by Laura Wright
Panic jumped inside Bronwyn. He had a power over her, her body, her mind. He wanted to take her, consume her, rid her soul of all its anger and leave only the lust and, God help her, the love.
He licked the inside of her ear and she gasped.
“My cock is in heat, Princess,” he whispered, his mouth trailing hot, yet achingly soft kisses down her jaw, “and you have too many clothes on.”
She arched her back, in heat, in need. “You want me to give myself to you, Breeding Male?”
He lifted his head, his eyes blazed down at her with the fire of a paven who knew he had no need to ask, no right to want, no future to give. “You can fucking punish me all you want, Bron,” he said, his voice rough, “as long as you do it with your mouth on mine and your legs spread.”
Her hands found his back, his hard, smooth back. “Maybe I’ll do it with my hand around your cock.”
“Yeah, I’d like that.”
“Or my fangs on your co—”
“Don’t say it. Oh, shit.” His eyes were fierce, inflamed. “I’ll come in my jeans.”
“Maybe that’s what I want,” she said, her nails gently digging into his skin. “Maybe that’s all I want.”
He laughed, hissed, his eyes savage with lust. “Tell me you don’t want me inside you, don’t want my cock sliding home, kissing every inch of those honeyed walls of yours. You tell me that and I’ll get up off you and walk my broken ass out of these woods right now.”
Bronwyn opened her mouth, ready to speak—ready to jump at the offer the Breeding Male had just given her. But she couldn’t do it. As the rain beat down on the trees above them and Lucian pressed his cock against the top of her pelvis, she cursed. She cursed, dark and lustful and defeated.
Grinning like the arrogant bastard he was, Lucian dipped his head and, with his teeth, drew her shirt all the way up to her neck. “Tell me you don’t belong to me.”
Bron gasped as the cool air hit her skin. “I don’t belong to you.”
He kissed the curve of her breast, then down to her belly. “Oh, lass, the scent of your wet pussy says different.”
She moaned helplessly at his words, at the truth inside them, at her core so hot it begged for release.
He had her shirt and bra off in seconds, his chin resting on her belly as he stared up at her, sniffed at her. “I want to eat you again, Princess. Inside and out. Press my tongue so far up your cunt you’ll come all the way down it.”
“Oh, God,” she uttered, her hips lifting, her mind giving itself over to her body.
“Say you’re mine,” he whispered, his fangs raking gently against her belly.
“No…I can’t.”
He hooked his fangs on the waistband of her skirt and yanked it down. “Do I have to lick the words from you, Princess? Suck the words from you?”
Bronwyn’s skin was on fire. She was so hot, she wanted to run to the rain, get on her hands and knees under its spray while Lucian took her from behind.
“Or do I have to fuck the words out of you?” he uttered, his mouth so close to her cunt, his breath, warm through the thin cotton of her underwear.
“Yes,” she uttered, her hands reaching for the last bit of clothing that separated her from him. She fumbled with the edges of her underwear, trying to get them off. “Help me, Lucian,” she begged. “Take them off. Take them off before I burn up, before I die.”
“You’re not going to die, Princess,” he whispered, sliding the bit of cotton from her hips and down her ankles until she was free. “I’d never allow it. Never. You belong in life, breathing and smiling and cursing me with that pink mouth of yours.”
Then he was on his knees, his jeans unbuttoned, his fly down, his cock out—so heavy and hard it was nearly purple.
“And I belong inside you,” he said, lifting her up and slipping her shirt beneath her. “My tongue, my cock—it all belongs to you if you want it, Bron.”
Moaning now, keening, baying into the empty woods, Bronwyn grabbed at his chest, her hands fisting his pecs, her hips lifting in silent invitation.
Lucian hissed at her grip on him, but his eyes, wide and savage, were on her mound. He growled, “I’ll take your glistening pussy as a yes, shall I?” Then he drove his cock inside her, groaning as her hot, tight muscles welcomed him, then sucked him in deeper.
Bron gasped at the feel of him, the heaviness of him, the deep pleasure that his cock wrought on her body. It was the most perfect sensation in the world. Nothing was better—nothing—except the movement, the slow pistoning in and out of her.
She arched her back and wrapped her legs around his waist, rubbing her wet core against his pelvic bone and his balls, circling, using her hips and her cunt as her body liked, as it silently instructed her. It was instinct, all instinct. Taking what she needed, what she’d always needed from him but never had the guts to ask for.
Well, perhaps now she did—she would.
“Lucian,” she uttered, beautifully pained, “go deeper, deeper inside of me. Fuck me so deep I can’t breathe or see or do anything but come.”
“Oh, God, Princess,” he whispered softly. “I need you to tell me—tell me you belong to me, that I’ve claimed you inside and out.”
Bron shook her head, her breath heaving, making her breasts quiver. She couldn’t. She wanted to, but she couldn’t—he could never claim anyone, not in love, not in heart.
He left her, pulled his cock from her, and she cried out. Then he moved down, quick as lightning, and buried himself in her curls, licked up her soaking slit until she screamed into the open air. Her head thrashed from side to side and her hands found her breasts. As he nipped her clit, she tugged and played with her nipples.
Just as she was about to come, about to scream, die, he rose up, the head of his cock an inch inside her entrance.
Still tugging at her hard nipples, Bronwyn cried out, “Lucian, please!”
Her eyes opened and she saw him above her, staring down at her with a gaze unlike anything she’d ever seen, his Breeding Male brands—the empty circles nearly glowing. “I want to hear you say it,” he said in a savage, pained voice. “Fuck, I need to hear you say it.”
He inched inside her.
She gasped.
“You want me inside your cunt…”
“Yes!” she cried out.
“But not inside your heart.”
She gasped, then cried, “God, fuck you, Lucian.” Tears glistened in her eyes as she stared into his tortured, hungry gaze. “This is cruel.”
Another inch inside her. “I am cruel. I am savage. I’m the worst—no good for any female, and yet I am the paven who wants to hear that the mother of his balas cares about his sorry ass.”
“I do care. Please,” she whimpered, tears falling down her cheeks.
“Do I own your heart, Princess?”
“It doesn’t beat, Luca.”
“It beats for me,” he said, his hand tunneled between them, his finger trailing up her sensitive slit, “just as this sweet little clit does.”
Her hips slammed up, trying to get at him, get all of him. But he lifted himself just enough to escape her as his finger flicked the swollen bud, then tapped it gently with his thumb. “You hold me captive, Bron.”
“And you me!”
He leaned down, lapped at her tears with his tongue. “I won’t take you, make you come until you tell me you belong to me because otherwise I’m just the Breeding Male again. Don’t you understand that?” Her eyes locked with his. “Don’t you understand that I love you. Me. Not ‘it’—me.”
Her body was on fire, her mind gone, but her unbeating heart could only call out, cry out to the one it had no right to claim. Lucian Roman. “Damn it! I love you too, you bastard.”
He grinned down at her, his eyes shining. “Asshole.” Then slid an inch deeper inside of her.
“Arrogant prick!”
“Say it, my princess.”
“I…am yours.”
And with that, he slid all the wa
y home.
24
The reality of Titus Evictus Roman’s choosing lent itself well to reflection. Here within the travertine walls of the Colosseum in Rome, on his podium overlooking the arena where many of his brothers had once battled, he could think, could connect deeply with his son. He chose a crowd of five hundred, all shouting in anticipation of the battle ahead. The intense noise blocked out everything superfluous and allowed him to focus on the emotions and fears within the Scottish credenti.
He could not be harmed inside his own reality.
“Feeling weak, Titus?”
No matter who chose to enter it.
His eyes opened, his gaze searching the massive space for the form attached to that voice.
“Or hungry?”
In the very center of the arena stood Cruen. He was still wearing his Order robes, the hood pulled back to reveal those startling blue eyes and the black circle brand around the left.
Titus lowered the level of crowd noise within the reality and stood. “You have no right to be in here.”
The paven grinned up at him, his fangs long and curved and bloodred. “I apologize for intruding on your time-out. But that is what happens with you run away like a scared little balas.”
“You would know, wouldn’t you?” In one thought, Titus was on the ground before him.
“Impressive,” Cruen said. “You know, if you weren’t so depleted, if you weren’t the half-assed Breeding Male you used to be, I’d have you lay with the Breeding Female. Payment for the blood you will always require. She comes from another line, after all.”
“I will never lay with that female,” Titus said darkly. “And neither will my son.”
His blue eyes as calm as a steady ocean wave, Cruen nodded. “We’ll see about that. Hunger, power, and the desperate need for sanity forces us to make difficult choices sometimes, does it not?”
A low growl rumbled through Titus. Maybe he wouldn’t escape the binds of his blood master here, but Lucian would never be taken. Never. “Stay away from him, Cruen. My son will have nothing to do with you or your schemes.”
“Your son,” Cruen mocked.
With barely a thought, Titus had the crowd on their feet, had them jeering at Cruen.
Shaking his head, amused, Cruen shouted over the din, “Honestly, I don’t know who your son despises more—me or you.” His eyebrow lifted. “But if you wish to remain as part of the Order, you will not interfere again.”
Without another word, Cruen disappeared, leaving Titus alone with his thoughts, his fears, and a crowd of five hundred strangers who had all suddenly fallen silent.
The day had aged thoroughly by the time Lucian carried a beautiful and worn-out Bronwyn through the woods toward home. The rain had gentled somewhat, and its soft, wet pings to his skin felt good and refreshing after such delicious labor. She hadn’t said much to him, only releasing from her throat three cries of climax beneath their tree on the forest floor, then the coos and heavy breaths of a satiated and perhaps thoughtful veana. And he hadn’t pushed her. His declarations, his demands during lovemaking had been enough for them both. He had said what he felt, what he’d felt for a while now, and its repercussions would be dealt with soon, he imagined.
The cottage stood quiet and empty, the loch beside it higher and darker with the heavy rain, the rain that didn’t still as they reached the door.
Bronwyn stirred sleepily in his arms and he placed her down ever so gently on his pallet, then got to work lighting the fire and heating water on the stove. Drowsily, she watched him as he filled the bath, higher and higher until the steam hovered inches above the tub’s rim. Then he came to fetch her, lifting her nude body and placing her in the water.
She gasped at the heat, then sighed and unwrapped her limbs, her knees bobbing up toward the surface, her arms drifting to the sides of the tub.
Lucian went to sit beside her, watched her as she let her head fall back and once again sigh with pleasure. In that moment he understood the drive and the wish to care for a veana. It was a strange, overtly tender feeling that made him want to simultaneously touch her and run to the fields to gather her a bouquet of wildflowers. He wanted to call himself eight kinds of asshole—he didn’t appreciate soft emotions or grand gestures, but for her he was pretty sure he’d grow those fucking flowers himself if she wanted him to.
Pussy.
He grinned, shook his head.
“What are you smiling at, Paven?”
His head came up, eyes too, and focused on the water nymph with blackest hair, eyes the color of the verdant loch at midnight and lips heavy with the stain of his kisses.
“You.” He took a breath, cursed, because well, he was still him, and said, “I’m sorry, Princess.”
She sat up just a fraction. She regarded him seriously, but without malice. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
The fire crackled hard and harsh behind him. “Besides how you feel about me, about the Breeding Male—about what happened with your sister?”
“Yes.”
“You will hate this balas.” His gut constricted with so much pain he couldn’t breathe for a moment.
Pussy.
“What?” She sat up, water splashing over the edge. “No—”
“You will hate this balas because of how it was conceived—who conceived it with you.” Goddamn, the pain in his lungs was fierce as fuck.
“Never.” She shook her head. “I could never hate a child, my child.”
Why was it he could barely hear her—or was it believe her…? “Then you will hate the babe’s father for what he is and what he will become.”
“Lucian.”
“The balas will be ashamed.” He was on a roll, a shitty, nonthinking, every self-loathing thought he’d ever had kind of roll.
“Stop, please.”
He was staring at the floor, at his feet. “The kid—and fuck, I’ve never wanted a kid, mostly because I always had the feeling I was destined to be the Breeding Male. The kid is going to look at me like I fucking ruined its life. If it ever looks at me, speaks to me, thinks I’m anything but a goddamn monster.”
“Lucian!”
His head came up, his fierce eyes fixed on her. “I couldn’t bear it. Do you understand?”
“And I will love this balas. Do you understand?”
Every muscle in his body clenched at her words. Not because he believed them, but because he’d wished, prayed when he’d realized what he’d done, that he’d planted the seed of life inside her womb, that she would say such a thing aloud. He was on his knees, leaning over the tub, his arms in the water, his chain, still attached to one wrist, lying across her belly. “Stay here, Bron,” he begged. “With me. In this ancient cottage in this dreary, old-fashioned credenti. Forever.” His hand trailed in the water, down her thigh. “Keep me tied up like a dog, feed me scraps, and let me lick you whenever you’re unhappy.”
Her eyes closed and for a moment she said nothing. Then a sigh and, “I wish—”
“That things were different?”
She nodded.
“They’re not. Never will be.”
Her eyes opened. “I have mated, Lucian.”
“Me,” he said fiercely, possessively. “You have mated me. In every way that matters.”
She shook her head. “A Breeding Male cannot have a mate—”
“Don’t,” he warned, his eyes suddenly fierce. “Don’t tell me what I can’t have. I am a Breeding Male now and still in control, able to reason and choose. With your blood—”
“I don’t think it’s my blood,” she said, though her eyes had gone heavy and her hips lifted, sending her core closer to his palm.
“What?” he rasped.
“You must’ve thought about it, Lucian. I know I have. In my work, it would be my first thought, my first educated guess knowing what I know. Breeding Males take blood from the veanas they lie with—not all the time, but it’s not uncommon. The community, the Order, would know by now if veanas’ blood h
ad such an effect on the Breeding Male. At the very least, it would be spoken of in scientific circles. It hasn’t. Ever.” She swallowed tightly. “But a Breeding Male never goes back to the veana he has impregnated. They’d never know if balas blood—or the combination of mother and balas—spurred on such a reaction.”
“No.” He released her, pushed himself away from the tub, stood over her.
She stared up at him, her eyes pained, yet heavy with desire. “If we’re speaking truth, it can’t be just the truth we wish to hear.” She reached for his hand. “I don’t think it’s my blood that’s keeping you sane and controlled.”
Lucian’s jaw tightened.
She sat up completely now. “And if that is the case, what happens when I bring this balas into the world?”
“Well, I suppose I’m good and fucked,” he uttered, turning away, heading for the hearth, his pallet, his corner of the world.
She said nothing for a moment. The room fell silent except for the fire, its snaps and pops orchestrating a terrible sound track for the scene in which they found themselves.
“Perhaps your brothers will find an antidote,” she said behind him, her voice filled with a doomed sadness.
“Perhaps,” he muttered, feeling the heaviness of the shackle around his wrist for the first time since his escape. Yes, perhaps his brothers would find a cure for his coming madness. “But if not,” he uttered aloud, “I will become what I am meant to become, and seconds afterward, I’ll force one of them to end my miserable life.”
In an abandoned hut forty miles outside the Banchory credenti, Erion stood in the center of the darkened room, his hand curled around the neck of Lucian Roman’s number one guard. The other was dead and buried already, his wounds from the Breeding Male attack too severe to keep his Impure heart beating. If he’d been raised to feel and exhibit compassion, Erion might have given the dead male’s associate here a moment to grieve.
But he wasn’t raised to feel anything save blind loyalty to his father. It was enough that he had experienced a few lapses in that stalwart devotion as of late. That momentary error had passed.
“You will take us to where your master and his veana are hiding,” he said with absolute calm, absolute confidence.
