by Rhea Watson
The next silver bolt split violently, twin streams engulfing the entire sky, thunder cracking in their wake. They lit up my reaper’s face, her high cheekbones, her deliciously pointed chin, her ivory flesh.
Her wicked smile.
For she enjoyed the storm too, her shoes abandoned a few beaches back, her hair loose, her arms up as she danced in the rain. Jumping. Twirling. Laughing. Hazel was a wild thing in her own right, those beautiful eyes like beacons in the darkness.
Calling me home.
The next torrent of brisk ocean wind hit the beach hard. I braced against it, arm up to shield my face. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught Hazel embracing the gale like she would an old friend, arms outstretched, head thrown back. It wrapped around her like a lover instead, hoisting her black dress up her thighs, pasting the fabric taut over her curves.
She favored shapeless garments most days, but here, now, I had a moment to admire every delectable inch of her…
And she was a goddess.
A primal, wanton creature of the old world. The storm paled in comparison to her, and as I faced her direction, turning my back on the ocean, I truly saw her—for the first time, it seemed. No longer was this reaper my mentor, my protector, my guardian in this new life.
She was a woman.
A vision.
A dream.
She was everything—and I wanted her. Desperately. Not sweetly either.
A snarl echoed in my chest as I barreled toward her, and with a laugh she took off down the beach. We had been running since the storm started, something wild hounds in Hell did together. Race across their territory. Conquer the cruel terrain, bonding as a pack. She hadn’t suggested it when the first drops of rain misted across the sand, and neither had I. As the humans fled, we’d broken off into a run—together, as one.
But we weren’t running together now.
She ran.
I chased. Hard. Feet pounding the wet sand, my vision narrowed on her back, on the white mane blazing behind her like the tail of a comet. She wasn’t trying to evade me. Hazel jogged. I sprinted. When lightning cut the sky again, my shadow consumed her, and she faltered with a glance over her shoulder, an echo of a laugh on her lips, her eyes wide.
Had she ever been hunted before?
Captured?
Consumed?
She deserved to know how it felt.
We deserved that.
I hooked her around the waist and dragged her flush against me, her back a perfect fit to the naked mold of my chest. She exhaled a shocked cry, bare feet hoisted off the sand, and her hands fell to my arm as I spun her around, away from the mossy grey rocks ahead. No escape, sweet. You’re not going anywhere.
The beach betrayed me, sinking beneath my heel, and I lost my footing with a growl. We crashed to the sand together, her yelp drowned out by the earthshattering boom of thunder. She squirmed on top of me, and I rolled us—once, twice, three times down the gentle slope, not stopping until the surging tide was within reach.
Not until I had her pinned beneath me. Need tunneled my vision, the beach, the forest, the ocean blurred in my peripherals—Hazel’s flushed features front and center, her chest rising and falling in uneven beats. Elbows in the sand, I caged her in with an arm on either side of her head, and her useless wriggling only made it so I nestled deeper between her thighs.
My lips hummed at the closeness to hers, our faces mere inches apart. Desire had my cock hard against her center, and she stilled when I made my affections known—physically, for the first time—with an insistent rock of my hips. I’d been so cautious before, savoring the spark of skin-to-skin contact with her yet never acting on it. But no more. No more sweet words and stolen glances and hands accidentally nudging whenever we walked side by side.
“Declan,” she whispered, no longer the laughing, dancing goddess, no longer the queen of the storm. From the wary look in her eye, she straddled the line between goddess and reaper—torn between desire and duty.
I could work with that.
“Hazel,” I growled back, daring her to protest. The rain muted her scent, muffled the sunshine, the dates, the feeling that filled me whenever I took a moment to breathe her in. So I closed the space between us, dragging my nose down the slender column of her neck, filling my lungs with her, with her exquisite scent mingled with stormwater and the ocean’s rage. Her hands found my shoulders, fingertips cautiously pressed to their tops as I trailed down the hollow of her throat, smelling her, marking her with an openmouthed kiss that had her arching up.
She was always so cold, such a sharp, delicious contrast to the ever-present fire flashing through my veins. Tonight, she tasted of salt and freshness, not the sweet honeyed dates I’d expected, but I had the rain to blame for that. Her chest rose and fell with short, curt breaths, her back arching to meet my mouth, her hips ever so slightly undulating against mine. I growled when I met her soaked dress, despising the layer of fabric between us, desperate to rip it to shreds—to show her that I could be brutal like the rest of them, that I wasn’t all wagging tails and skipping steps and happy howls in the surf.
“Declan—”
I’d issued the challenge—dared her to protest, to push back against me—but I couldn’t stomach the thought of hearing the words. Snarling, I crawled up her figure and claimed her mouth for my own. Hazel squealed into the kiss; I’d caught her with her lips slightly parted, and I seized the opportunity without hesitation, tasting her as I’d needed to from the start, exploring her mouth and tangling my hand in her hair.
Trapping the white locks around my fist.
Tipping her head back so I could take what I wanted, drink my fill of her as our bodies rocked together. I found her bare beneath her dress, my cock nestled in her slick folds, so desperately close to uniting us that it fucking hurt.
Hazel moaned and shoved at my chest, but her protests died when I nipped at her lower lip hard enough to make her flinch. Shocked golden-brown eyes stared up at me, until finally they fluttered shut, her tongue suddenly chasing mine and her arms thrown around my neck. Nimble delicate fingers worked into my hair, smoothed down to cup my face.
This morning, I would have been satisfied with a kiss and nothing more.
But not now.
Like the riptide, there was no stopping this—no fighting it.
Desperate for more of her, her scent, her chilled flesh and her supple curves, my hand slipped between us, grabbed the neckline of her dress, and ripped the fabric clean down her body. I swallowed her indignant cry, then tore away from the kiss with a wolfish grin. Fire bloomed in her cheeks, skittering down her neck and flushing bright across her chest. Mesmerized, I traced the burn with one finger, not stopping until I reached her swollen lips, plucking at the lower one as she gasped for air.
Lightning made her blush even prettier. Thunder boomed in my heart now, coaxing the beast within me to the surface as I dragged my teeth down her neck. She arched up to meet me again, her moan a detriment to my self-control.
I had never shifted accidentally before. I had never lost control, turned from beast to man or vice versa without intention.
Here, I could have.
If I let the animal inside take over completely, there was no telling what would happen.
Little pieces of the beast escaped me, teeth raking her flesh, hands clawing at her exquisite body. Hazel accepted every rough caress like there was no other way to love, arching and moaning and writhing beneath me as I dragged my mouth down, down, down to the valley between her breasts.
Breasts still covered to me, black fabric stuck to each mound, her nipples pebbling through the material. Lips curled in a snarl, I wrenched her dress aside and dragged my tongue up the sinuous swell of her breast, licking the rainwater away. Her pale pink nipples matched her lips, equally tempting, equally swollen under my attentions. I closed my mouth around the little pink pearl, and she bucked beneath me, one hand twisting in my hair, the other pressed to her forehead—as if in anguish.
/> Desire and duty.
Which would win out?
I grinned against her skin, kissing my way to her other breast, needing to taste every part of her before the night was through. In the past, a spark always jolted between us when we touched, no matter how fleeting the caress. Now, the spark surged like the lightning, bright and brilliant, illuminating me from head to toe. I couldn’t stop touching her, couldn’t stop mapping the dips and valleys of her figure—couldn’t stop tasting her.
Smelling her.
Marking her with my scent, marking me with hers.
And her scent was strongest in her core. I hurriedly crept lower, kissing and nibbling and nipping wherever her body begged to be worshipped, not stopping until I had the scraps of her dress shoved up her hips, her legs thrown over my shoulders. A bolt of light made the darkness into day, and I kissed her core in the thunder that followed, her heady cry drowned out by a single, intense drumbeat.
Here was my honeyed dates, my golden sunshine, my contentment. She tasted divine. My tongue swept between her folds, wet with rain and need. Every inch of her was as cold as the autumn rain—except for here. Her cunt was fire, a delicious, all-consuming heat that I just couldn’t get enough of. Gripping her hips firmly, I yanked her closer and fucked her with my tongue. Hazel shuddered against my face, her thighs twitching, both hands in my hair, but she made noises I had never heard before from a female—wild and ragged and, frankly, a little squeaky—when my thumb found the little bundle of tender nerves at the crest of her sex.
That was where the pleasure lay, apparently. Right. There.
“Declan!” Roaring thunder threatened to drown her out, a poignant complement to the wind howling through the nearby forest—but I heard her. The sounds she made tonight, her taste, her body flush against mine… I would never forget any of it.
I settled between her thighs like I had finally found a home. She wiggled against me, pushed at my arms, shot up with a cry, and then flopped down on the sand—none of it deterred me. Her body was my temple, and I was here to worship until the ritual was done. I lapped at her center like a wretch dying of thirst after stumbling upon an oasis. My fingers and tongue traded places every now and again, allowing me to stroke her inner walls and taste that little bead that made her shaking turn violent. I enjoyed her as I never had a mate before, going on instinct, taking my time.
In the past, any physical gratification came from hurried trysts in dark corners, from the rare hellhound females in heat but ashamed to have succumbed to me. I thought I’d acted on instinct then, simply following my body’s needs and desires like any male should.
But now I knew instinct. Now I felt fate. The three hellhounds in my past had used me just as I’d used them, our fucking shameful and quick. They’d needed relief, not chosen for breeding but still plagued with need. I’d gone with them for comfort, for acceptance—to quell the painful loneliness in my bones.
With Hazel, it was so much more than any of that.
She needed to know…
Hazel needed to know that if I had my way, I would never lick another female again, never worship a mate with every part of me, because this felt right. This was what I had spent my whole life searching for. She—
“Declan, stop.” Gone were the fingers twisting in my hair, replaced by both hands swatting at my shoulders. Panting, Hazel sat up on her elbows, face racked with worry as she very obviously avoided my gaze. Rain slaked over her gorgeous cheekbones, down between her breasts, and a flash of lightning illuminated all that you didn’t want to see at a time like this: apprehension, fear, panic. She shook her head. “We shouldn’t.”
I pushed up with a growl, literally shaking at the effort it took to control the beast within. “Why not?”
Hazel looked lovely when she stammered, stumbled, stuttered for a response—because that told me she had no fucking clue either why we ought to stop. Her pale lashes fluttered, the color in her cheeks ripened, and I caught her by the hips when she tried to crawl back from me, fingers sinking in possessively.
You’re not going anywhere, sweet.
“Don’t you feel it, Hazel?” I asked as I prowled up her body, inch by inch flattening her back down to the compact sand, rain lashing at my back. She opened and closed her mouth, still fighting for a response, and her gaze slid from mine to my lips and back again. In a fleeting moment of softness, I brushed her wet hair from her face, curling it behind her ear with a trembling hand. “I have… The pull between us… I’ve felt it from the moment I first saw you, and I know you feel it too. Don’t deny it for the sake of, I don’t know, fucking propriety.”
“I-I… I feel…” Her eyes dropped to my mouth again, her hands tentatively drifting up my chest, and that was answer enough for me. Forgoing any semblance of restraint, I caught her by the throat, fingers bruising into her jaw, and captured her in another searing kiss that made my cock ache and Hazel moan.
No more waiting.
Mine. All mine.
The tide surged up the sand toward us, ferocious as our kiss, constant as the fire between us, and I wrapped her legs around my hips at the next clap of thunder, then filled her to the hilt with a single, brutal thrust.
“Oh!” Hazel cried into my mouth, her back arching those perfect breasts into me, her hips shoved into the wet grit below.
Fuck. Her center felt as I always imagined Heaven might. In the deep, dank kennels of Hell, I had pictured warmth and acceptance, light and peace—comfort and an intense belonging that I scarcely believed existed in this world. But it was right here, in her, so hot and slick and tight, accommodating for me, for my liberties and my roughness, like we were made for each other.
Hazel deserved slow, sweet lovemaking—but I couldn’t hold back. Couldn’t get enough of her. Desperate to make the most of the moment, I retreated slightly and pounded back home, rutting hard and fast, grinding my hips to toy with that little bundle at the crown of her cunt, memorizing every breathy cry she uttered when I hit it just right.
She was all I could have hoped for in a mate, all that the others hadn’t been. Attentive, her hands roving my body, the bite of her nails down my back the sweetest pain. Engaged, her hooded gaze locked on mine. Present, her hips rocking up to meet my every harsh thrust.
Mine—her mouth yielding to me, her body responding to me, her heart open to me.
My name on her lips would be my undoing.
I was so wrapped up in her that I barely noticed the slight shift in our positions—and suddenly I was rolling, my back colliding hard with the sand, the tide crawling up the beach within an inch of me. Hazel situated herself on top, her hands to my chest, riding me with her head thrown back and her full lips slightly parted. Backlit by lightning, glistening with rain, she was a vision.
Until she stopped. Until her hips stilled and her hands retreated, slithering down my body, and then up to cross over her chest. She nibbled her lower lip, brows crinkled, and shivered.
“Declan, I still think—”
“No, you still feel,” I growled, propping up on one elbow as my other hand went for her swanlike neck. I’d learned that word recently—swanlike. While Knox and Gunnar watched yet another awful reality program a few nights back, I had sat with a dictionary and a thesaurus, rooting out words that fit Hazel in my mind’s eye. Swanlike had been one of them. Divine another. Now, I needed additional words—for she was a wild thing, a goddess, and she deserved a whole book dedicated to her beauty.
I bucked up hard, driving into her, making every delectable bit wobble and bounce. Her hands snapped around my wrist in an attempt to loosen my hold on her, but I simply held tighter, anchoring myself along her throat as I pumped into her, relentless and hungry for her pleasure. Slowly, those grasping hands slid down my arm and found my chest again, then my thighs when she leaned back, rolling her hips to match my thrusts, both of us finding a familiar rhythm in the storm.
My free hand explored her, ripped her dress aside, revealed her to me as lightning struck and
thunder clapped. It soon settled where we met, stroking her little button, swiping over it, circling around it, bearing down hard when she started to shake, my hips bucking harder, faster…
Until she lurched forward, stiff and shuddering for but a moment, her porcelain flesh aflame as she choked out my name. “Declan…”
Again and again and again. Her sex tightened around me, danced along my cock, and watching her come undone was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. The sight alone sent me sailing into the black. I thrust into her one last time and spilled myself inside her, a pleasure so sharp erupting through me that I felt it in my teeth. The world went completely dark for a moment, every cell in my body tensed and then not, a languid, lazy heat rolling out from my core.
When she pulled at my hand this time, it fell away from her throat. But rather than throwing it aside as I’d expected, Hazel pressed my hand to her heart, flat to her breastbone, where a ragged drumbeat stuttered beneath my palm. A weary smile crossed my lips, one that brightened to match hers. Even as the rain pelted our bodies, warmth swirling between us, I barely felt any of it; lovemaking had put us in a bubble, one I wasn’t looking forward to leaving.
But we would have to go sometime. Knox and Gunnar were waiting on us, trapped inside the ward, eager to learn about the outing—eager to pick and prod and find a way to use it to their advantage in the future. I closed my eyes and gulped down a few deep breaths, the thought of sharing any of this with them making my heart sink.
This shouldn’t be used against her.
Not only that, but during, I had thought of Hazel as mine—I had felt that possessive claim in my marrow. But she wasn’t mine. The whole pack desired her; we all felt it in the bond, no matter how the others denied it or acted out to mask their interest in her.
