his and makes me wince during all this, and I hiss out a breath as I mutter a quiet expletive.

“Ow.” I bend my knee to bring my foot off the floor. “My foot.”

“Shit.” He’s already pulling away from me, and now I sort of wish I’d just borne it. “I forgot. Are you okay?”

“It’s fine,” I assure him. “It’s not bad. Don’t you dare stop.”

There’s an impish quality to his grin, making him seem younger, like a hormonal teenager doing something he shouldn’t. “I’m not stopping. We’ll just have to be a little more careful.” His eyes rake up my body hungrily. “This time.”

He’s gentler now when he starts to tug my pants over my thighs, gingerly working them down my legs and over one foot at a time, taking extra care with the one that’s wrapped. He notices my underwear when he comes back for them, cocking an eyebrow up at me as I roll my eyes. “They’re cute.”

“They are,” he agrees. His fingers curl purposefully on either side of them, hooking into the elastic before he looks up at me again. “But they’re coming off.”

Getting my underwear off has me spreading my legs a little to help him, and no sooner am I rid of them than he has his hands running up the insides of my thighs to keep me that way. He holds me open so he can curl his body and press a kiss right above my crease, brushing his nose back and forth along the soft, neat curls there.

If I weren’t so horribly turned on, I might even be embarrassed.

“If I didn’t need to come inside you so badly,” he says against my core, lowering to give me one broad lick directly up the center with a rumbled sound that seems to come from deep in his chest and has my back arching and my breath catching, “I’d be down here all night.”

“Hunter.”

“Next time,” he promises quietly, pressing one last kiss between my legs before he pushes back up again.

I can’t do anything but watch as he starts to shove his pants down broad thighs that are dusted with the same dark hair that covers his chest, thick and corded with muscle that he surely got doing wilderness tasks that make the cavewoman part of my brain purr. But none of that really compares to the shocking size of him—long and so heavy that even fully hard it sort of hangs between his legs instead of jutting upward. I didn’t have time to fully appreciate it last time with how frantic we were, but I sure as hell do now.

I’m not a virgin by any means, but that doesn’t mean I’m not equal parts excited and nervous when I see all of him, knowing that this is really happening. That he’ll be inside me. Not that I have any real time to dwell on it, given that Hunter seems to be single-minded right now.

He crawls up next to me only to urge me to turn onto my side, then wraps an arm around me to pull my back against his front as easily as if I were some cotton-filled doll rather than a fully grown woman. His hand makes my thigh seem tiny when he curls his fingers around it, lifting and pulling it back to drape over his so that my injured ankle hangs safely behind his calf.

At first I’m a little put out by the fact that I can’t see his face in this position, but then Hunter starts to lick at a spot where my shoulder meets my throat, and I sort of forget where I am. I feel his fingers skimming back up my thigh before he reaches between my legs to tease my swollen, slick folds, running his knuckles between them in a slow up-and-down motion that’s only interrupted by the periodic rubbing of my clit, which makes me squirm against him.

“Talk to me,” he says into my neck. “Can you take my cock now? Tell me what you need.”

I don’t say that if it weren’t for my somewhat busted ankle I would be pushing him to the floor and taking advantage of him in utterly obscene ways, forcing a nod instead, because I am so wet already with the climbing heat threatening to take over me.