The Last Emperor

by Kari Gregg

  Nothing in his careful, organized life had ever felt as good, this right.

  Tunneling his fingers into Arit’s hair, Nick fisted it. He angled Arit’s jaw, and the kiss got better. Deeper. Wetter. Arit groaned and thrust his hips forward, his cock so hard he physically hurt.

  Nick mauled him. Eating at Nick’s mouth, too, Arit moaned again. Nick lowered a hand to squeeze one fleshy globe of his ass. “Clothes off,” Nick panted.

  Yes. His sweater and pants, socks and boots, all of it needed to be gone. Right the fuck now. Stripping would require Arit to release his grip on Nick’s silky hair, though, force him to let Nick go—a feat far beyond Arit’s power to achieve. He liked the growl in Nick’s voice, his mate’s hungry tremble, the jut of Nick’s prick stabbing into Arit’s groin. The musk of their arousal dizzied and delighted him. Arit grinded his hips into Nick and yanked at the waist of Nick’s boxers at the same time.

  “Shove down your pants.” Nick growled. “I want to suck you off.”

  Arit gritted his teeth, need tightening his balls. A whine of raw need lodged in his throat.

  Cooperation, however, seemed to be something Nick didn’t require. He easily slid out of Arit’s grasp and dropped to his knees. He shoved Arit’s sweater up, revealing Arit’s abdomen bisected by a dark treasure trail that dipped into his pants. Arit grabbed Nick’s shoulders to brace himself on his jellying legs. Nick fought with Arit’s belt and then unbuttoned his fly. “Oh fuck,” Arit said, chest heaving. The rasp of his zipper lowering broke the quiet.

  Nick leaned forward. He planted warm, damp kisses on Arit’s stomach. He shoved his hand past Nick’s fly. Arit cursed again as Nick found Arit’s rigid length, his head spinning when Nick wrapped his fingers around his girth to draw out Arit’s cock from his clothes. Hot breath washed the weeping head while Nick bent over Arit’s dick, and the pleasure exploding inside Arit nearly felled him. Only Nick’s groping grasp on his ass while he steadied Arit’s cock with his other hand kept Arit standing.

  On his knees, Nick smiled wolfishly. “You’ll go off like a rocket. Don’t hold back. I want it.” He licked his sinful lips. “We can try slow after we work the edges off.”

  Judging by the lust firing Arit’s blood and the desperate tremble of Nick’s body, Arit seriously doubted slow would be on their menu this first night together, but he wriggled, his dick bobbing to slap Nick’s cheek. “Watch your teeth.”

  Eyes sparkling, Nick bent to his work. He swallowed Arit’s cock in a single greedy gulp.

  Shouting didn’t help. Pleasure jolted through him, lighting up Arit. His muscles clenched, Nick’s hot mouth engulfing him almost more than he could bear. Nick didn’t tease. He flicked the bundle of nerves on the underside of his cock head and hollowed his cheeks. Taking Arit’s dick deep, Nick swallowed, and his throat squeezed the sensitive tip.

  Snapping his eyes shut, Arit tossed his head back, and the tingling tsunami of sensation flooded over him. He let his mate take him however and wherever Nick wished to go. Licking along his length on the upstroke tightened Arit’s balls, the seal of Nick’s talented lips around him providing sweet suction that rocked Arit’s world. Behind his closed eyelids, he saw nothing except a red haze of lust. He smelled only the earthy tang of their sweat, felt nothing beyond the wet wonder of his mate’s lips. All his senses narrowed. Focused. Exploded.

  Nick pumped, his grasp on the base of Arit’s dick tight. So good. Too good.

  As much as he wanted to prolong this, Arit wouldn’t last. Couldn’t. His orgasm already gathered at the base of his spine, moments away from splintering him apart. “Soon,” he said, chest heaving in harsh pants.

  Mouth full of Arit’s cock, Nick growled. The muffled, hungry sound streaked through Arit, eroding the fraying control Arit had mustered, and if that didn’t shatter him, Nick slipping a finger into his mouth alongside Arit’s cock would have. Because once he’d slicked the digit with spit, Nick reached around Arit’s hip to trace Arit’s crack. Arit shuddered at Nick caressing his hole as the rapacity of Nick’s voracious mouth redoubled.

  Pupils blown wide and black with lust, Nick stared at him. The pink line of his lips sealed around Arit’s cock dazzled Arit. The hollowing of Nick’s cheeks as he sucked burned Arit to the marrow of his bones, but even that failed to wreck him as readily and as completely as Nick working his finger past Arit’s softening ring to slide the tip into his ass. Grunting, he pushed back to take him in deeper, needing more. Craving it.

  Nick rewarded him by crooking his finger and rubbing over something inside Arit that consumed him whole. His muscles went taut. His jaw clenched, teeth gritting. A broken groan rolled from his chest at the sly strokes inside his ass, and within a few heartbeats, the fierce pleasure concentrating at his groin blasted through him, setting alight his every nerve ending from the soles of his feet to the ends of his hair. He bucked his hips, fucking into Nick’s eager mouth as he shot. Spurt after glorious spurt burst from his dick to coat his mate’s gullet. Nick swallowed around Arit’s dick emptying into him, and Arit howled.

  Balls draining, senses spinning, Arit wasn’t aware of collapsing to the floor with Nick. He knew only the fog his orgasm had cast over him for long, heart-thumping minutes. When the sensual haze cleared, he sprawled on the fancy tapestry rug sent from the capitol, his lax body twined with Nick’s. With one finger yet in Arit ass, Nick jerked his boxers down with his free hand and thrust his diamond-hard cock against the groove where Arit’s groin met his thigh. Nick plastered his chest to Arit’s, his swollen lips diving to ravage Arit’s neck. Nick thrust. Stupefied, still shaking from his own release, Arit managed to lift his arms to draw his mate in and arched to meet Nick’s thrusts. He splayed his fingers over Nick’s ass cheeks and pushed to urge him.

  “Yes,” Arit moaned, mind whirling at the scrape of Nick’s teeth on his throat. “Paint me with it. Mark me.”

  Nick’s husky growls as he fought toward his own orgasm was sweet, sweet music to Arit. The graze of Nick’s sharp white teeth transitioned to arousing nips and Arit’s spent dick twitched, struggling to fill with fresh blood to harden again. Groaning, lapping at Arit’s throat, Nick bucked his hips. Arit squeezed his thighs around Nick, providing a tighter ride. He bowed his spine, tipping his head back to give Nick more room to bite.

  The lone finger in his ass wasn’t enough, could never be enough, but Nick’s cadence of thrusts went erratic as soon as one of his teeth broke the skin on Arit’s throat. Nick shuddered and moaned, his tongue lapping up the coppery splash Arit scented. His own mouth watered, his thirst for sampling his mate’s blood kindling inside him. Nick thrust and thrust and thrust, cadence breaking in his abandon.

  “Drink,” Arit urged him. “Drink your fill.”

  As if that was all Nick had needed to push him over the edge, Nick tensed. A long, low moan worked from his throat, the warm puff of air from his breath bathing Arit’s blood-slick neck. Nick shot, dick spitting cum across Arit’s abdomen in heavy pulses. Rich and enervating, the pungent smell of Nick’s release wafted into Arit’s nostrils. Saliva pooled in Arit’s mouth because he wanted a taste, wanted as much as Nick could give him, his semen and his blood. His cock tingled in anticipation. He’d have Nick’s dick in his mouth before the night was done. In his mouth, in his ass. Arit nor Nick would rest until they’d had their fill of one another. If satisfying this terrible craving was possible.

  Arit wasn’t sure the need could ever be met. He gathered Nick into his lax body. He oomphed out a sharp breath when his mate collapsed onto him, crushing Arit into the hard floor with his dead weight, but Arit longed for the messy exhausted burden of Nick bearing down on him. Depleted, Nick kissed Arit’s throat through gasping pants for air. Nick’s too-short hair tickled the underside of Arit’s chin. Nick squirmed, tensing his muscles to lift up, and Arit tightened his legs around Nick’s hips to hold him there.

  “’m too heavy,” Nick slurred into Arit’s neck.

  “You’re not.” Arit sighed,
shoving his ass back to bury Nick’s finger deeper into him. “You’re perfect.”

  That was exactly what Arit had been most afraid of.

  Chapter Ten

  They moved from the hard floor to the enormous four-poster bed in the suite’s master bedroom…eventually. As Nick had surmised, the blowjob had only taken the edge off Arit’s lust. How his mate had managed to reach twenty-eight years without sex was a mystery to Nick, who had taken his first lover in his teens, but now that Arit had enjoyed a sample of what he’d been missing, Arit would be eager for more. Showing Arit the pleasures of his body spiked Nick’s arousal, too. Granted, the mating heat ramped up their desires, and shifters didn’t hit their sexual prime until their late twenties. They both had been genetically programmed to fuck and fuck often to seal their bond. Still, the craving that gnawed at Nick after the mind-numbing orgasms in front of the picture window shocked him.

  He didn’t want to wait for Arit to finish the shower Nick had persuaded him to take. Arit had scowled, handsome and perturbed, when Nick had shoved him toward the suite’s bathroom.

  “We’re shifters,” Arit had grumbled, though his hand had already dropped to scratch at Nick’s semen drying on his abdomen. “We like the scent of cum marking our lovers.”

  “You were a virgin. What do you know what we like during sex?” Nick had pushed Arit forward. “I want to eat out your ass. Go. Wash. Get clean, and while you are, think about my mouth and tongue doing wonderfully wicked things to you.”

  When he heard the shower spraying water on tile, Nick kicked off his boxer briefs. He marched around the bed to his closet and, once he’d opened it, he shoved his underwear into a hamper he’d discovered inside while exploring his suite his first night in the Urals. He tried not to think about the dirty clothes the lodge’s employees had retrieved and laundered for him since his arrival. Growing up with maids, a cook, private tutors, and various other support staff, Nick would have thought such things wouldn’t bother him, but he guessed he’d lived in the lands of men too long. Mom had taught him to operate her washer and dryer when he was ten, and he’d been tending his own dirty laundry since. His skin crawled at the idea of others pawing his underwear, but Nick had tolerated the intrusion at every hotel he’d visited while touring the tribe’s territories. One more item on the list of crap he needed to adjust to.

  He shut the closet door. Walked to the bed. He pulled the comforter down to drape over the footboard, out of the way. He grabbed the extra decorative pillows and tossed them toward a wingback chair. Chewing his bottom lip, he retrieved a bottle of lube he’d brought with him from home and shoved it under one of the remaining pillows but knew he could do better to set the scene for his mate’s seduction. Wanted to do better. While the shower steamed up his bathroom, Nick returned to the sitting area of the suite and examined the bottles on display on a wet bar tucked in one corner. He frowned because he didn’t yet know his mate enough to choose between spirits and wine. Because he was going for ambiance, he selected a pair of dainty wineglasses, a cork puller, and a bottle of chardonnay. He filled a bucket with ice from the mini fridge.

  Though the sounds of the shower’s spray halted, Arit still hadn’t emerged from the bathroom when Nick returned to the bedroom. He set the wine on a bedside table. To give the wine opportunity to breathe, Nick deftly removed the cork and replaced the bottle in the ice. Still no Arit. Excitement skittered through him nonetheless. He hurried to the sitting room to steal flowers from an arrangement on a side table.

  By the time Arit walked out of the master bath, towel hanging precariously on his lean hips, Nick had plucked petals from the blooms to scatter them across their mating bed.

  Arit halted in the doorway, eyes narrowing on the mattress scattered with fragrant rose petals. He scrubbed his wet hair with a second towel. “Really?”

  Frowning, Nick set aside the naked stems and marched to the wine and poured for them both. “You don’t seal a mating bond every day.”

  Arit tossed the towel he’d used to dry his hair behind him and then yanked away the one covering his erect dick, too. One corner of his mouth curved when he accepted the wine Nick brought to him. “You realize shifters metabolize alcohol too quickly to get drunk, right?”

  Nick tamped down his annoyance. “I like the taste.” He lifted his glass and tipped it in Arit’s direction in wry acknowledgment. “Which is why I imagine you keep the bar stocked for guests.”

  Lifting his own glass to his ripe pink lips, Arit shrugged. “Dad takes care of amenities in the lodge.” He shoved his nose into the glass and sniffed. His brow furrowed. He tentatively sipped. And grimaced. “Not bad,” he lied.

  Amusement flooded Nick. “Here.” Nick retrieved the glass from his mate and set both glasses on the table next to the chilling wine. When Arit’s arms looped around Nick’s waist and Arit pressed into him from behind, Nick jumped and then relaxed, his tension draining from his muscles at the solid weight of his mate pushing into his spine and Arit’s chin resting on Nick’s bare shoulder.

  “I appreciate the effort.” Arit angled his head to skate an open-mouthed kiss on Nick’s warm skin. “But there’s no need. You realize I’m a sure thing?”

  Nick did know, but his mate was also a virgin. At such a late age, Arit’s prolonged abstinence had to be significant to him. Had he been saving himself for his mate—for Nick—all these years? Apparently. Nick couldn’t grasp it, didn’t understand it, but he respected the discipline and control Arit had exerted to remain chaste until only a few moments ago in front of the suite’s picture window. Arit had sacrificed for his future mate and deserved all the romance Nick could muster, despite the strategic foundation of their relationship. Maybe because their mating was based on politics rather than affection, Arit had earned better than a perfunctory bedding. “I want to make this special for you.”

  “It will be. Already is.” Arit licked Nick’s nape. “You’re nervous,” he said, voice husky. His warm breath heated Nick’s skin deliciously.

  Shoulders sagging, Nick dipped his chin down, head lowering to give Arit greater access. “A little.”

  At the scrape of Arit’s teeth, Nick shivered. Arit chuckled. “Me, too,” he said.

  And struck.

  Pain shot through Nick as Arit’s canines stabbed into him, the bite vicious, deep…and deeply arousing. Lust rocketed through Nick. His body bowed, his loosened muscles abruptly tightening at the twin sensations of hurt and pleasure s earing through him. He gritted his teeth, his dick jutting hard as flint at his groin. He lowered his hand to grasp his cock when Arit swallowed Nick’s blood, gave his dick a few lazy tugs while Arit drank and mauled him. Stroking Nick’s belly, Arit moaned and pushed his hard length against the crack of Nick’s ass.

  If his mate wondered if Nick would mind bottoming, he need wonder no more. Nick arched his hips, squirming to lodge Arit’s dick in the seam of his ass, and then braced to provide Arit a solid base to thrust. Nick had never felt compelled to top to prove who and what he was to his lovers. In his heart of hearts, he’d always believed the expectation alphas should always top was another example of tribal foolishness that short-changed their peoples. Everyone had their preferences, but in his experience, an alpha who refused to bottom for his lovers—be the partner an omega, a beta, or another alpha—by no means demonstrated the alpha’s strength. Far from it. Such silly demands instead spotlighted the selfish alpha’s raging insecurities.

  “Want me?” he asked, his breath stuttering. “Top or bottom. Blowjobs, frotting, rimming, or fucking, I love it all. If you’d feel more comfortable giving rather than receiving the first time, I’m game.” His stomach knotted with the intensity of his desire, his craving for his mate’s cock inside him a physical ache. “Very game.”

  Grunting, Arit bit harder into the meat of Nick’s nape and settled his gloriously thick cock in Nick’s ass crack. Arit moaned, loud and low, when Nick clenched his ass cheeks to squeeze the dick riding him. “You are the most bizarre shift
er I have ever met,” Arit said after his teeth finally released Nick.

  Maybe. Probably. Nick hadn’t failed to notice the slick of pre-cum dampening the tip of his mate’s dick, though. “I want you.” He gave his needy dick another pump. “I don’t care about the how of it.” The slow cadence Arit set rubbing his cock against Nick’s ass sensitized Nick’s hole with every stroke. He tingled, the sensation of emptiness building inside him to nigh unbearable levels. “I put a bottle of lube under the pillow on the bed. Fuck me if you like.”

  “Isn’t there someone here more experienced, who knows what they’re doing?” Arit snorted a laugh. “Show me how to make it good for you first.”

  Blood streamed from the bite on Nick’s nape in wet trails. The coppery scent dizzied Nick as he turned in Arit’s embrace. He’d meant to guide Arit to their mating bed, but red blood painting Arit’s delectable mouth and smeared down his chin set Nick to trembling. Nick had to taste Arit. Not kissing those plump red lips was unthinkable. Nick bent his head, and Arit angled his jaw to meet him, their mouths mashing together in eager lust. Nick shuddered at Arit’s tongue dancing with his, loved the sharp prick of Arit’s canines. The salty, metallic flavor of Arit’s mouth dazzled him, and when Arit bucked his hips into Nick’s groin, grinding their cocks together, Nick grasped Arit’s biceps. He pushed and, body loose, Arit let him. They both fell to the mattress in a tangled heap.

  Unlike his mate, Nick had enjoyed many lovers. He had never considered himself a slut, per se, but he’d rarely denied himself physical release if the chance for an orgasm or three arose. He liked sex. His partners and a couple of boyfriends over the years had taught him what turned him on best, how and where to touch, lick, and suck to please whoever he was with and, most importantly, to read his lover’s responses to make sex good for them, too.