by Zoey Marcel
“I have no idea, but I intend to get to the bottom of it.”
Bottom—that’s where Mark’s fingers were gliding up into. He was only cleaning himself, but it alleviated some of the insanity this mating heat had plunged him into.
“I’m not cocking any excuses,” Jack continued.
Mark bit back a groan at the word. His cock pulsated with need from the sound of his mate’s sultry voice. No, Jack wasn’t his mate—never his mate.
“I’m going to keep jerking at this problem until it swells with possible explanations,” Jack said in a husky tone. “I may grow hot and desperate searching for the end to this problem, but I’ll know the answer once it hits me in an intense aura of awareness.”
Mark nearly whimpered. Jack often used racy analogies, but this was driving him crazy. He lightly touched his finger to the tip of his cock and it jerked to attention. He gaped in awe, nearly trembling with bliss. He needed to get out of there, or get Jack to leave.
“It’s always rewarding, isn’t it? After groping for an answer for so long and then it finally comes to you long and hard, releasing you, freeing you from your cares.”
Okay, now he was getting too risqué to be talking about problems. He was turning smutty and Mark wasn’t going there. “Jack, I want you to leave while I’m in here.”
“No, you don’t.”
He whirled around and yelled in shock when Jack stood nude in the shower with him. “What the hell is the matter with you? Get out of here!”
“You’re erect. Why is that?”
Curse his bewitching, infuriating smile. “I was jerking off.”
“With me in here?”
Mark averted his eyes. “No! It was before you walked in.”
Jack slammed him up against the wall, stealing a breathy gasp from him. “You’re lying. You were never any good at that.”
He bowed his head when Jack leaned in to kiss him. “Not like you. You tricked me. You knew all this time what you did and worse, you don’t even care.”
Jack hindered him when he struggled. “You know me so well, mate.”
“Don’t call me that. We’re not mates and I don’t know you. The Jack I knew would never do those things, any of them.”
He smirked, pressing his hard-on against Mark. “The Jack you knew was a fucking pansy. He wanted you for years, but instead of just taking you, he held back because he had respect for your feelings and didn’t want to hurt the friendship. He was so pathetic he bought a butt plug for you and never used it on you.”
Mark’s jaw dropped. “That first, brand-new butt plug you just happened to have on you and used on Morrigan? You bought that for me?”
“Ridiculous, isn’t it? Poor, sappy fool always jerked off to thoughts of you and had anonymous sex with men in glory holes at the club because he was too weak to just hold your church-loving ass down and fuck you like he wanted to.” Jack stroked his strong arms in appreciation. “All he had to do was bite you and you would be forced to hunger for him for eternity, but no, he had to wait for you to turn heathen so he could have your consent—sucker.”
“Don’t talk like that about him. You’re not him.” Mark tried to shove him off, but buff as he was, Jack was somehow stronger.
“I am him, fool. I’m the real Jack, not that miserable soul trapped in a human shell that you thought of as your best friend.”
“I don’t believe that. You’re too different. I want the old Jack back.”
Jack teased his nipples with his thumbs, smiling when they firmed beneath his touch. “You didn’t before. He’s gone now, Mark, and he’s never coming back.”
“I want him back. He was good, loyal, protective, and caring. He wasn’t an asshole like you.”
Jack grinned. “But he was a manipulative motherfucker. He didn’t have sex with that woman in front of you years ago to prove he wasn’t gay. He did it to make you want him.”
“That’s ridiculous. He knew I wasn’t gay.”
“He was an imbecile. Always looking at you tenderly when your head was turned, hugging his pillow at night pretending it was you, and longing to tell you what was buried deep in his heart.”
Mark’s heart seized with awe. “You love me?”
“No, fool, the old Jack loved you. I’m too intelligent to fall into that mind-numbing trap with the rest of you saps. You’re all going to die and no one will save you. You’ll scream, but no one will hear you, only your demonic oppressors, and they won’t show you any mercy. Neither will I.”
Mark snapped his mouth shut tight when Jack jerked his chin up and smashed his lips against his. The man’s mighty tongue was a force to be reckoned with, but Mark was determined to keep him out despite the lethal attraction he felt for him. He yelped in pain when Jack bit his lower lip, drawing blood. His lips automatically parted for the alpha and Jack’s tongue surged in to claim its victim.
Mark moaned loudly when a masculine hand cupped his balls and squished them in his palm, rolling them in an erotic rhythm. He groaned with delight when firm, sensuous lips pulled his lower one and sucked the blood from it.
“You like it when I play with your balls, don’t you, fag?” Jack taunted in a heated murmur against his puffy, swollen lips.
“Don’t,” Mark panted in desperation. “I don’t want to sin.”
“Isn’t that funny?” Jack’s palm glided up his cock and gave it a gentle squeeze. “Because it feels like you do.”
“Oh god,” he wailed at the plethora of sensations having a man’s hand wrapped around his prick evoked. He cried out as Jack pumped him slowly, dark eyes mocking in approval.
“Your erection is magnificent. I don’t believe I’ve ever felt a stiffer cock in my life. I think that makes you the filthiest man of all, naughty Mark.” Jack sucked his neck, making depraved slurping noises on his retreat.
“This isn’t fair,” Mark groaned with nauseating pleasure, “You made me want this.”
“Maybe if you had been more generous with pansy Jack you wouldn’t have to lose your anal virginity to sadistic Eversor.”
“Who the hell is Eversor?”
“It’s my real name.”
He swatted the man’s groin and bolted only to be slammed back against the wall, this time with his back to Jack.
“Nice try, Mark, but you’re hopeless. Do you know what the great thing is about mates when they’re this drugged with passion?” Jack slicked their erections with the bar of soap.
Mark mewled at the tingly ache spreading through his body as Jack’s soapy hands smoothed the lather in upward strokes all over his shaft. He squirmed in apprehension when he felt his butt cheeks being split and the crown of the other man’s penis aligning with his quivering hole. This was bound to hurt. He only had the soap he washed with still on there for lubrication. Thankfully, Jack’s boner was soaped up.
“They are so intoxicated by their mate they revel in every touch no matter how pleasant or painful.” Jack jabbed his dick at the rear entrance.
Mark’s outcry was one of brutal pain at the forced entry and overwhelming pleasure at the feel of the man’s bare organ tunneling deeper inside of him. The agony of such a rough penetration was unconscionable even when his shaft passed his sphincter muscles. Only the hand groping his stalk offered him a divine consolation from the woes of being overpowered and punished with excruciating pain.
“Stop,” he pleaded breathlessly, making pitiful sounds of elation when Jack worked his cock to the edge before backing off and repeating the torturous cycle. He was evil. He was phenomenal.
“You have the tightest ass I’ve ever fucked,” Jack ground out, as he drove into him cautiously at first before seeming to lose it.
Mark sobbed at the nirvana washing over him. The pain felt so unbearable it became surreal and sent him into a drugged high that was like an out-of-body experience. It combined with the unbelievable euphoria dancing like magic on his phallus and turned him feral.
Jack growled and licked his mating mark, which felt al
most as good as the thumb tracing his tip, but not quite as delicious as the naked appendage making sweet love to his prostate. It probably would have felt better, still, with lube.
“Don’t stop,” Mark whispered. He couldn’t talk any louder. He was in too much pain. No, this went beyond pain and pleasure. It was a decadent, perfect union of the two that melted into a mind-altering sensation of its own.
“I wasn’t going to,” Jack whispered into his ear. His nails morphed into claws and he slashed them across Mark’s chest while his other hand remained devoted to his dick in a pleasant groping.
Mark nearly went blind from the pleasurable anguish of being cut by his mate while they had sex. It was heaven and hell, clouding his vision and sending heat and chills all over his body as the end drew near. Jack kept teasing him and denying him the release he sought. He thrust into the strong, capable hand, pleading for climax. “Let me come. I need to come so bad.”
“Say you’re my bitch.”
He clenched his jaw in annoyance, but instinct demanded he pay any price for the finale he required. “I’m your bitch.”
Jack sucked his earlobe, nipping it with his teeth. “Say you’re my slut and my horny, little fag.”
“What? I’m not—” Mark bellowed with suffering at the fierce jab in his rump. He needed relief and release. “I’m your slut.”
“Say the rest or I’ll leave you hurting.” Jack sank his fangs into his bite mark again as if reasserting his claim on him.
That, with the insistent stimulation on his cock, was all it took to send him over. “I’m a horny fag!”
The words would have pissed him off and made him blush under normal circumstances, but right now there was nothing at all normal about these circumstances. He whimpered when Jack turned his chin and ensnared him in an ardent kiss. The sweet, coppery taste of his own blood exploded in his mouth. It was warm and deep like the hot, deliberate thrusts in his back door.
His impassioned body was helpless in the clutches of rapture as his dick became possessed before yielding the seed his partner demanded of him. His semen splashed against the marbled tile wall, betraying that he lost control to a man.
His orgasm had his ass clamping down on Jack’s meat, which triggered his climax as well. The alpha’s release sprayed into Mark’s ass, wet and sizzling like an erotic bath caressing his prostate and the very depths of his rectum. The intimate feeling had him making noises of delight he couldn’t even begin to identify.
They slumped against the wall and each other, shivering more from the magnitude of the entire experience than the now-cold water.
Jack disengaged and soaped his genitals off. Mark watched the water rain down on his strapping body—a body he knew completely now. His eyes followed the runoff water trickling from the dark thatch of hair between his hard thighs. He saw the obvious satisfaction on the man’s cock and the softness of his now-emptied balls. The suds were washed away from his body and dragged down the drain by the steady flow of water. Mark waited to feel something, anything, but he knew only numbness.
Jack grabbed Mark’s towel and stepped out of the shower. “Be happy you pleased me. Your life will be that much better because of it. I want you to be my eyes and ears around the others in my absence. If you’re faithful, your reward will be great. If you betray me, your punishment will be damnable and you’ll wish you were never born.”
He left Mark standing alone and naked under the chilly water, shivering with possession and confusion. His ass felt sore from being beaten to hell by a mighty erection. His penis was sticky with his release and his chest crimson with beastly cuts that would soon heal. He wasn’t sure about his soul, though. It was far more shaken up than his body.
* * * *
Quinn drove home once Morrigan told him Mark had texted her saying that’s where he was headed. “Moron, doesn’t he know it isn’t safe for us to go home right now?”
Jack knew where they lived. They needed to hide until they came up with a plan. She told him she sensed through their bond that something was wrong and Mark was in some kind of danger. She wanted to go herself to make sure he was okay, but Quinn wouldn’t hear of it. Their first duty was to protect the little lady.
When he got home the door was unlocked. Jack’s fragrance flooded his senses like a dark premonition. He was here. The scents of fear and lust were evident before Quinn even stepped into the house. He smelled blood and sex and in the middle of it all, Mark.
“Mark, are you here?” He was prepared to shift if Jack was still around. He wasn’t.
Mark sat naked on the floor with only a white towel draped across his junk and ass. The bible was spread across the hardwood floor, there were rosary beads scattered around him, and he clutched a crucifix so tightly, Quinn was surprised it didn’t split.
“Mark, what happened?”
“I don’t know,” Mark murmured, sounding numb with shock.
“Is Jack still here?”
He shook his head. “No, he left after he got what he came for.”
“What did he come for?” Quinn figured he already knew the answer to that, but some stupid part of him asked anyway.
Mark didn’t answer. “I missed mass last week. I wanted to be with Morrigan. I should have gone. A good man would have gone.”
When he shifted slightly, Quinn saw the healing slashes on his torso. His tone was quiet. “Jack fucked you, didn’t he?”
Mark’s eyes closed and he heaved a shaky sigh.
Quinn remembered the first time someone forced himself on him. He understood what Mark was going through, though he’d never been betrayed like that by his best friend. He approached his brother and reached for his shoulder.
Mark flinched away. “Don’t.”
Quinn backed off. “We can’t stay here. It’s not safe. I just came here to get you and some of our clothes.”
“He’ll find us if I’m with you. You should get far away from here and me.”
“I’m not leaving without you. You’re my brother and Morrigan’s mate.”
“I’m Jack’s mate now.”
“It doesn’t change the bond you have with her. You can have two mates. It’s rare, but it happens.”
“I didn’t ask for this.”
“I know. We’ll get through this somehow, all right?”
Mark said nothing.
“I talked it over with Morrigan. Actually, she laid into me and said she would kill me if I killed Jack. It’s kind of funny seeing a little five-foot-four honeybee threaten a guy who towers over her, but I know how much Jack means to you guys.”
“That’s not Jack. He said his name was Eversor. Jack is gone. He’s never coming back.”
Quinn sighed. “We’ll find a way to get him back. It’s just some kind of doppelganger posing as Jack. We’ll find the real one.”
Mark’s voice increased slightly in volume. “That is the real one. The man who led our pack for years and called us friend was a fraud. Jack Dillinger was just a mask he wore so he could blend in and get close to Morrigan. He claimed me. I keep getting little bits and pieces of his memories, what he did. Our alpha is a killer, Quinn, and I don’t mean because of his lycan heritage. He enjoys it. It thrills him to snuff out life, to taste blood and smell terror. He’s demonic.”
Quinn felt chills of horror crawl up his spine that made his scalp prickle. He feared as much, but there was a small part of him that refused to believe that their beloved leader was really capable of such a thing.
“Do you know how this happened, or why he’s like this? Was there some kind of trigger, or was he always pretending with us?”
Mark’s eyes closed and he squeezed the crucifix so tightly the sharp parts cut his palm, making him bleed.
“Mark, don’t.”
“It feels good. I want to bleed.” His chest heaved a bit as he drew deep breaths. “The friendship was sincere. He’s one of Samael’s bounty hunters. He was looking for Morrigan. I guess the death angel doesn’t like it when people cheat dea
th. Jack cared about us, though. I know he did. I felt it.”
“Why did he wait so long to turn on us? It’s been years.”
“He hadn’t found Morrigan yet and then when he did he was confused because she was his mate.”
“I guess he’s worked through that dilemma,” Quinn snorted.
Mark offered no reply to this.
“We should get going before he comes back.”
“He had a soul. Samael took it from him. That’s why he’s doing this. He has no conscience to tell him not to.”
Quinn became spooked. “How do we stop him without killing him?”
“You can’t stop him. The only way to do so is to kill him, unless you can find some way to return his soul to him.”
* * * *
Morrigan flew into Quinn’s arms when he reached the hotel. “I’m glad you’re back. Where is Mark?”
“He’s staying with Damon at the hospital to make sure Jack doesn’t hurt him again. Where is Hilary?”
“She’s in the shower. Oh good, you brought my clothes. Thank you.” She took the suitcase from near his feet. “I thought I would let her wear some of my clothes until we can take her shopping for some. They probably won’t fit her very well.”
“Yeah, she’s kind of curvy,” Quinn agreed absently.
She glowered at him and smacked his arm in jest. “I have curves.”
“I know you do and they’re gorgeous. I really didn’t mean anything by it.”
“You think she’s prettier than me,” she sighed.
“No. She’s not bad looking, but you’re a hottie.”
Morrigan smiled. “Tell me she looked fat to you.”
He snickered. “She’s fat as hell. Feel better?”
“I do. Where did you get her anyway? She talks so proper and elegant, like’s she’s from another time. Earlier I saw her standing in front of a vending machine, holding her arms toward heaven and commanding the strangely packaged sustenance to come forth and satisfy her.”
