Sunny had come to me, not for an emotional connection, not for the binding relationship of a mate, but to discover a part of herself—a part she'd trapped in a relationship she'd only barely ended. She was my client. She was young. She'd come to be set free, not bound. Well, not like this.

The words were on my tongue. Could she taste them?

"Sunny," I growled, but my throat seized and choked what wanted to follow.

"Khell," she gasped out, arching, starting to flutter along my length as she bounced. "Thank you, thank you for this."

For this.

For this week. For this experience. For being paid to be with her.

Sunny was lost in the throes of her rising orgasm and my body was tight, muscles coiling, trapped in the moment, the contract. I snarled as Sunny cried out and gave into the beast inside of me, rising up on my knees and then falling forward, my claws digging into Sunny's ass as I lowered her to the ground beneath me, onto the cloak she'd dropped earlier.

The moonlight was dressing her in pools of silver now, bared to my gaze, her expression torn with pleasure as she clamped down on my cock. My mate. My Sunny. She would always be mine now. I was permanently entwined with her. Would she feel it as orcs did? If she did, the bond would call her back to me, but if she didn't…

I threw my head back and roared with frustration, my hips slapping against her wet sex, refusing the siren call of her orgasm, demanding that she return to that precipice and fall again for me.

Sunny howled, gasped, her eyes growing wide and searching mine. Was I being too rough? No, my little mate could take me—she'd proven as much.

"Oh fuck, Khell, don't stop!"

I bared my teeth in a snarl of a grin, lifting her hips from the ground, driving deeper, harder, watching Sunny's breasts bounce with my force. She was mine, and I couldn't claim her. Not with words. But tonight, like this? I would mate her as an orc ought to claim what was theirs. My claws scratched the globes of her ass, my thumbs digging into the muscle of her inner thighs to spread her wider, to fit myself closer.

Sunny came again with a scream, her own hands flying into the grass and dirt and crunching leaves, back lifting off the cloak, throat flexing and swallowing hard. And still I thrusted and bucked, gritting my teeth against the rising heat in my spine, the swollen throb of my stav begging to release seed into my mate. Not yet. I wouldn't let this end yet.

And as if we were of one mind, Sunny's sweet and tender and exhausted body began to squirm in my hands, forcing herself against me in that same brutal beat I'd chosen, fucking herself, her brow furrowed with focus.

My mate. And yet not mine.