Page 22 of Pack’s Pledge

And they’d found me. He’d found me. And he’d taken me to dinner, and tonight, for a drink, and now, back to his apartment.

Conall smiled at me from the driver’s seat of the SUV the pack had driven the night we all met. He looked more at home behind this steering wheel than the one he’d gripped so tightly last night, and I wondered if that had been Adrian’s car, or Beau’s maybe. They seemed more the type.

But then we arrived at his building.

We’re roommates,Conall had said, and I’d pictured them living in a place somewhere between a bachelor’s low-maintenance apartment and a frat house. But the place we pulled into–a private, underground parking garage below a glass high-rises was less college dorm and more penthouse. We stepped into the elevator and he hit the button marked P.

My stomach dropped out of my body as the elevator began a rapid ascent. Notlikepenthouse. Justpenthouse. How much money had Conall made in the years since we’d been best friends? I’d felt confident at dinner, remembering the look on his face last night as he’d spilled into me, but the nerves were suddenly back.

“Are Beau and Adrian here tonight?” I asked, to fill the vast space of the room.

“No,” Conall replied. “They’re out.” He must have seen the nervousness on my face, because he came closer to me, so tall I had to look up. “But Britt, I don’t expect anything tonight. Just because of last time…” he shook his head. “You don’t owe me anything.” The back of one finger trailed down the outside of my arm, making goosebumps bloom over my skin.

“I know,” I said, closing the space between us. “But…” His eyes went dark. I stood on my tiptoes, kissing him. His arms wrapped tight around my waist, and I never wanted him to let go.

He made dinner–searing thick cuts of steak, sautéing vegetables with a practiced flick of his strong wrist, drizzling rich, golden olive oil over crisp butter lettuce. It was nothing like the meals we’d shared before–fast food fries eaten in my car in the high school parking lot, popcorn at movies whose plots I don’t remember–but it felt the same: hopeful, and precarious.

It was only afterward, when he took me to his bed, that it felt different.

“I want you, Conall,” I said into the darkness, my hands gripping the sheets as his tongue slid across my entrance, his strong fingers holding my thighs wide. His tongue felt so good and his unashamed moans as he tasted me made my back arch up, but I wanted more. “Please, Conall, I want to feel you.”

“We don’t have to,” he said, his breath hot against my sensitive inner thigh, and then his lips, kissing the skin gently.

I wiggled, nudging him up toward me with one knee. He complied, crawling up so his body hovered over mine. His eyes were at my eye level, but alongside the heat so plainly written in his widened pupils was… reluctance.

“If you don’t want to,” I started, but was startled into silence by a low, rumbling coming from his chest. My breath caught.

“Of course I want to,” he growled, and the sound of his need went straight to the base of my spine. “I want you sofuckingmuch.”

He pushed himself up and away from me until he was kneeling, his knees on either side of my thighs where I lay prone on his oversized bed and his cock–

His cock was heavy and hard and nearly purple with want. He stroked himself slowly, just once, and I watched his shaft pulse in his hand, a glistening bead of precome pearling at the tip.

“Can’t you tell?” he gritted out through clenched teeth. His eyes never left mine. “I’ve never wantedanythinglike I want you, Britt.”

My stomach clenched. My nipples hardened, and wetness flooded between my legs in anticipation.

“But I— Britt…” he hesitated.

“I want you, Conall,” I said.

And then he was there, his large body stretched out against my smaller one, one thigh between my own, and his cock, still in his hand, nudging at my entrance.

“Tell me if you want me to stop, and I’ll stop,” he said, “I swear.”

The blunt head of his cock parted my folds, slick with precome and my own wetness. My eyes widened.

“Okay?” he asked, and I nodded.

“Tell me, Britt,” he prompted.

“Okay,” I said. “More.”

His eyes fluttered shut for a moment as he let himself sink another inch inside—barely the head, but already…

“You’re so big,” I gasped. “God, Conall.”

“Too much?” he asked, and withdrew a fraction.