Reaper's Pack (All the Queen's Men Book 1)

by Rhea Watson

  Hazel twisted and squirmed in a futile attempt to get me off her arm. “I’m not ready to go back yet.”

  “Well, I am, so—”

  “So, you go back, then,” she argued as the pair of us skated clumsily across the muddy clearing.

  “Not without you,” I said distractedly, more focused on finding the best exit through the trees at the perimeter. The most solid muddy path would be best, as the muck rendered my fucking boots useless, and something without a lot of scraggly underbrush would benefit her bare legs.

  Hazel, meanwhile, delivered a well-aimed kick to my shin. “Oh, what, now you want me around?”

  I frowned down at her, seconds away from asking what the fuck she was talking about, only to be dragged into a clumsy brawl in the mud as the reaper tried to shake me loose.

  “Hazel, for fuck’s sake—”

  She slammed her shoulder into my chest, the hit hard but nowhere near painful. It did knock me slightly off-balance, however. On an ordinary day, that wouldn’t matter, but here and now, my feet encased in stupid human shoes, I lost my footing in the forest sludge. My left foot gave out, sliding sharply backward, but rather than releasing her, I yanked her with me, the pair of us stumbling down the little rocky hill and into an exposed cedar trunk. The tree stopped our descent, my back taking the brunt of the fall, and I whipped around before she could wriggle away, pinning her to the bark with a snarl.

  “Stop this,” I ordered, knowing full well the glaring reaper only took orders from Death. “Right this instant.”

  “Get off me,” she grunted. Her dainty hands slapped at my arms, and I pressed down on her chest, right at the base of her throat, to trap her in place. My hand almost stretched the full width of her, palm to her chilled flesh, one fingertip a breath away from her thundering pulse.

  Hazel kicked at my shins again, missing on the first attempt but nailing me much harder on the second. I winced and held firmer, only then realizing I didn’t need to blink the rainwater out of my eyes anymore. In the shade of the old cedar, we found a shelter from the storm hammering the rest of the forest.

  She seemed to realize it too, her arms falling to her sides, her breath coming in hard, stuttering pants. The pause heightened the way she felt against me, cool and solid, beautiful, fire blazing in her golden-brown gaze—a fire that threatened to consume me. I licked my lips, desire spiking, no doubt flickering through our pack bond straight to the others, and no amount of deep, steadying breaths could quiet that rising need. As if sensing it, Hazel nudged halfheartedly at the arm pinning her to the tree. Those cautious fingers then crept up my wrist, my forearm, before leaping to my chest.

  The quiet is dangerous, warned a gruff voice at the back of my mind, one that grew softer and softer, its protests falling on deaf ears when Hazel’s gaze flitted from her hands on my chest, up to my lips, then directly into my eyes.

  The voice was right: there was danger in the quiet. Time stilled around us, the moment suddenly far too intimate.

  Was this how she had hooked Gunnar and Declan?

  My teeth gritted at the thought, but her fingers shyly toying with the end of my beard drop-kicked doubt clear out of sight.

  Because Hazel had never felt malicious to me. The quiet didn’t read as a trap—not in her cautious yet open expression, her hesitant exploration across my soaked shirt. It all seemed so natural, so right, the way it unfolded between us.

  And maybe that was the trap.

  Her full lips parted with a soft breath, damn distracting, fucking up my train of thought so she was all that was left, occupying every crevice in my mind, threatening to steal away my heart…

  My hold on her went lax, and she slipped around my hand easily. Instead of running, the reaper closed in on me, eyes never once leaving mine. She fisted my shirt collar, twisting the damp material, and then used it to hoist herself up—straight to my lips.

  The kiss took me completely by surprise, so much harder than her supple mouth had ever hinted at. She crashed into me without hesitation, all the tentativeness gone, throwing an arm around my neck like she knew precisely what she wanted. Standing stock-still, arms up but refusing to lock around her, I let her do what she pleased, unable to tear my gaze from her face.

  From her thick, fluttering lashes, how they splashed across her pale skin. White on white, yet somehow contrasted too. Starlight. She was fucking starlight.

  Despite the height difference, she fit perfectly to me, snug, her curves soft and pliant to the wall of muscle I had perfected into armor. With a sharp breath, I finally responded, my hand shooting to her hair as if to yank her off. Only instead of pulling her away, my fingers threaded through the mess of silvery white, and suddenly I was crushing her to me, my lips parting.

  Our first kiss was still hard—rougher now, tongues tangling, teeth crashing. I slammed her back into the bark again, hips grinding instinctively when her legs parted for me. Every bit of exposed flesh glowed luminescent in the storm, her skin soft and cool—but her mouth shocked me. It was so fucking hot, a perfect home for all that fire, and as she locked her ankles behind my back, I couldn’t help but wonder if her cunt blazed even hotter.

  Only I shouldn’t wonder about that.

  Shouldn’t give in to the primal beast inside, to the lust flooding my veins and warping my thoughts…

  I ripped my mouth from hers, from the first kiss in my many centuries that had ever made me feel something. “No, Hazel… No.”

  It killed me to stop. Loss throbbed in my chest, the disconnect physically painful, but what hurt the most was watching her face fall. Cheeks flushed, hair mussed, eyes wide with confusion, Hazel opened and closed her mouth a few times, but nothing came out. Her fingers, meanwhile, dug sharply into my shoulders, ten individual little knives leaving me with a whole host of new scars.

  But I couldn’t give in.

  Had to… Had to keep my wits about me, especially with that blood-magic fucker skulking about.

  I went for her legs, trying to untangle myself from them, but she held tighter, eyes shimmering, fighting to stay open—as if holding back tears, anguish that would streak down her cheeks if she dared blink. Guilt twisted in my gut, but I shoved it deep, deep down, like always, not wanting to hurt her but knowing my duty had to remain elsewhere. We had already detoured so far off the beaten track, the path to pack freedom, and it became bumpier and bumpier with each passing day.

  “Hazel—”

  “Don’t you want me?”

  Her choked whisper shredded my heart to pieces, and I stiffened. “What?”

  She studied me for a tense beat, and then she sucked in her cheeks. Fury replaced heartache in a flash, and Hazel blinked hard, tears careening down her cheeks, so distinct from the rain. A stiff flourish of her hands brushed the streaks away before she shoved at my chest, hard, that seductive tentativeness dead and buried. I set her down with a soft clearing of my throat, a throat that felt too tight, and any attempt to shove down the lump that had settled there was like swallowing a mouthful of bees, stingers and all.

  As soon as her bare feet touched the ground, Hazel shouldered her way around me and stomped into the clearing—her dress hiked up, especially at the back, high enough to reveal the tantalizing curves of her ass. Just the bottom bit, nothing too scandalous, and yet my cock, roused from our kiss, shot to full attention at the sight.

  Fuck me. Teeth gnashing together, I took a moment to readjust my trousers. Constrictive things. Would have been better to just be naked. Desire threaded with my own anger as I stalked away from the cedar, and rain pelted me from all sides as soon as I left the safety of those piney boughs. I glared at her retreating form.

  “What?” I demanded, my voice cracking across the clearing and making her stumble. “Are you angry because I won’t fuck you like Declan and Gunnar did?”

  Hazel whirled around, her furious gaze catching the lightning that cut overhead.

  “No,” she snapped, one hand tugging at the hem of her dress, the other m
otioning between us. “I’m angry that you keep pretending there’s nothing here. We don’t have to fuck to accept it—or at the very least acknowledge it.”

  “Stop. This is nonsense.” If only there had been a slight wobble to her words, something I could latch onto and blame on all those drinks. “Drunken nonsense that you’ll regret in the morning.”

  Those busy hands fell to her sides, coiled in tight, trembling little fists. “Fuck you, Knox.”

  And then she was off again, marching toward the tree line on the other side of the slanted clearing, like she had some true destination in mind. I could have stayed right here to stew in my thoughts, in my ridiculous feelings—in the truth behind her words. There was something here, something between us that I simply couldn’t deny anymore.

  Affection.

  Acceptance—of my role as alpha, of the strengths of my miscreant pack.

  Desire.

  But…

  But that didn’t matter.

  It simply couldn’t.

  Rolling my eyes, I carried on after her. No matter how irate she was at my rejection, no matter how my traitorous body desired her, I would still get her back to the house, safe and sound. I would see her to her bedroom door, possibly even a bathroom so she could clean the mud from her taut calves, her milky thighs.

  A cluster of shrub and close-knit trees slowed her, and I’d caught up just enough to snag her by the elbow when the forest floor gave way beneath her feet. Hazel slipped about a foot down the decline, headed for the ravine, before I snatched her up and steadied her. While I hadn’t expected gratitude, her violent wrenching away had my eyebrows shooting up—

  And then she slapped me.

  Clear across the face.

  The blow landing out of nowhere.

  A sharp, pleasant sting echoed across my skin, and renewed desire pounded through me, made my hands quake, my cock ramrod straight, my vision narrowed.

  “Go back to the house, Hazel,” I growled, low and dangerous, words laced with an unspoken threat. Not of violence—but of a loss of control.

  She rolled her shoulders back, lifted her chin, and inched up on her tiptoes. “You go back to the house.”

  I concentrated on my breathing as she marched off again, willing my body to settle—ordering my mind to let go of the notion of fucking her into the mud.

  Really though. Rogue spirits had to be easier to corral than a drunk reaper.

  Sick of this back-and-forth, sick of her effortless sway over my own damn body, I caught up with her in three long strides. This time, however, when I snatched up her arm with the intention of hauling her all the way back to the manor kicking and screaming, the forest had other plans. Hazel reared back as if to strike me again—and the mud gave way, forcing my foot to take a hard right down the ravine. My knee buckled. I flailed. Hazel scrambled to grab a tree branch. I fell.

  And dragged her right down with me. My back hit the scraggly floor hard, and before I could catch anything, we slipped and rolled and tumbled all the way down the slope—a slope that steepened, laden with unseen rocks and mud and leaves sticks and oh fuck, whatever that was actually hurt a bit. Over and over we flew, and still I refused to let her go.

  Not even when we finally hit the gully at the bottom. The ravine’s base squished beneath me but had yet to flood. Overhead, the cedars bent and swayed, shielding us barely from the sheet of rain. Having taken the brunt of our descent, I sat up with a breathless groan, Hazel strewn across me, her dress around her hips and her hair like a spider’s nest. The reaper pushed up, both hands on my chest, and blinked at her new surroundings, momentarily dazed.

  But as soon as her gaze landed on me again, that hand was up, palm out, ready to hit me for some cardinal sin. I caught her before she swung, a snarl humming between us. She fought me, silent and fuming, our fall just a brief pause from whatever this was between us. To her credit, she was far stronger than she looked.

  I was just stronger.

  Capturing both wrists, I managed to roll and pin her, then shoved a knee between her exposed thighs when she tried to kick me. Her throat dipped delectably when my cock pressed against her belly, hard and insistent, but a heartbeat later she bared her teeth and fought. Squirmed. Wriggled. Thrashed about.

  Little did she realize, her fire only made everything worse.

  The union of an alpha and his true mate, his fated mate, was said to be a violent one. Harsh enough to draw blood. That wasn’t the case with every female; all my past trysts had been hurried and in secret, neither of us a mating pair.

  For an alpha’s mate was the only one who could handle his power, his strength.

  The only one who could stare down the savagery within and survive.

  The only one who could laugh it off—and slap him across the face.

  How long could I refuse her? How long could I face all the evidence and still walk away?

  Scowling, I released her and sat up on my knees, pointedly not looking at her exposed sex, her bare stomach, the swell of her hips. Just as I was about to climb off and stand up, Hazel rose onto one elbow, then grabbed my shirt collar with her free hand. The fabric tore when she yanked me back down, and ruled by the beast within, I fell into a biting kiss that wrenched a snarl out of me again.

  For a creature who looked so breakable, Hazel was resiliency personified, her bones forged of the same cosmos as her scythe. She withstood everything I had to throw at her, every rough caress, every probing sweep of my tongue. Her nails raked down my neck and under my shirt, and I met the searing pain with a hiss, my fingertips sinking into her thigh.

  Did reapers bruise?

  Fuck, I hoped so.

  Even if it all came crashing down right this second, I would have loved to see marks on her pale flesh tomorrow.

  She matched my ferocity with one of her own, biting and snapping at my swollen lips, tugging at my hair, arching up beneath my much larger body.

  Hell, she even managed to roll me onto my back, catching me off guard at just the right moment to flip me into the sodden earth. Settled on top of me, Hazel ripped her mouth from mine, one hand on my throat, the other my chest, her molten center writhing over my constrained cock. Her tongue swept across her full lips, that once furious gaze muddled and complicated. Then, without a word, she staggered off me, half-naked and tromping through the ravine.

  I blinked the rainwater from my eyes, bereft without her. Hazel’s scent lingered in her wake, a clear-cut trail through the darkness, and I shot to my feet, every sense zeroed in on her. It had been an age since I’d hunted anything properly, but through the rain, beneath the flash of streaking white and the doldrum echo of thunder, I stalked her. Hunted her. Pursued her across the ravine.

  Hazel stumbled along like she’d forgotten she had left a predator behind, yanking her dress down and attempting to untangle her hair. Slow and steady, she picked her way through the soggy terrain, her back to me—a fatal error.

  Don’t you want me?

  Blood pounding in my ears, I finally answered. In a few monstrous strides, I was on her, hooking an arm around her waist and hoisting her off the ground. She squealed my name, legs flailing, and I lurched forward with my teeth to her neck—let her go at the foot of a fallen tree that sliced across the valley. Hazel stumbled a little once her feet found the forest floor again, but I refused to give her so much as a second to reorient; I shoved her forward, bent her over the tree trunk. A green sheen coated the bark, moss growing, but it was solid enough to withstand the weight of a gasping reaper.

  Her hair spilled over her shoulders, and my hands frantically found the top of that red dress—grasped it, ripped it clean in two. Pretty as it was, delectable as she looked in red, it only got in the way. Next came the black material that wrapped around her chest, that hid away her breasts. It opened with a snap of the clasp, lace splayed on either side of her like wings. Lips lifted in a growl, I tangled one hand in her hair, holding her down, while the other went for my cumbersome trousers.

 
Hazel kicked back at me blindly, squirming in place and swatting halfheartedly at my forearm. I stretched her neck back, practically salivating at the sight of her folded over before me, ass up, sex ripe for the plundering. Logic switched off when I dug my cock free. The internal monologue that had plagued me since birth, the one that assessed risk, that always pushed me in the “right” direction for the sake of others around me finally fell mute. More beast than man, I let desire win, just this once.

  I parted her legs with my knee, spread her softest folds with my fingers—and plunged into her with a single, brutal thrust.

  Everything went black as I sank down to the hilt, her wet inferno engulfing me whole, welcoming me home—the perfect fit, a lock requiring a very specific key.

  A key crafted by fate.

  Well, I suppose—keys.

  Her long, breathy moan brought the world into color again, and her dulcet soprano cry met my gruff baritone rumble in perfect harmony. Hazel arched her body up, rising to meet me even with my hand twisted ruthlessly in her hair. Delicate shoulders met my chest. Her heat tightened around me. Her lips tumbled open. Her hand found my hair.

  And sank in, gripped firmly, wrenched like she was spurring on a stallion. I snarled in her ear and bucked hard, earning another moan that would rattle around my skull for eternity. My teeth found her neck just as my hips found their rhythm, the pair of us falling into a dance that somehow I had always known—for which I’d spent my life waiting for the right partner. It came easily, naturally.

  Roughly.

  Harsh and violent, Hazel gave as good as she got. Sure, I was the one who pounded into her from behind, taking her with a brutality that would have splintered a lesser creature to pieces. But she rocked back to meet my every thrust, tipped her head to the side to offer her flesh to my greedy mouth—neck, shoulders, jaw, lips. Nothing was safe. Nothing off-limits.

  I still wasn’t sure if she could bruise, but I could mark her skin, evidence of our union scattered across the luminescent white in angry red lashes.