Exposure: Bloodlust Series Book 1

by L. L. Ash

  Clarence breathed out, as if the conversation physically pained him.

  “Are you happy here, Addie,” he asked finally, looking at me with the saddest eyes.

  “Happy? I don’t know if happy is the word, but it’s...comfortable here. Everyone treats me kindly, except Jo.”

  “Who is Jo?”

  “She’s my other queen,” Eddie said, crossing his arms in front of him and leaning back in his chair in a boastful manner.

  “So you’ve two women to keep your company?” Clarence sounded disgusted.

  “I’ve got two queens, not two women. They get to mate with whomever they want. As long as they sleep beside me.”

  Clarence looked like he was going to be physically sick.

  I took his hand in both of mine before saying, “I’m ok. Everyone’s nice and I have everything I need.”

  “Addie,” his voice broke, his eyes strangely devoid of sparkling moisture that seemed to be on strike against gathering in his eyes. “You don’t have to do this… You can come back with me if you want.”

  “At least I can hide here, Clee, I can’t do that with you and Mason. Besides, I’m pissed at him right now.”

  He took his hand back and pressed his palms to his face, strangling his hair with his fingers before looking back at me.

  “I can’t lose you forever, Addie...”

  “This is where I belong now,” I managed to squeak out and he let out a burst of breathless air like I’d struck him.

  “My number,” he told Eddie, passing a business card over the table without looking at me. “If you need me, you know how to reach me.”

  Without one look back, he left the room.

  That was when I crumpled into a fit of hysterical crying. Eddie gathered me up quickly and moved me quickly from the conference room to the bedroom, laying me down in the bed and cuddling up to me, trying to comfort me. At some point Jo came into the room and found us like that and lay behind me, pressing against my back and stroking my hair.

  “I remember when it first happened to me,” she said in a whisper. “I cried for days after finding out. Eddie is a good companion, Sweetheart. You won’t miss the other one soon enough.”

  My tears began to dry up as I laid there, bodies pressed against me like an Addie sandwich, and it was weirdly comforting.

  “Have her, Eddie,” Jo said over my head in a quiet voice.

  “It’s not the time, Jo,” he countered. “She’s mourning.”

  “And she doesn’t understand the beast yet. It’ll help her calm down and release her pain.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked, wiping at my eyes with the back of my hand.

  “Physicality… It’s different with us,” she said with a sigh. “It’s like breathing and eating and drinking. An outlet to prevent insanity. Don’t you feel it? Don’t you feel the raging inside you that you can’t quiet, no matter how you try? We crave companionship, we crave touches, caresses and closeness.”

  “Is that why you guys are always rubbing all over everyone?” I asked and they both chuckled.

  “This,” Eddie snuggled into my neck, “Is as good as a hug to a werewolf.”

  “Am I supposed to do that?”

  “It’ll come naturally, over time,” Jo said gently, stroking my hair. “Soon instead of being awkward you’ll begin to crave it. And sometimes, we crave deeper affection, for deeper emotion. It’s just how we deal with it. It is the werewolf way. Am I correct, my king?”

  “Yeah, you are,” he sighed pressing his forehead to mine.

  “So are you saying if I hug it out I’ll feel better?”

  “Not quite,” Jo chuckled.

  Eddie smiled.

  “So innocent,” Jo sighed, dragging her hand down my back before lifting up my shirt.

  I clutched onto it and she clucked her tongue. “Trust, child.”

  I let her remove the baggy shirt and her fingers deftly removed my bra before she pressed me face down into the mattress and pillows. Her nails scraped delicately down my back and shivers ran through every limb. Again, the touch was so much stronger than it ever had been before. It touched me deep down into my soul, easing my pain and relaxing me.

  “There, do you feel that?” she asked, the tips of her fingers following every ridge on my back, around the shoulder blades and down the indent of my spine.

  “Yeah… I do. It feels so good.”

  She hummed, and I felt the brush of her hair on my bare skin. Moments later warm wetness brushed up my back, and every hair on my body stood on end. A sandpapery tongue lashed upwards in long strokes, a feminine hand touching my side and fingers curling around, brushing the side of my breast.

  “Now,” Jo said in a husky voice. “Will you finish, my king, or should I get a more willing companion for our little one? Adonis, perhaps?”

  “Move,” Eddie told her, his voice low and rough as gravel.

  Jo chuckled and shifted, her fingers slipping beneath me long enough to grasp my breast and give a slight squeeze, brushing her fingers gently over the nipple.

  “Gently,” Jo whispered in my ear. “Gently, and then roughly,” she squeezed again, causing me to gasp a little. “He’s capable, just remind him.”

  With that her hand slid away and her hair brushed my back one more time before she was up and gone, the door clicking closed.

  “We don’t have to...” Eddie started but I was far past gone, the haze of lust and the smells of arousal thick around me.

  “Now, Eddie,” I told him, sounding far more like Jo than I’d have liked.

  His bare, slightly fuzzy chest brushed over my back, his hand finding the same spot Jo had found earlier, grasping the breast with more force and eagerness.

  “If you don’t want to...” he tried, but didn’t finish, grasping my hips with the other hand and lifting my butt up.

  His fingers deftly found my jeans button and unlatched, tearing my pants and underwear down quickly before his lips found my back, licking and smothering the skin with affection, as Jo had called it. Within the spell of his touch, everything else disappeared. Nothing else mattered other than the sensations I was eagerly awaiting. Every nerve was firing off in pleasure, meeting for fireworks at the apex of my thighs.

  One of his arms was tucked behind mine, skin touching skin as they lined up, and the other hand drifted down my neck, past my necklace and around my shoulder, clutching eagerly at a dangling breast before he teased the nipple. My butt bucked backwards into him, and he grunted, squeezing harder like he wanted me to do it again. I did, again and again as he assaulted my breasts, bruising the nipples with his attention. Eventually as my bare butt ground into his hips, he let go and dragged his hand further down, finger dipping momentarily into my navel before finding the curls, absolutely soaked by now.

  He whined, actually whined as he dragged his fingers through the moisture. And I cried out, every nerve so sensitive I felt like exploding. He fingered my pearl for a moment, feeling how engorged it was, how ready I was. Within a second his shorts were down and I felt his member pressed against the crease of my butt, urgently seeking its prize.

  I ground against him and he pinched a nipple again before pressing my head down, my face hurrying to find a comfortable position in the pillows.

  Butt in the air, elbows and knees supporting me while his hands adjusted my hips, I wasn’t quite expecting it when he slammed into me. I shrieked at the invasion, then groaned as he pulled out, slowly. My face ground into the pillow, hopefully muffling the awful noises that were coming out of my mouth. Tiny grunts filled the air around me as he pumped and rammed into me, and it wasn’t more than a minute or two before I was holding a pillow to my face, feeling my entire guts contract and throb, fire running through my veins, leaving a pleasant and lingering warmth as he continued to pump. Another couple of minutes later, I was falling all over again and he was groaning, shooting a different type of warmth into me as we collapsed, gasping for air and heaving in breath after breath.

 
My lightheaded ascension back to reality finally settled and I felt his heavy body on top of mine, chest no longer working for breath, but instead slow, as if in sleep.

  I smiled, feeling strangely carefree at the moment, basking in the afterglow of the most amazing sex. Affection, I reminded myself again. It didn’t mean the same to these people. With Clarence it meant love, adoration and devotion. With the wolves it meant comfort and security.

  As I was considering this he moved. Not much, but enough so that he wasn’t on me, but rather beside me, wrapped around me. I absolutely felt the comfort, deep down into my bones. I think to me, it didn’t mean the same as it had with Clarence. I didn’t love Eddie, not really. I was grateful to him, and I owed him my life, but this was more like an exchange of mutual need, not of mutual love.

  I was asleep when Jo came back in, but she eventually joined us and cuddled up to us, naked as we were, skin on skin on skin as we all laid cuddled together.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Waking up was a little awkward. My legs were stuck together at the thigh and I had Eddie’s morning wood poking me in the back, while large, naked breasts lay close to my face where Jo slept, tipped in full, perfect, rosy pink buds.

  I startled, instantly fully awake and managed to do the same to my sleeping companions.

  Eddie sat up as well, looking around as if there were a threat in the room with us, but Jo just stretched, chest wiggling with her movements. I averted my eyes, trying to hide my nakedness as I considered how I was going to get up without showing the world my lily white ass and caked, gross curls.

  “You ok?” Eddie asked me, wiping at his eyes, trying to wake up since I’d so rudely extracted him from his dreams.

  “Yeah. I just… I jumped I guess. Sorry.”

  Eddie yawned and laid back down.

  “I’m just going to get a shower,” I said quietly as he closed his eyes again.

  I shuffled up from the bed, feeling slightly covered with the sheet I’d stolen from Jo. She whined and curled up on her side, wiggling closer to Eddie’s warmth. He woke up enough to shift closer, pull a blanket over them and hold her as he fell back asleep. The sight of seeing the man I’d been so intimate with hours ago, embracing a naked woman that wasn’t me weighed heavily on me. Innocent affection or not, it didn’t sit right.

  Wrapping the blanket around me tighter, I grabbed another of Eddie’s shirts and some underwear before picking up my jeans at the end of the bed and going into the shower. The hot water felt like bliss on my skin, and it felt good to be clean and smelling good after who knows how many days. Washing with what I assumed to be Jo’s strawberry shampoo and conditioner, I finished up and dressed quickly before heading back into the room to see if Eddie or Jo were up yet.

  They were, and Eddie was up in more ways than one. Jo sat on his thighs, gyrating her hips, boobs bouncing in his face as they moved together, noises of bliss coming easily and loudly from Jo’s mouth.

  She saw me emerge from the bathroom and met my eyes, green clashing with green and I almost saw satisfaction there. She had wanted me to see this. She wanted me to know that Eddie wasn’t just mine, but hers too. His body belonged to his queens, not just me.

  Shutting myself back up in the bathroom, I waited until I thought I heard Jo loudly orgasm, moaning and groaning like she’d just lost a limb. Silence followed for a full minute before there was a gentle knock on the door. Jo was gone and Eddie stood there, still naked, hand raised to knock again.

  “I’m sorry you saw that...” was the first thing out of his mouth. “She’s in heat, and we need royal babies.”

  In horror I wondered if they had children together.

  “She hasn’t gotten pregnant yet, after 4 years and I guess she’s positive it’ll work this time. I don’t know, but it’s my job, you know?”

  Relief flooded me for just a second before shrugging.

  “You made it crystal clear that none of us own each other. I know you’ve got jobs to do, and even if it weren’t a job, she’s got just as much say on you as I do.”

  “No she doesn’t,” he said quietly. “I want you to be my mate. Permanently and exclusively. But I have a duty towards her and I’m… I’m kind of stuck between a rock and a hard spot right now.”

  My heart skipped a beat. He took a moment to press his lips to mine, giving me a languid and meaningful kiss.

  “Heat happens once a month and only lasts a couple days. It won’t happen again anytime soon. Not at all, if I can help it.”

  “Not at all? Isn’t that unfair to her?”

  He shrugged.

  “I didn’t expect that two queens would be happy to coexist. I doubt Jo will want to stay when I tell her I can’t fulfill her heat anymore, and she’ll find another king to burden with her bitchy mood swings.”

  “She confuses me.”

  “Welcome to the club,” he chuckled. “Now, I’d love to stand here and chat, but all things considered, I feel pretty gross right now, inside and out.”

  I moved away from the bathroom door.

  “Are you saying you want me to stay here, with you? Forever?”

  “Yeah,” he said simply.

  “And I’m supposed to have your babies?”

  “If we’re so blessed,” he grinned.

  “After last night… will I…?”

  “Doubt it. You’re not in heat. Even then, you’re still very new and the odds of conception are even slimmer.”

  “How will I know when I’m in heat?”

  He laughed.

  “Oh God. Trust me, you’ll know,” he grinned and closed the door.

  The statement had my stomach all twisted up and worried. Was it that strong? Maybe there was a sign. Was he talking about the menstrual cycle? Maybe he meant that week of fertility before mensis.

  Taking a deep breath, I put aside my thoughts on the matter and put on my shoes, intent on finding breakfast.

  Jo and I didn’t have much to say to each other as we went out to buy some clothes. Raymond followed behind us, carrying bags as we collected them and paying for our purchases with what I found out was Eddie’s bank card. Evidently he’d done well enough for himself and liked to keep his ladies happy and well dressed. Raymond only put his foot down when Jo demanded large, extravagant things like three carat diamond stud earrings.

  “You know Eddie’s the one that buys that stuff,” he told Jo. “Take it up with him.”

  She pouted but soon her eye caught on a 700 dollar handbag.

  “You know,” Raymond said after a while of both of us watching Jo spend all Eddie’s money. “He doesn’t mind if you get some nice things, just for you. He specifically told me to spoil you today. Don’t make me look bad to the king.”

  His grin was all friendly, and I knew he was just trying to loosen me up a little as the morning’s activities had made me a bit anxious.

  “Thanks Raymond. Do you mind if I call you Ray?”

  “I’d prefer it. Everyone does.”

  “Ok, Ray it is. And I’m just Addie. I’m so over all this king-queen business.”

  “Some, like Jo, take it seriously, but the rest of us just recognize it as a title of authority, no more. It’s just our name for the food chain. No doubt the previous kings liked the idea of being lord of their own domain. Eddie isn’t like that, and that’s why so many men are loyal to him.”

  “How did you get to be this way, Ray? If you don’t mind my asking.”

  He shrugged.

  “I was a young man, and I got into trouble. Selling drugs in the dark corners of a big city tends to get a body into some nasty business. Some werewolf pups stole my pocketful of coke and took off with it. I scuffled with one and he accidentally bit me. Took me weeks to figure out what had happened, but eventually I ran into another of my kind, he smelled it on me, and he brought me here. Eddie took me under his wing, the kid was barely out of teenagehood at that point. He’s been good to me, and I appreciate that. I hear not all kings are so good to their men.” />
  I pressed my arms across my chest as I considered what he’d said.

  “So? About that shopping spree...”

  I laughed and nodded, letting him lead the way. We left Jo to window show at Tiffany’s and he brought me to a trendy little place that had just the edgy-but-comfortable style I liked.

  I got some new pants, shorts and a few tanks, but we went to another shop for tops and a couple overshirts and jackets. Raymond informed me that Eddie liked to go out and that I should have a few outfits for dinner or clubs. It almost felt like being a kept woman, though this was what I chose. I did feel some affection for Eddie, though love wasn’t in my realm of feelings toward him. I would probably learn to love him, over time. He was good to me even if he was a bit overconfident.

  Picking out a new leather jacket that I told Raymond was my big, splurgy purchase, I thought about Clarence. His reaction to me had broken my heart. He would blame himself, only himself for my current situation. And, it seemed a little silly that he refused to turn me when we’d dated and promised ourselves to each other because he wanted me to live a normal life, but now, here I was, turned, but not a vampire and living like a fugitive. All the while I was pretending to be dead to the world.

  Sighing from the irony, we found Jo again before heading back to the car.

  Just as the car came back in sight, Jo pulled on my arm.

  “Come,” she told me, leading me to a completely pink shop. “I’m tired of you using my underthings.”

  We stepped into the lingerie shop and waved me ahead. Raymond followed in behind, looking slightly uncomfortable.

  I quickly grabbed some panties and started shuffling through some bras in a bin. Jo browsed the skimpy, lace and gauzy outfits as I stared at them longingly. I’d never had anything besides panties and bras and the idea of dressing in something so feminine and sexy appealed to me. Grabbing a couple bras that were my size, I made my way around the shop, opposite of Jo and fingered a few outfits. I grabbed two silk tank and short pajama sets, adding them to my basket before stopping at a black lace teddy set. It had sheer cups with an underwire, a ribbon closure in the front and lace that dropped across the abdomen. Attached to the hanger was a tiny little lace thong. I considered it for a while before snatching it and stuffing it in the basket. Going to the checkout counter quickly, the girl rang me up and announced the price for me. I looked around and Raymond headed over. He handed the card to the girl and she looked at us funny before snatching the card up and running it. The receipt printed and she stuffed it in the bag with the rest of my purchases.