“I asked you a question—the flat limestone slab, lighter than the rest. You see?”
“What about it?”
“It’s a little bit warm from the fire, but not too hot. I’ll hold your hair and press your cheek to that rock while I fuck you. It’ll feel good on your cheek. A little rough, but it won’t mark you.”
I swallow.
He slides his hand to the top of my mound. My entire soul curls and unfurls from sheer anticipation. I want him in me—his fingers, his cock, his tongue, whatever he’ll give me.
He slides his hand down, hitting my drippingly wet core. “You’re ready for me,” he whispers as he slides my juices around with two fingers.
His fingers are blunt and thick, like finger-sized caveman clubs, but he plays me like a maestro. He’s a master hunter, this guy, with superhuman physical skills.
“I’m going to have to fuck you hard,” he says. “I can’t help it. We almost died, and something gets in me when that happens.” His breath sounds a little ragged. “I’m making you very ready, though.” He applies two fingers to the job of getting me off now.
The more I twist, the more tightly he holds me.
He’s like one of those Japanese finger traps, tightening the more you try to escape—except in addition to tightening his hold on me, he strokes my core with more concentration, more keen resolve. More wicked technique. I twist on purpose now, enjoying his harsh hold.
“I want to enter you, Ann, and feel you tight around me.” He’s stroking me, panting. I’m fighting not to come, clenching my pussy, but really, that just makes the feeling more intense.
“I’m going to hold you by the hips. I’m going to hold you hard.”
He’s moving his fingers. Or maybe I’m moving around them.
“We almost died, and it makes me need you so much.”
He removes his hand from my sex and returns to my nipples, anointing them with my juices—gently this time.
My pussy throbs with need in the cold air. “Kiro! Touch me there again,” I beg. “Or let go of my hands and I’ll…I make myself ready.”
“Now you’ll make yourself ready? You’re already ready.”
“God, yes,” I gasp. “So ready.”
He hauls me up by the wrists and drags me to the flat rock he’d pointed out to me.
He lowers me down to my knees, standing behind me. I’m naked in the cool air—a naked, mud-covered warrior princess, kneeling in front of Kiro.
“Put your cheek to the place I showed you. Ass in the air for me.”
He doesn’t wait for my compliance, or maybe he’s just as crazy into the caveman thing as I am right now. He grabs my hair and forces me facedown, presses my cheek to the rock. Then he caresses my butt cheeks, like this is a new thing he wants to get into exploring. “You are so beautiful.”
He holds open my butt cheeks and drags a finger up my seam. My asshole jumps and quivers as he brushes his wicked finger over it.
I nearly implode from arousal. “Kirooo…”
This pleasurable feeling spreads through me as he presses a hand to the small of my back, pressing me down. It so turns me on, I feel crazy.
Fingers of sensation move all over my skin now, even where he’s not touching. My body is a topographical map of craving. I almost died today, too. And now I’ve never been more alive.
He jabs his fingers into my hips, positioning me for his pleasure.
I’m completely debased, this animal for him to fuck. I’ve never wanted it more.
I feel him position the head of his cock at my entrance, and all I can think is, yes. I want him to fuck me. Not just fuck me, but like this.
I feel him at my entrance, rough fingers positioning his head for me. They hit my clit, and I squeeze my pussy, trying to stave off coming. But that just makes it hotter. The feeling of him effervesces through me and he’s not even inside me.
“Relax for me. Open for me,” he grunts, working himself in.
My sex throbs, needing, wanting whatever he’ll give me. He starts out slow, pushing, filling. Then he shoves in, slamming mercilessly into me, filling me, filling my body, filling my mind.
I can feel him all up to my eyes.
He stays deep inside me, pressed flush to me. Then he reaches around and touches me, finding my pleasure, taking it like prey.
I come, shattering in a thousand pieces. A sound tears from his throat, and he begins to move, stoking me higher, taking me higher, taking everything from me.
He comes with something between a groan and a cry. He comes forever, sliding his hands around my lower back, coming down raggedly.
Chapter Thirty
Kiro
We set back out and make excellent time. I allow Ann to go without her hands bound now. I carry the canoe, and she follows me without objection.
She seems…different. I ask her what’s wrong, and she says nothing’s wrong. Still, she looks at me differently now. Like she’s seeing new things in my face that she didn’t see there before. She’s a little wary of me, I think.
Having her bend in front of me and beg was the most amazing thing I ever experienced. No, being inside her was the most amazing thing. Or maybe it was just touching her. Listening to her breathe. Or having her on my lap and listening to her enjoy the way I learned her and touched her. Maybe that was the best.
It was all the best.
Several hours and many miles later, I set the canoe into the fast-moving water. I want her again already. If we didn’t need to make good time, I’d stop to fuck again.
Instead we go. We’re heading west for a time. The current will be with us. The water is nice and high for this time of year, thanks to a rainy summer. It’s good; the trek was tiring. I still feel the poison of the wasp stings in my body, though the mud I found was good. Light in color, best for stings.
In the boat I ask her about her life growing up. I want to know everything about her.
She tells me about walking to school. ‘A shitty little school,’ she calls it. Her face softens. Stories relax her.
She went to high school, which I didn’t do—I stopped in third grade. She tells me about high school. She studied subjects I don’t even recognize.
She assures me that I’m as smart as anyone who attended high school, but I know my knowledge isn’t the same.
I ask her about one thing I’ve really been wondering about—the kitten.
“I don’t talk about the kitten,” she says.
The kitten experience wounded her somehow. She doesn’t trust me enough to tell me. I wait, but she doesn’t relent.
I die a little to realize she doesn’t trust me, still. But why should she? I’m her captor. I tied her up and carried her. It was wrong to do that—so wrong. I always hated when it was done to me. I can’t do it again—I won’t. I’ll find other ways to make her come with me.
I ask her about her sister and her parents. She enjoyed family dinners instead of dreading them like I did. She told her parents things that were important to her instead of hiding them like I did, for fear they’d be somehow destroyed or taken away. She loves her sister, too. She talks about how proud she is of her sister, the actress in Hollywood.
I listen, seized with so many emotions, I can barely paddle. This is what the people on TV have—their families love them, and they love them back. They want to see each other and tell each other things. Help each other.
I would have loved such a family.
Is this what I’m taking away from Ann?
I try not to think about it. I’ll make her happy—I know I can.
Sometimes she pauses and stares up at the trees, and I know she thinks it’s beautiful. It gives me hope that I can make her happy. I have to make her happy. I don’t want to be without her.
We make good time. We stay overnight on another island. I bend her over and fuck her after she’s good and ready, which means begging. I decide to only fuck her if she begs me. She seems to like that best.
We share the sleeping b
ag. I want to be near her, but I also need to know if she gets up.
The next morning, we push off the shore, under the shadow of towering rocks. She sits on the seat in front of me, facing forward—away from me. She seems to want her own space at times.
I allow it.
She won’t jump out because of the icy water—I’m sure she had more than enough of swimming out here, and the water is even colder now, being that we’re getting farther north.
I imagine her paddling around on her own someday and coming back to me—not because she can’t survive or doesn’t know her way home, but because she wants to be by my side. It’s a dangerous thought, yet I can’t help but have it. I want so badly to trust her, to think she’s my partner, my ally, my pack, like when we were back at the institute.
Back then she felt like a true ally. A true friend. So much more.
I paddle us forward, under soaring rocks and trees. With the current behind us, it feels like we’re flying.
Three days until we get there. On my own I could make it in two.
My heart pounds when I think about seeing my pack again. They’re not the original ones I met: they’re more. These are the wolves I grew up with. I describe each one to Ann and tell her their names. I tell her exactly how they’ll greet me in exactly what order.
First Red will leap on me, nip at me. My closest friend, like a brother. Pack leader by the time I left. I’ll grab his scruff, gray and black, a slash of reddish fur along his back. And Snowy. Wild and playful. She’ll come next.
I tell Ann about the different things they do. Like snapping—they’re not trying to bite you; it’s just about making that sound with their teeth to warn you off. Or when they bow, chin near the ground, eyes up. It means they want to play.
Red and Snowy and I were a unit in the pack. They stayed with me when I was injured and couldn’t move. They slept with me and protected me from unfriendly wolves. They only ran when the campers came with guns. My heart pounds to think of seeing them again.
Now and then I hear other wolves howling. Not mine—we’re deep into another pack’s area. But soon. Every smell feels like home. Like family.
I can almost feel Red’s rough scruff in my fingers, the cool wetness of his nose.
They’ll accept Ann if she’s with me. I’ll keep a close watch until I know things are right.
“Wait,” she says. “Where’s that keychain? Wait.” She pulls it out of the pack and examines it. “This is like your friend. Red. The reddish back. Is that why you like it? Because it looks like him?”
“Yeah. But I don’t need that thing anymore.”
She beams at me. “You’re going home to your family. You so can’t wait to see them.”
“I so can’t wait,” I say.
She smiles. She smiles when I say things the way she does.
She wears her brown hair in a braid, exposing her pale neck. I think she’s more beautiful than anything out here. More beautiful and still more painful.
She could have died so easily. She would only have had to swallow one wasp.
She’s paying attention to her surroundings, memorizing the way back. I hate that she’s doing it.
“Until you’re really used to this wilderness, all the trees and rocks look the same.”
“We’ll see.”
I put extra muscle into my strokes, as though I can glide over her words, hating her, hating this. I’m in utter control of her out here, so why do I feel so helpless? I want to fuck her again so badly, I can’t think straight.
“Don’t worry, I’m not planning on running off and stepping in another wasp nest if that’s what you’re worried about.”
In truth, I’m worried about everything.
“But I am going to leave. And I’m going to find out your story—not your forest story—that’s yours, and I won’t invade it. But Kiro, your story with the mafia. What the fuck. I can’t stop thinking about it. No matter how deep we go, I feel like it’s dangerous. Have you ever heard the saying ‘you can’t run forever’?”
I sigh, weary of the story talk.
“I get it, you don’t trust me quite yet. But you should trust my journalistic instincts. I wish you knew I only ever wanted to help you.”
The emotion in her hits me. She really wants me to believe it.
“Anyways, the point is, you don’t have your power until you know your story. More knowledge is always best. More light is always safer. If I were you, I’d do anything to understand what the fuck was happening.”
“Knowing my story won’t stop them from hunting me. My story isn’t the reason—”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. They hunt you because you’re different.” Her eyes shine. “It’s such total fucking bullshit.”
Her ferocity takes my breath away.
“You are being hunted, and you have no idea why. I know you think it’s because you’re different, but trust me—you’re wrong.”
She sounds so sure of herself. I love her like this. “So you say.”
“So I know! They know your name from before you were adopted—this name of yours. Kiro. Why do they need to kill you so badly? I can’t believe it’s not driving you crazy. Because it’s definitely driving me crazy.”
The moon has risen, a circle in the sky, a pale, shimmering splotch on the water.
“I get that you hate that I’m a journalist, but guess what? I know when there’s something big. I have instincts. I can’t recognize one pile of rocks from another—it’s true. But you don’t know shit about stories. Light is better than darkness. Knowledge is better than ignorance. It’s true for you just like it’s true for everyone else. You think you’re so fucking different.”
“You don’t understand. You can’t understand unless you’re me.”
“Ugh!” She flops back, frustrated. I want to kiss her, but I think she wouldn’t like it right now.
We enter a narrow stretch of river. Familiar bird sounds echo in the trees—night birds, starting to hunt. The terrain rolls out like a map in my heart.
I close my eyes and imagine the howls of my pack, each voice utterly distinct. I imagine the relief of hearing them and calling back. I imagine falling into them.
My heart hammers. Even Ann wants to get away from me, but Red never wanted to get away. Snowy never wanted to get away.
“Why did the wasps go after me?” she asks after a while.
“Because you stepped on their hive. You became a threat,” I explain, surprised she doesn’t understand something so obvious.
“Maybe they attacked me because I’m a human.”
“They would only bother to attack you if they saw you as a threat.”
“Maybe they didn’t like me because I’m different.”
I growl. The professor used to do what she’s doing—questions and answers designed to teach me things. “Talk to me normal, or don’t talk to me at all.”
“You need to ask the question, Kiro. Why are you a threat to the mob? You’re clearly not after them, so why is your very existence a threat?”
I push us on forward. There was an island near here. Always so much better to stop on an island for the night. I’m hard already thinking about her.
“You have to ask the right questions to get the story.”
“The professor used to say, ‘If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.’ You’re a reporter. All you think about is a story. Everything is the story. Let them come after me. If they get too close, I’ll rip their throats out.”
She continues on, undeterred. “It costs thousands of dollars a day for a mob boss to have soldiers after somebody. And to send them on trips like what they did? There’s a big reason they want you dead. I’ve been thinking about it. You have either power or people.”
The island comes into view. I point. “We’ll stop up there.”
We pull up the canoe. She unpacks while I make a fire.
“You could have assets of some sort that you don’t know about. I wonder if that’s it,” sh
e says.
“I’m tired of this talk.”
“I’m not. The more I ponder, the more my money is on family. You have a family. A true family. Maybe your enemies want to hurt this family or usurp some territory…”
“I have a true family. The wolves are my family.”
She sits and warms her hands near the fire. “You’re not a wolf.”
Not a wolf. Not a man.
I take her hair in my hand and pull her up. I put my lips to her ear. “The wolves are my true family. And you’re my mate, so they’re officially your family now, too.”
“Repeating it a lot doesn’t make it true.”
I jerk her softly, to remind her who is in control. Her pulse begins to hammer in her throat. “You’re mine to feed. Mine to care for.” I’ll smell her arousal soon. “Mine to fuck,” I breathe into her ear.
The moon catches her hair, giving it a soft glow.
“Mine to make come.”
“You can make me come,” she says breathlessly. “Congratulations. You think that makes us mates? A relationship is mutual. It’s about mutual trust and respect of what the other one knows and says.”
Miserably, I twist her hair, wondering if there is some man out there she has that with. Mutual trust and respect. Love. A man who’s not a savage.
“Like a fucking caveman. You don’t even know—”
I jerk her hair to stop her from talking, feeling so hopeless. She wants to leave and figure out my story. I know how to make her stay, but I don’t know how to make her want to stay.
She looks up at me, all fire and defiance. I don’t know how to behave like one of the civilized men she prefers, but I know how to make her beg.
So I do it—I make her beg, and then I put her on her hands and knees and fuck her, lose myself in her warmth and softness.
Afterward, she collapses on her back and stares at the sky, sated. “Kiro. Fuck.”
“What is it?”
She says nothing.
“Maybe you’re hungry. I’ll get us food.”
“Yeah, that must be it. Great sex and food. That’s all I need.”
I go to catch fish.
Savage Mafia Prince: a Dangerous Royals romance Page 22
