In the Arms of the King

by Heather Killough-Walden

  “And you,” he told her before he lowered himself over her and brushed her lips in a tender, teasing kiss. “Are my fire.”

  The Shifter King,

  The Kings, Book Ten

  Jack’s mind exploded. It took him a fraction of a moment to realize that what was happening was real, not a dream. Not one of the many, many, many dreams he’d had of this very same moment, this very same hope. Sam really was in his arms, her hands around his neck, her lips pressed against his.

  She was kissing him.

  In the fraction of a moment that came after, the beast in Jack, the hunter – the man – took over. He crashed into her like the tidal waves that collided beside them, slamming her into the metal gate behind her. Passion and hunger drove him, the smell of her in his head, the feel of her against him forcing him to want to get closer, go deeper, feel more.

  His left hand was at her throat, where he felt her crazed pulse beneath his fingertips, and his right arm pulled taut around her waist, drawing her as close as he could humanly get her. Her chest rose and fell against his with painful abandon as he pressed her lips open with his and took possession of their kiss.

  He felt her tongue find his growing, sharpening teeth and could smell the adrenaline that coursed through her when she realized what they were – what they meant. But a growl rose from deep within him, one of possession, one of no-going-back, and that hand around her throat began to squeeze. In response, her heart beat even faster, and he caught the scent of something else. Something hot, wet, ready.

  A curse ripped through his mind. His strong body that was so accustomed to moving fast, to fighting and winning, suddenly could not move fast enough. He needed to taste what had been denied him for so long, needed it like he needed air. No, he needed it more than he needed air. Fuck air. At that moment, in that sudden earth-shattering flash of bliss, there was simply nothing else he could think of, nothing else that made it into his head.

  Nothing. Else. Mattered.

  He was suddenly bending, his hands gripping her round bottom, his strength lifting her against him, and she cried out in surprise against his lips. But she didn’t pull away. She didn’t break their kiss. So he smiled into it as he spun with her and strode to the higher partition of wall abutting the city’s bay, where he set her down.

  A wave hit high on the wall, and water played over them in a misted shower. A brief concern highlighted itself in Jack’s mind; the water would be cold on Sam’s naked flesh – and he wanted her naked like there was no tomorrow. But there was a tomorrow, he would make damned sure of it, and there would be other nights and other chances, and right now he had no patience anyway.

  Her red silk dress was already hiked up, exposing long, pale legs highlighted by the moon overhead and gleaming with sea salt moisture. He broke their kiss, trying hard not to scrape her lip with his now fully-exposed fangs as he withdrew. Her eyes were closed, her cheeks flushed, her lips parted and red and bruised. The sound of her pants, short and quick, was like rocket fuel on the combustion already raging inside him. But he steadied himself, reigning in the beast with a sharp pull of the leash.

  “Sam, look at me,” he said, his voice ragged and deep.

  Sam opened her eyes and settled them on him. They gleamed in the night, lit from within by her own rising power. They were amber magic, like liquid gold… and Jack was rocked to his core. For a moment, he forgot the world. He forgot his words, his actions, he forgot himself.

  But the animal in him was primal, raging and impatient, and he came back to himself like whiplash. “Samantha, I want you right here and right now,” he told her as he held her gaze and ran his hands up the smooth, smooth skin of her thighs. She dug her nails into the top of the cement wall on either side of her body, but didn’t look away. “So if you have a problem with that, you’d best speak up.”

  But he waited all of two precious, gracious seconds before he took her lack of a response as a green light and moved in. His hands made his way to the tops of her luscious legs and found the satin material of her underwear. His fingers curled around the delicate lace band at the top, his body tensing, his very soul ready for his next move.

  Then he moved over her, a waiting shadow, and reclaimed her lips. She made a helpless sound against his mouth, and he was tempted to ignore it. But he knew better, and nothing – including his own selfish need – was going to fuck this moment up.

  So he released her once more and slowly pulled back enough to let her breathe. He waited. Not patiently. But he waited nonetheless. “Well?” he said, a note of edginess to the word that spoke of his mounting, craven yearning. His teeth throbbed, and he knew they were clear as hell in the San Francisco moonlight.

  He was a monster with a glowing gaze and fangs. When she looked up at him and took a breath to speak, he was frankly expecting the worst. But Samantha licked her lips, the scent of her own yearning hit him like a ton of bricks, and she smiled, flashing her own perfect set of bright white fangs. “We’ll talk later.”

  And just like that, those long legs were wrapped around him, hooking at their ankles, and Jack was slamming his lips back down onto hers and ripping the delicate panties off her beautiful, willing body. The sound of the crimson material tearing was a sweet lullaby. He left it in shreds and curled his fingers under her legs, pulling them further apart to effectively expose her to the night.

  She made another helpless sound, and this time it was Sam who broke the kiss. But he let her go. He could hear her heart beating, calling to him, a siren song that mingled with the scent of her blood and begged him to make his mark.

  “The door!” she gasped. “What if someone –”

  “They won’t,” he told her flat-out. No one would be coming through that back door tonight, and no one would be going near the gates. They would die if they did, and they knew it.

  Sam’s fingernails had given up on the cement wall and were now digging into his shoulders. She was scared; he felt her tremble beneath his touch and caught the chemicals of fear in her blood. But she was also on fire; her skin was feverish with a nearly unnatural heat.

  She was opened up before him, bared to her core, and Jack had officially run out of patience.

  *****

  Sam had gone off the reservation. There was no other explanation for it. And the craziest part about it was that she honestly didn’t care. Jack Colton’s tall body was in charge, orchestrating her every move, playing her like the wanton instrument she’d become. His lips blazed a trail down her neck to her collar bone, and his teeth followed, scraping their warning as they went.

  Deep down, she knew what was happening with those teeth. Sam was a shifter, and in the end a wolf was a wolf, a man was a man, a dragon was a dragon. Each had fundamental knowledge, instructions for life, love, and loss braided into their DNA. She knew what his long, sharp teeth meant, and she knew what hers meant as well, because those teeth and their ultimate bite were a part of this night. They were a painful, meaningful destiny.

  Jack’s skilled hands slid slowly down her arms, and her red leather jacket slid along with them. It hit the ground at Jack’s feet; she saw it at a glance, a red pool of leather that left her only in her thin red dress and strappy heels. She was being stripped, in every sense of the word.

  For the second time that night, Jack’s thumbs slid under the spaghetti straps of her dress, her last defense. But this time it wasn’t her well being he had in mind. It was her undoing. And this time, she didn’t try to stop him.

  The straps came down, and freed from the only thing holding it up, the silk dress slipped like a whisper past her full, milky breasts and the nipples that stood so painfully erect in the cold night air. Sam moaned, her head falling back in a mixture of shame and abandon, and Jack moved in on the exposed column of her throat.

  *****

  He kissed her once upon that pulsing, precious lifeline. But then he straightened. Now that there was no barrier between them, nothing keeping him from seeing and touching her every precious s
ecret, Jack stepped back just for a moment, just long enough to imprint the vision of her on his brain forever. Her hands slipped from his shoulders and once more gripped the wall, her body quivering slightly in either cold or anticipation or outright fear, but he could not pass up this moment. He would not. It was a long time coming.

  She was a painted masterpiece, alabaster limbs, crimson dress draped around her waist, her breasts full and bared and shimmering with late evening mist and west coast fog. Jack’s body was rock hard, every single part of it rigid with insurmountable need. He could feel the wolf in him, the wild cat, the predator a flash away, a breath away, clawing at his insides for ultimate release.

  She must have seen something in his face, because Samantha’s lips parted, and her eyes widened. As if she were the prey about to bolt, the hunter moved in. He rushed forward, and slipped his arm around her waist, pulling her hard against his chest. He felt the warm softness of her body against his like a holy blessing, tender and delicate and yet stronger than anything he’d ever known. She smelled faintly of soap and the leather he’d relieved her of, but mostly of blood and of need, and the scent filled his nostrils and poisoned his mind.

  He felt Sam’s head drop onto his shoulder and heard her soft, ragged breathing in his ear. The animal in him reared its head. A flash of concern zapped through his mind, like a brief shorting-out light that buzzed in a dark room and then popped. In that brief flash, he thought of her past, of all she’d been through. Was she ready for this, for what he was about to do? For what nothing in the world was going to be able to stop him from doing?

  But the dark was there again, deep and thick, and filled with shadows that danced in wickedness. He smiled and turned his head into her to again kiss the pulse in her throat. His lips brushed the sweet, taut skin with all the tenderness in his heart before he pulled his lips back, exposed his fangs, and sank them deep into the side of her neck.

  Sam’s body arched against his. She inhaled sharply, and he felt her nails dig deep, drawing blood of their own. It was heaven.

  “Jack…” His name sounded like a magic spell on her lips, breathing across his shoulder, and his cock was absolutely throbbing in his pants. Her blood in his mouth fed his fever, tasted like candy and wine, and fucked with him like both. Do it, he thought. He knew she was getting there. Her confusion was melting away, and her body was taking over. Any second now, she would do what she knew deep down she had to do. She would take what she wanted, just like he was.

  She was close. He could feel it in the way she moved against him, he could hear it in every breath she took, and he could smell it. It was heady and intoxicating beyond anything he had ever experienced.

  Do it, Sam. He pulled against her neck, drawing more of her sweet, sweet blood into himself, letting it burn its way down his throat and fill his entire body with the magic of what she was. His arm slid free of her waist so he could grasp her legs, his grip bruising and possessive.

  “Jack…” she moaned again as his deft fingers moved up her creamy thighs, inching their determined way to her moist, waiting core. It was radiating heat. His mind swore in color, his body ached relentlessly, and when he brushed his thumbs along her slick outer lips and she quivered beneath his touch, he couldn’t hold back the growl that rose in his throat. It shook against her neck, low and long and mean.

  “Jack!” she finally cried out as he pressed two fingers inward, and she squeezed him back, tight and hot as hell. Oh Christ, he thought mindlessly. He was losing it. He couldn’t wait for her any longer.

  Her blood burned in his veins, setting him on fire. His cock throbbed, his head felt light, and sweat broke out along his body. Jack used his free hand to rip the front of his pants open, freeing his dick from its confines. Then he grasped Sam around the waist, pulled more of her blood into his mouth, and lined himself up.

  One hard thrust, and he was spearing into her, long and thick and rock-hard, filling her to the point of delirious pain. Sam cried out as her slick tightness was invaded, her scream filling the night and goading the monster predator within him. He sank deep, sliding his thick hardness into her, and animal sounds escaped him at the painful bliss of the experience.

  And that was her ultimate undoing. At last, Sam’s body took control, her head dropped to his neck, and she bared her fangs. Jack smiled in victory against her throat as she shook in his arms – and then sank her teeth in deep.

  Stars exploded in Jack’s mind, a kaleidoscope of agonized bliss. She drew his life force into her body, and it was the most wonderful surrender he had ever given. That’s it, he thought recklessly. That’s my Firebird.

  Down below, she squeezed the life out of him, so small and sweet. It was madness. And he was only getting started. He steeled himself, his nerve endings screaming for mercy and more at the same time, and he pulled ever so slowly back, gaining ground. Sam stiffened; she knew what was coming. And he didn’t disappoint.

  Again, he thrust forward, this time harder than the last – and he sank deeper. She cried out against his throat, and her teeth followed suit, sinking further into his neck. I deserved that, he thought with a killer grin against her vein as she drank him up and he claimed what was his.

  The glove of her core pressed in on him, crushing him like a dream, her rings of muscles reacting to his presence with innocence and need. Jack ran his hand up her waist and curled his fingers around the pool of scarlet material that was her dress. One swift motion, and he tore it from her body as he again pulled out of her and thrust back in.

  She was bared before him, exposed to the world, a pure goddess of curves and glory, and she was all his. He proved as much as he pressed his hand to her back, holding her still against his body and plowed into her again, drawing from her another beautiful, strangled cry.

  He was heading into delirium. Blood streamed from the half-moon wounds her nails had carved into his shoulders, staining the black shirt and suit coat that sweat plastered to his form. The night was spinning around them. The ocean crashed into the wall beneath them. They moved in time with it.

  He was savage, and so was she, both souls given in to the unnatural nature that ruled them with brutal insistence. Little by little, she opened further for him, allowing him access to her inner most being. And when he felt his resolve weakening and knew the end was coming, he pulled his teeth from her neck and took her head in his hands.

  Sam pulled her own teeth from the wound they’d made in his throat, and very slowly looked up at him. Heavy lidded eyes of glowing yellow speared through Jack’s consciousness. He was stunned, thoroughly and irrevocably, as he lowered his lips to hers. There, he pried Samantha’s dangerous teeth apart and gently tempted her tongue with his own.

  Sam trembled, shaking uncontrollably as his pace quickened, fierce and unrestrained. He was climbing a peak he hadn’t even known existed. His fingers brushed through Sam’s hair, curling around her thick, glorious waves, then fisting tight as he deepened his kiss, drinking her in. He tasted his own blood in her mouth. It had a primal effect on him, more fuel on the infernal blaze already consuming him.

  Then he dropped his hands to her waist, wrapping his fingers around its narrow softness before sliding up to cup her glorious, perfect breasts. Tenderly but relentlessly, he brushed his thumbs across her taut, no doubt aching nipples. She moaned into his mouth, and he felt her tighten around his cock. For half a second, he felt so much ungodly pleasure, he literally feared he would lose his mind.

  And then he was reaching the top of that heavenly hellish precipice, and Sam’s sounds against his lips became guttural and desperate. Jack’s hands dropped to her round, tight ass, grasping it hard. With a growl of primal resolve, he lifted her up, pulled her hard against him, drove into her with all of his inhuman strength – and exploded.

  *****

  Sam pulled away from Jack, breaking their kiss, and her all-out scream pierced the sanctity of the night. She couldn’t get it out fast enough, there was too much – too much! She’d never felt anyth
ing like it, could not have even imagined it, the pleasure was so intense it was painful to the brim, overflowing, and she was drowning in it. Her body tightened, clutching at Jack, grasping and constricting around him. She cried out as he drove into her again and again, pushing her further and further beyond human sanity.

  Until she was dangling over the edge of some kind of precipice, and all she wanted to do was jump. But she didn’t need to. Jack drove into her tight, slick sheath to its absolute hilt – and pushed them both off together. The night erupted into red and white behind her shut lids, and she lost track of sound, of scent, of reality. She was falling – floating…. I’m dying, she thought for half a second. Because this kind of feeling had to be wrong. It wasn’t allowed. Only death could feel as good as this.

  Jack spent himself inside her, claiming her with his body as he had his teeth, and her orgasm painfully milked him for every last drop he had to give. His arms were wrapped tight around her, un-breathably close as they came down from that impossible high together.

  It took forever. As Sam rested her head on Jack’s bleeding and tortured shoulder, the feeling came back to her toes and fingertips. Her skin began to notice the cold wind and salt air. Little by little, the world came blurrily back to her, unfocused but real.

  It was then that she fully realized she was completely naked. And Jack was still completely clothed. Typical, she thought with a slight smile. It seemed like something so very Jack – and something about that turned her on again.

  Just like that.

  But turned-on or not, the world was becoming more and more solid by the second, and though Jack was holding her so tight, she was starting to ache, Sam was admittedly beginning to feel the cold of the city around her.

  She turned her head, lifting slightly from Jack’s shoulder, and noticed Jack brush his fingers against the tattoo on his left forearm.