Beyond the Dark

by Angela Knight

  His voice was heavy, his expression dark, remorseful.

  “I tried to be honest with you, Grace.” He shook his head, his lips tightening with what she now knew was self-anger. “But I hungered for you.” A frown creased his brow, as he stared back at her as though that hunger still confused him. “Even now, my control is less than it should be.” His frown deepened. “I tried to tell myself it would be different between us, but I knew better.”

  Her sex clenched as slick juices spilled between her thighs.

  “Do you think explaining it any further to me would have made a difference?” she asked “I’m not a child, and I’m not completely ignorant. Once you told me what you had, I remembered the tabloid stories, I knew I could be looking at more than you were telling me. Evidently, I didn’t care.”

  His head tilted as he watched her with confusion. “How could you not care, Grace? It will change your life forever. Place you in danger. It will restrict your life and will turn you into a target for the scientists out there, who are determined to destroy us.”

  “And that’s what bothers you the most,” she said softly. “That danger. Admit it, Matthias. You’re frightened.”

  His lips tightened. “I will protect you.”

  “No matter the cost,” she guessed. “You’re afraid that your attempts to protect me will cause me to hate you.”

  He growled. That sound sent rapid little bursts of near-ecstasy to explode through her vagina, as it tightened her clit further.

  “That isn’t all,” he admitted. “They want our mates.” He stared back at her, tortured, desperate. “The mating causes a decrease in aging. The couples who have mated are aging only one year per every five to ten years. You will live far longer than you ever imagined, and it’s because of this that the rogue scientists are so desperate to get their hands on mated pairs.”

  Okay, now that was shocking. Grace stared back at him, her lips parting in disbelief.

  “How much longer?” she asked.

  He swallowed tightly. “We aren’t certain, but there’s rumors that the first Lion Breed created more than a century ago still lives, and that he and his mate are still in their prime.”

  “Whoa!” She breathed out, moving to the chair beside her and sitting down heavily. “That’s definitely a decrease in aging.” Her hand pressed against her lower stomach. “Does it stop after conception?”

  He shook his head sharply. “Not that we’ve seen. Conception is so difficult that our doctors and scientists believe this is nature’s way of ensuring the species. Until the babes have grown and we see how this aging affects them, we can’t be certain of anything.”

  “Well, this definitely throws a little kink into things,” she breathed out roughly. “You said Merinus and Callan have only one child? The reports state three. I remember that.”

  He shook his head. “There are three pride children. The press mistakenly reported the children as all belonging to the pride leader and his mate, and they didn’t bother to correct it. They keep their mates closely guarded while they’re pregnant, and out of the public eye. It’s the only way to ensure their safety.”

  “And the wolf mates?”

  His jaw flexed, a muscle ticking violently just under the flesh.

  “No one knows where Dash Sinclair hides his family. Aiden and Charity stay on the Wolf Breed compound in Colorado and never leave it. Their child will be born under as much restriction as we were created in.”

  “And if I conceive?” she whispered.

  “We’ll have no choice but to return to Colorado. If it happens.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Grace rubbed at her bare arms as she stared back at Matthias, the irritating pinpoints of sensation racing over her flesh were driving her insane. She needed him to touch her, not stand there trying to explain things neither of them could change at this point.

  “So, you’re regretting not telling me all this before?” She leaned back in the chair and licked her lips, watching as his eyes darkened, his dark cheeks flushing a brick red, as his lips became fuller, his expression darker with lust.

  “I should have told you.” His nostrils flared as she lifted her hand and stroked it over her collarbone. Every inch of her body was tingling now, begging for him.

  “Consider me told,” she stated.

  “What?” He was staring at her, almost dazed now, his hands slowly pulling from the pockets of his black leather pants. Pants that did nothing to hide the straining length of his arousal beneath them. He was thick and hard. She was wet and wild, and she needed him now.

  “Look, this is all very interesting, and I’m sure I’m going to have questions eventually. You know, once the ramifications of the whole mating thing hits me? Sometime after you get your wolfie ass over here and fuck me.”

  His eyes narrowed, as his hands went to the black shirt he wore, his fingers sliding buttons from their holes, and his gaze gleaming now with pure lust.

  “My wolfie ass?” he asked her softly, his voice dark, rough.

  Grace slid her shorts from her body, leaving only the silk panties she wore, as his shirt was tossed to the floor. Her own shirt came off easily, as he sat down and pulled his boots and socks off.

  She rose to her feet, and before he could rise from the wide, padded stool he had sat on, she was in front of him.

  “You’re slow.” She knelt before him, pushing him back against the chair behind the stool, her fingers moving for the metal closures on his pants.

  “So I am,” he growled, his tight abs flexing as she parted the edges of the pants and revealed the straining length of his cock.

  The piercing gleamed against the dark flesh.

  “Why the piercing?” she asked, lowering her head to let her tongue worry the little ball at one end of the bar.

  His hands slid into her hair, a tight groan leaving his throat.

  “A reminder,” he panted.

  “What does it remind you of?” She held the hard shaft, turned her head, and sucked the upper side of the crest between her lips to allow her tongue to stroke around the jewelry with flickering movements.

  “Freedom,” he bit out. “It reminds me of freedom.”

  “Why?”

  He tightened further as her teeth gripped the bar.

  “We weren’t allowed piercings or tattoos in the labs. Nothing that would identify us. Nothing that would make us individuals. It reminds me. I’m free.”

  Her heart clenched, and her soul bled for the pain that resonated in his voice. His freedom came down to his choice to be pierced and marked. His ability to be an individual.

  She sank her mouth over the engorged head of his erection and sucked him in deep. She wanted the memory of that place wiped from his mind. She wanted it replaced with need, with hunger. For her.

  He belonged to her.

  He growled her name as he leaned back against the chair, sprawling across the stool and the chair cushion behind him. Her fingers stroked the thick shaft as his hands clenched in her hair, guiding her movements, showing her how to please him best.

  He liked to feel her teeth raking gently along the crest. The way her tongue played with the bar piercing his flesh.

  As she sucked his cock head, her hands pushed at his pants, sliding them over his thighs, and pushing them down his legs.

  There, now she could explore flesh she had been dying to touch. His scrotum was silky and smooth, only the faintest hint of silky hairs covering it. It tightened as she cupped it in her palm then slid her nails over it.

  “Grace,” the growl in his voice was warning. “Leave me control, sweetheart. Don’t push this.”

  Oh, a dare.

  She opened her eyes, lifting them to meet his as her lips lifted from the throbbing crest and began to slide down the straining shaft.

  He was breathing hard now, his hands gripping the arms of the chair rather than her hair.

  “What control?” she whispered. “I don’t have any, why should you?”

  She
wanted that loss of control. She wanted the wild man she glimpsed in his eyes, the bad boy she knew he was. Her lips moved lower, her tongue licking until she came to the tight, silky flesh of the sac below.

  “Dammit. Grace,” he cursed, but he arched to her, allowing her the freedom to lick over the tight flesh, to feel the straining tension there.

  As she watched, a small spurt of pre-cum spilled from the slit on his cock head. He growled again, a thick rumbling sound of hunger that had her heart racing in excitement.

  She used the slick fluid to ease the stroking of her hand along the shaft, feeling it flex beneath her fingers as her lips investigated his balls and her tongue flickered over the silken, tight flesh.

  “You don’t know what you’re doing,” Matthias snarled. “What you’ll cause.”

  The fingers of her other hand moved lower, beneath the tense flesh of his scrotum and found the ultra-sensitive flesh beneath. She couldn’t have anticipated his reaction.

  She was only stroking the flesh between his balls and his anus, but he jerked, his hands gripping her shoulders and pulling her back as he jackknifed from the chair.

  “I warned you,” he bit out, his voice tight and hard, wicked with a sensual threat. “You want to play games, mate. Let me show you what happens when you do.”

  She had somehow released more than she had bargained for. Within seconds she found herself bent over the stool, Matthias behind her, and before she could stop him, his lips and tongue were moving along the cleft of her rear.

  She should have been frightened, terrified. She had never been touched there, refusing to allow any previous lovers that freedom.

  But Matthias wasn’t asking for anything. His tongue was ravenous, licking and stroking, as his hands parted the full curves and he delved lower.

  “Matthias!” She cried out his name, trying to lift herself from the wickedness of the caress, the stroke of his tongue over the entrance to her rear. Another stroke, then an entrance so shocking she began to shudder.

  “I’ve been dying for this,” he groaned behind her, his hands caressing over her ass as he rose, his cock tucking against the entrance.

  “It’s not going to fit,” she gasped.

  At the same time, she felt the first blast of the preseminal fluid explode from the tip of his cock and his cock sinking into the tight orifice.

  Grace tried to writhe beneath him, but his hands held her in place, his cock parting her flesh marginally as the forbidden channel began to burn.

  Sweet God, what was he doing to her? What was in the silky fluid that both lubricated and eased the passage she knew he was preparing to take?

  With each spurt, he was able to sink deeper inside her, stretching the unbreached entrance, burning it with a pleasure/pain that had her screaming beneath him.

  “I love your ass.” His hands kneaded the curves. “I would watch you when you walk, my cock so damned hard I thought I would die, imagining this. Imagining taking you here, feeling you accept me. Submit to me.”

  Submit.

  That was it. Grace could feel it in him. The dominance and power he had kept hidden from her. He had let her make nearly every decision in their relationship until now. He was ensuring his dominance now. Reinforcing the fact that he might give up a few things for her, but he still controlled this. He controlled her response. He controlled her sexuality.

  She arched before him now, feeling another heated spurt of the fluid that relaxed and eased, even as it intensified sensation. She could feel the burn inside her anus, demanding more, demanding the hard stretching, the submission required to take him in.

  “You’re mine!” The declaration was made with a rough demand. “Say it, Grace. Mine.”

  “Yours,” she panted. She wasn’t about to argue. Not now. Not when he could stop and take the incredible sensations away from her.

  He was thick and hard, hot and demanding, and with the aid of the slick, forceful jets of heated fluid, he was taking her, stretching her, forging inside her until his scrotum was pressed into the wet heat of her pussy, and his cock was fully embedded in her rear.

  Then he was moving. He didn’t pause. He didn’t wait for her to make sense of the pleasure that mixed with the pain or the burning need and heated resistance.

  His hands gripped her hips, and he began fucking her with slow, forceful thrusts. Each time he slid back another spurt of heated fluid sensitized her inner flesh further. Each forceful thrust was taken with slick ease and with a desperate cry.

  He moved one hand from her hip, sliding between her thighs, his fingers surrounding her clit, stroking and milking it as his thrusts increased.

  She could feel the drag of the bar that pierced his cock, an added sensation that dragged a desperate breath from her lungs. His thighs braced hers, his balls slapped against sensitive flesh, and within seconds Grace felt her release racing through her.

  She bucked beneath him at the hard explosions that began to shudder through her. Pleasure became an agony of ecstasy. Sensation became waves of desperate, clenching release that she was certain she would never survive. As one would recede, another would build. As the thickening of his cock filled her ass and his spurts of release began to burn inside her, another took her, shook her, and had her fighting to scream.

  She was writhing, jerking beneath him, held still by his body as he came over her, his lips covering the mark he had made on her shoulder earlier, his tongue stroking it as his sharp teeth held her in position.

  She was lost. Lost in the orgasms pouring over her, and the mental and physical submission racing through her. She belonged to Matthias, just as he belonged to her. And the knowledge wasn’t scary. It was right. For the first time in her life, belonging to someone was just right.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  The horrible craving for Matthias’s touch had finally eased as the day gave way to night. He forced her into the shower again, chuckling as she leaned against his chest and tried to doze while he bathed her. It was a good thing he still had some strength in his legs, because hers was shot.

  She was limp, physically and mentally sated, and sleepier than she could ever remember being in her life. When he finally carried her to the bed and tucked her in close to his chest, a satisfied little sigh left her lips.

  Her lips smoothed over the curved bar, secured at both ends by small silver balls that pierced his nipple. The metal was warm from the warmth of his flesh and reminded her of what he had said about his reasons for getting the piercings. To remind him of his freedom, his individuality. He was pierced and tattooed, scarred inside and out, and he was the most beautiful creation on the face of the earth, as far as she was concerned.

  The thin scar that ran from his brow, across his eyelid, and halfway down his cheek was barely noticeable to her, though she ached often at the thought of the pain he must have felt when he was wounded.

  He was a bad boy. There was no doubt about that. Wicked, carnal, intense, and arrogant. But when he held her, his arms were gentle, his hands tender as he soothed her closer to sleep.

  “My dad would like you.” She yawned as she snuggled closer to him. “My brothers would, too.”

  She felt his hand still on her back where he had been stroking her spine.

  “Do you think they would?” His voice might sound unconcerned, but Grace knew him now, and she knew that strained edge to his tone was one of hope.

  “I know they would.” She was confident of it.

  “Why would they like me?” he asked her. “I don’t look like any man’s vision of a son-in-law, Grace.” Stark, almost bleak, his regret washed over her, forcing her to blink tears from her eyes.

  “You’re strong, honest. You stare people in the eye when you speak to them, and I love you. Trust me, Dad won’t be able to resist you. And of course, Mom is just going to be in heaven. She’ll think you need to be fattened up. She’ll bake you homemade pies and bread and spoil you every chance she gets with her best dishes.”

  “Why would she do that
?” Confusion lingered in his tone.

  Grace moved her head back, staring up at him in the dark. “Because she’ll love you, Matthias. That’s what mothers do. My brothers will teach you how to play touch football, and their wives will ogle your ass when they aren’t looking. My sisters-in-law are exceptionally intelligent. They know a fine male form when they see one.”

  Matthias stared down at her, frowning. She was talking as though his acceptance within her family was a done deal, without him having to make concessions or scrape for it. That couldn’t be true. Nothing had ever come so easily to him. He had to fight for everything. It was accepted.

  “Your father and your brothers will see me for what I am, Grace,” he warned her, hating that fact. “They’ll want you to choose another man. Accept that now.”

  He felt her surprise, then her amusement at the soft laugh that wrapped around him. “Oh, Matthias, you just don’t understand families,” she whispered into the darkness. “Daddy will take one look at you, and he’ll take you out to his shed where he tried to fool us into believing he’s building something. He’ll give you a beer and interrogate you for hours as he puts you to work sanding this or that, or using a hammer. That’s his form of acceptance. Trust me. He’s going to love you.”

  “I don’t know how to sand or hammer.” For the first time in his life Matthias wondered if he was feeling an edge of fear.

  “My brothers will follow along, of course,” she informed him, as he felt a curl of trepidation. “They’ll grin and smirk, as Daddy questions you, throw out a few questions of their own, then grab the football and rescue you.”