Chosen Mates (Beasts of the Bay Bundle)

by Bell, Lilith T.

  James’ voice from behind me startled me and I spun around to see he’d sneaked in while I was distracted with the paintings. He was still stripped to the waist and barefoot, wearing nothing but those comfortable looking jeans. He hadn’t come very close and so his scent hadn’t been noticeable over the background scent of him in his own home.

  Seeing his chest bare was nearly hypnotising. He didn’t have much in the way of body hair, with just a faint sprinkling of fine black hair around his nipples and trailing down the center of his chest, only thickening up once it got below his belly button and then disappeared into his jeans. He looked as though he was very physically active, but not like he lifted weights or anything like that. Just smooth, lean muscle all over.

  I took a deep breath and turned my eyes away to stop my gawking. That he was staring at me with that hungry gaze again wasn’t helping either.

  “What’s terrible about them? I think they’re amazing,” I said.

  “They’re childish fantasies. They hold up some imagined ideal instead of a real, complex person.” He came closer, making the need for him intensify all over again. I took a step away from him to try to make more space between us as he took the painting I’d been looking at and held it up against the wall. This one was the dark haired woman holding the severed head of a man in her hands. The style of the clothing looked very old, putting me in mind of a biblical story. The death of John the Baptist, maybe?

  “It’s crap,” he declared flatly. “Just a bunch of stupid, childish crap. This is an embarrassing waste of inspiration and skill.”

  “I don’t think there’s anything embarrassing about them,” I offered.

  “You don’t?” He turned to look at me skeptically. “Do you know who the woman in them is supposed to be?”

  I shook my head.

  “My mate. I’ve been dreaming of her for years and...” He tossed the painting on the floor as if it was a piece of garbage. “I’m sorry you saw them.”

  I drew my brows together, honestly baffled by all of this. “Why are you sorry?”

  “Because I’m an idiot who painted dozens of paintings of his dream woman and then let her see them.”

  I looked at him for a moment, then back at the painting he’d just thrown on the floor. The woman in the painting did look quite a bit like me, shockingly, but the details weren’t quite right. She had almost heartbreakingly beautiful features, so delicate and expressive. My own could never compete with that.

  “That’s not me,” I pointed out.

  “I know. That’s what makes it so stupid.”

  I turned back to him again, trying to figure out what he meant by it all. “You just met me. I know you think instinct brought us together and we’re supposed to be mates, but...I’m not your dream woman. I’m just Tina Tybalt.”

  He shook his head, his shaggy black hair ruffling a little with the gesture. “It doesn’t matter. They’re complete, self-indulgent shit.”

  “Is that why you have them all leaning so you can’t see the image?”

  “No. I do that with all my work. I hate seeing my own stuff, because it’s always terrible.” As if to illustrate his point, he pulled a painting out from the back of a stack and held it to show me. This one was simply two hands holding a knife together. The skin-tones and sizes of the hands were different so that it was clear that they were from two different people. The knife was being pushed through a book, which flexed and bowed like flesh as it was pierced and a few drops of blood were spilling over its side.

  “It’s like seeing your most personal thoughts made public,” he tried to explain. “It’s never exactly right and I always feel so naked in them. I can’t stand looking at my own stuff once it’s done.”

  “I feel a little like that about what I write.” The painting was strange and haunting, but I couldn’t see why he’d be ashamed of it except through creative insecurity. I watched him for a moment, looking over the frustration in his face. In the short time I had known him, that look seemed to come to him far too often. “Is this how you support yourself? With your art?”

  He nodded absently as he set the painting back down. “It is. For some reason, people seem to like them. I paid off my cabin last year after someone bought a selkie painting I did.”

  I gave him a look of respect. “How long have you been painting professionally?”

  He shrugged. “About nine years, I guess. I was selling my work at powwows in Oklahoma and shows starting when I was sixteen, but I only started really making money at it about three years ago when I moved out here. That was when I put the down payment on the cabin. I have this constant fear that the money is going to just evaporate overnight, so I still live like this.” He waved a hand around his Spartan surroundings.

  “I can understand that. I’d probably worry about the same thing.” I fervently hoped for his sake that his fears were unfounded, though. He was living the dream of every creative person I’d ever known. Off on his own, supporting himself entirely through his art? It was glorious.

  “Yeah?” He turned to look at me directly again, then took a step forward to close the distance between us. “You mentioned writing. What do you write?”

  I shrugged, feeling a bit silly to talk about my own largely imaginary writing career. “Urban fantasy, mostly. The struggles of the weird and non-human in modern life.”

  He chuckled softly as he came close enough to touch me. His fingers brushed my cheek and I automatically closed my eyes, leaning into that touch like a plant seeking the sun. “Writing what you know?” he suggested.

  I smiled self-deprecatingly. “What I didn’t know I knew?”

  “I imagine you knew it on some level, didn’t you? Always feeling a bit different from everyone else? Not quite grasping all the little social cues that humans take for granted? Feeling alone even when you’re in a crowd of people?” As he spoke, I felt the warmth of him coming closer until his body brushed mine again. He ducked to kiss along the side of my neck and I sighed.

  “That’s it exactly.”

  Chapter 6

  His hands slid down my body through the shirt, leaving a trail of fire in their wake. His fingertips just barely brushed over my breasts before moving down over my ribs, then my stomach. “It’s better when you’re with your own kind. We understand one another.”

  I made a soft sound of agreement, leaning into his touch eagerly. His hands moved back up again, to start unbuttoning the shirt from the top down. Feeling unexpectedly bold, I shrugged the shirt off my shoulders as soon as he had it unbuttoned, then moved my hands to the button on his jeans.

  One of his hands went back to my cheek to guide me in for a kiss. Those soft, full lips stroked over mine slowly, as if they could uncover all my secrets through enough attention. Maybe they could. His tongue lightly traced against my lips, teasing at them until I parted them to grant him entrance. Then he claimed my mouth with a muffled groan, plunging his tongue inside to seek mine out. There was little room for thought as I gave myself over to it completely, responding more than acting as I felt overwhelmed and swallowed up in his need for me.

  My fingers fumbled at popping open the button on his jeans, then dragged the zipper down. It felt awkward to take off someone else’s clothes, especially with his cock straining behind the denim. Every time my fingers brushed against the heat of his arousal my body would clench deep inside and I’d feel a fresh rush of arousal.

  Instead of pushing his jeans off once they were open, he scooped me up in his arms to hold me against his chest. I clutched to him with a yip of shock, disliking the sudden upheaval of being pulled off my feet. His body was solid and secure, though, showing no sign of strain at my weight and my fears of being dropped quickly dissipated.

  James carried me up the little staircase into the loft bedroom of the cabin, then laid me down on the bed. The first thing I noticed about it was that it was completely covered in soft, luxurious furs. His commentary before about being a capable hunter was right, if these were all f
rom his own hunting. I assumed he must have prepared the furs himself as well. Was there any end to his talents?

  “You seem a little unsure about what you’re doing,” James said before brushing a kiss against my lips. Before I could respond he’d caught my bottom lip between his teeth and suckled at it briefly, winning a low and needful moan from me. “Should I leave you here alone instead? If we stay together, we will mate.”

  Mate. Not have sex. Not fuck, as Anne had so eloquently put it. We would mate, like the animals we were beneath our skin.

  I took a deep breath to try to collect my thoughts, but that only succeeded in making me more aware of his scent. There was no helping it, was there? My hands went back to his jeans to tug them down his hips, revealing the charcoal grey boxer-briefs he wore beneath them. The outline of his thick arousal through the cloth was enough to make me feel light-headed.

  “I want you,” I said before leaning in to nuzzle into the side of his neck. It made me more aware of his scent, which made me sigh in pleasure. Once his jeans were down off his hips, he started to work them off on his own. My own hands skimmed up his thighs and settled on his ass, where they could knead the taut muscle. “I just haven’t...mated before.”

  “Well fuck,” he muttered by my ear, then pulled away to look at me. The hunger was still clear in his eyes, but there was something else there now as well. Concern, I thought. “Mating during your season tends to be a bit violent. There’s a lot of instinct and not much gentleness. I might hurt you.”

  “I don’t care.” The words were out before I had given them any real thought.

  The look he gave me was doubtful. “If this is what you want, I’ll do my best to hold back.”

  “It’s what I want.”

  He nodded, accepting that, then leaned in to brush a kiss against my lips again. As he did so I felt him shifting against me, pulling off the boxer-briefs. My hands at his ass helped him get them off and soon he was gloriously bare and against my body. His shaft felt hot against my thigh, even warmer than the rest of his body. I’d always run a bit hot whenever my temperature was taken, so that doctors were always concerned about me having a fever. Now I wondered if that was just normal for werewolves. Certainly, he made any humans feel cold in comparison.

  His lips left mine to trail down the side of my neck, then lower. His tongue followed my collarbone, teasing the skin there with the damp heat of his mouth and then the chill of his breath. When he finally got down to one of my breasts, I whimpered loudly and my hands buried themselves in his hair. He teased circles around my nipple before closing his lips around it to suck. I couldn’t help but roll my body up against his, sliding our skin together as I sought some relief from the ravenous desire within me.

  His teeth delicately pulled at my nipple until it was just barely inching into pain, then he kissed his way over to my other breast to give it the same tortuously sensual treatment. My fingers dragged through his hair as I breathlessly submitted to his touch.

  Soon his lips were trailing down my body, kissing over my ribs and then my stomach. His tongue briefly dipped into my navel to make me shiver. His hands slid down as well to grip my thighs, then pulled them up abruptly to change the angle of my hips so he could duck between my legs and kiss my sex as deeply and passionately as he had my lips.

  I gasped in shock, my fingers twisting a bit in his hair. He paused to look up at me, gauging whether my reaction was one of delight or upset. When he seemed satisfied that there was no complaint on my part, he dragged his tongue upwards through my inner folds and across the pearl of my arousal. I could do nothing but just watch him in transfixed wonder for a moment as he thoroughly explored me with his lips and teeth and tongue, his eyes never wavering from mine, never losing the starvation for me in their depths.

  As that tantalizing continued, I could feel myself growing impatient and desperate. I rolled my hips to him, trying to keep his tongue where I wanted it to be, but he made me wait, letting the anticipation build. When his lips finally closed around my clit and I felt him suck there gently, I thought I might die. My head fell back against the bed, eyes closing, and moaned his name as shudders rolled through my body, making my spine arch and resettle like the passing of a wave.

  His touches stayed gentle even if they were now more direct, still drawing me along slowly. I felt two of his fingers press beneath his chin to seek entrance to my body. They worked slowly into my tightness, never pushing too fast or too roughly. The other hand he had holding my thigh had a death grip on it and I couldn’t imagine the sort of self-control he had to be struggling with, if his need was even half as powerful as my own.

  As those fingers thrust in and out of my body in time to the soft brushes of his tongue and gentle suction, I could feel myself drifting closer and closer to the edge. All at once I tumbled over it, crying out his name again as I was racked with pleasure. My fingers curled tighter in his hair to tug him close to me and I felt the vibrations of his moans as he pressed into me, letting me ride out my orgasm against his lips. My body gripped at his fingers hungrily, though they could not give me what I so dearly needed.

  It felt like I was drifting back to earth as I came down from my orgasm, body relaxing bit by bit into the fur covered bed. His fingers slid out of me carefully and he kissed my sex one last time, then began to work his way up my body. All along the journey he left small kisses, following the curve of my stomach and then around one breast, then up my throat, and then finally to my lips. I moaned softly into the kiss, tasting myself shamelessly on him.

  At the same time as I felt his tongue teasing at my lips for entrance, I felt the blunt head of his cock pressing to me. My legs and lips alike opened to him, welcoming him into my body eagerly. He rolled his hips forward, just sliding his head through my slickness at first, then began working into me. It was even slower than the invasion from his fingers, my body drawn tighter around the greater thickness.

  Despite his warnings and concerns about hurting me, there wasn’t anything painful in it. Maybe it was because I was in season and my body was more receptive than it would for most virgins, or maybe he was just that good at preparing me. It felt odd and tight, but wonderful.

  Once his head was inside me, I sighed softly into the kiss and relaxed a bit more. He kept rocking there as he kissed me, pressing a bit deeper before he’d draw away again, always increasing his depth just a bit more on each stroke. Soon his hips were cradled by mine, his shaft nestled as deeply inside of me as it was possible to go. I automatically hooked a leg around his hips and rolled up to him, then moaned at the way that made me so much more aware of every little nerve he was touching.

  “Perfect,” he breathed against my lips, then began trailing kisses across my cheek. “So much more perfect than fantasy.”

  “Yes,” I sighed.

  He drew back to thrust into me again, settling into a steady rhythm. I kept rolling up to meet him, my eyes slitting open to watch his face. His own eyes were closed with an intense expression of concentration on his face. With his arms wrapped around me, I could feel the tension in them as he fought for control over instinct.

  I raised up to kiss lightly at his cheek, then nuzzled back to his ear. “You’re not hurting me. You can go faster.”

  “Are you sure?” he asked, voice strained.

  “Very.”

  That must have been all he needed to hear. The very next thrust was hard and deep, forcing the air from my lungs in a keening cry. Each thrust after it came quickly and gave me little time to recover, so that all I could do was cling to him and respond. That was no trouble, though, because there was more than enough instinct on my side as well. With barely any thought to it, I was responding to him, raising up to meet him, rocking my hips, begging him in soft murmurs.

  His hand slid down my body to work under me, gripping my ass and tugging me up to him to change the angle slightly as he kept driving into me relentlessly. The groans of his pleasure bordered on growls and when he kissed my throat I felt th
e threatening brush of his teeth. I couldn’t explain why, but part of me wanted him to bite me then. Not just a little love-bite to leave a hickey, but something to bruise. Maybe even bleed. He had warned me that mating during my season would be violent, but he must not have realized that the violence was exactly what I’d want.

  I clung to him tighter as I felt myself being pushed inexorably closer to my release once more. As the tension snapped, there was no thought in my side of it. I bit down on his shoulder, muffling my orgasmic cries as I writhed under him. He hissed sharply through his teeth, jerking against me, but didn’t pull away or offer any complaint. I could feel his skin give under my teeth and some tiny, civilized part of me worried about hurting him. The rest of me wanted to leave my mark, to claim him as mine and mine alone.

  Just as I released his shoulder to gasp for breath, he turned his head to snap where my neck and shoulder met, thrusting into me hard one last time with a growl. I could feel his cock jump inside of me, spilling jets of his hot seed within me, and that combined with the bite all tripped some switch inside of me I hadn’t even known was there. Moaning in an ecstasy I could never have even imagined before, I rolled between him and the bed, swept up in a second orgasm that came with a satisfaction that went far beyond simple sexual release. This was something so much more than that.

  I kept holding him to me and rocking to him as we both lost ourselves in the moment, then finally came down together as well. I laid there painting, vaguely aware of the taste of blood in my mouth. There was a stinging ache on my own shoulder as well that made me think he might have broken my skin.

  “That was amazing,” I murmured, turning my head to lazily nuzzle into his hair.

  James murmured something in agreement as he pulled out of me, then resettled with an arm and leg tossed over me. After a few moments passed, he spoke up. “We probably should have used a condom. I doubt you’re ready for pups.”

  “Considering I just found out what I am and met you...” I trailed off with a sigh. I couldn’t express any great regret over what we had just done, though. As stupid as it was from a human perspective—and I was very aware of just how stupid that was—it had reached some primal need within me too important to deny.