by Kaia Pierce
Now, bent over the edge of the bed, Caleb resumed fucking me. From this new angle, his cock could reach deeper, striking the tender, most sensitive nerve endings in my cavity.
My nipples were hard. A thin layer of sweat formed on my skin. Every time Caleb thrust into me, his ballsack swung forward to graze my own. It only intensified the pleasure I felt. Soon, I was moaning like a patient in a mental ward, so high from the sensation of Caleb fucking me that I was blinded by it.
Our voices mingled in the air, drowning out the sounds from the T.V. It felt like we’d been at it for hours, up until the point when Caleb suddenly cried out and froze. Then, it felt like no time had passed at all as he orgasmed and ejaculated inside of me.
I needed more. I always needed more.
I held my breath, prepared to pull myself off of his cock to clean myself up, when a strange sensation stopped me short.
Something inside of me was growing, both larger and harder, straining the tight walls of my inner cavity.
“Oh shit—” I began, before I was swiftly cut off by an enormous wave of pleasure.
I bit my lip. I knew exactly what was happening. We were knotting.
Caleb grabbed me by my waist, pulling me up until my back touched the front of his torso. Once he had a good grip on me, his right hand immediately dropped down to claim my dick.
He gave his hips a firm jerk, making me yelp as he buried his weapon even deeper inside.
“Feel that?” he whispered. His fingers formed a tight tunnel around my aching shaft. “That means you’re mine.”
He began jerking me off, running his fingers over the smooth, sensitive cap with each pump of his hand. As my entire body trembled with the force of his touch, he turned his head so that half of his mouth was pressed against my ear.
“This pussy is mine,” he said, thrusting into me. “This cock is mine.” His fist tightened even more.
This was painful for me, almost torturous. I cried out. “Let me come,” I whimpered. “Please!”
Mercifully, Caleb allowed me to. He clamped his lips to the skin of my neck as his hand made quick work of my cock. Within the span of a few seconds, I began groaning and twitching as he milked the hot, liquid sex out of me.
My eyelids fluttered. As the aftershocks of my orgasm finally waned, a strange thought I held in the back of my mind finally rose to the surface.
Caleb and I just knotted.
Knotting was absolutely the closest one shifter could be to another. To hold another man inside of one’s body for that long required a deep level of trust and intimacy unique to that knotted couple alone. I’d wished, but I’d never imagined that Caleb even wanted to share that with me. But it was done…
And it was still going. A full minute had passed, and Caleb was still hard and thrust deep inside. It left me feeling vulnerable and powerful all at the same time.
*
There was blood everywhere. Blood and shattered glass.
Our alpha was on the concrete floor, in pieces. His killer shifted back into a man, the gold studs in his ears glinting menacingly in the moonlight. They stayed in his ears even when he was a wolf. It had made it easy to tell him apart from the wolf who had led us and kept us safe. “Had” being the operative word.
That wolf was no more. There was a new alpha in town.
“Kill the spares,” he barked at his betas.
The carnage was terrible.
Too petrified to move, I peeked out from behind a concrete pillar to watch two wolves tearing apart the body of Richard, a shifter who took me fishing with him sometimes. Another beta, in his human form, doused a cluster of my packmates in gasoline and lit a match. Their shrieks chilled my teeth and made me clamp my hands over my ears.
The fire ate up the fur and the flesh of my friends and leapt across the abandoned meatpacking warehouse we’d been living in for the past year.
“Gather up the females and let’s head out,” the alpha said.
I didn’t understand at first. Then, I saw a man dragging my mommy by her back legs. Her front paws scratched uselessly at the floor as she tried to scramble away from him.
“No!” I said, running out from behind the pillar.
The other kids emerged from their hiding places, their cries rising above the crackle of the flames. There were six of us, ranging from three to nine. Now that the pack was decimated, our mommies were all we had.
One of the enemy betas paused, looking uncertain. “What about these pups, alpha?”
The alpha’s cruel eyes barely flicked over us. “Leave them be. I have no use for them.”
My mommy was rounded up with the others. Then, the betas shifted, along with their alpha, and they herded our mommies onto the loading dock and pushed them out towards the road.
“Mommy!” I cried, along with the other kids.
We followed them outside and carefully jumped off the loading platform. The three-year-old stayed behind and cried into his fist, too small to make the jump. The wolves were already yards ahead, driving our mommies further and further away from us.
“Mommy! Mommy!” we screamed.
My lungs burned as my bare feet slapped the cold asphalt. We followed them for as long as we could until they disappeared into the night. Then, we just followed the road until it eventually turned to dirt and then to nothing. After that, we had nowhere else to go and nothing else to do but cry…
*
“Wake up, Liam.”
I opened my eyes, but my mind was still replaying the dream on a loop. Over the years, the horrible memories had festered into a nightmare. It was my own personal hell, having to relive that moment over and over.
Slowly, the room materialized around me as the fog of my dream retreated back into the shadows. I was in my room at the Gaslamp Motor Inn. I was in bed beside Caleb McArthur.
I was safe.
The way Caleb stared began to bother me. I could tell he wanted to ask about my mother again. I sat up and kicked the covers off of me before he could get the chance.
“What are you doing here?” I asked him.
Caleb stayed reclined on the bed, one arm bent on the pillow over his head. “Are you trying to kick me out of your room?” he said, his lips twitching with amusement.
“No, I mean here in Riverrun. Here at this motel. You’ve been here for a year. What’s your endgame?”
I scooted away, but only so I could turn around and sit facing him.
Caleb stared at me for a long while. His forehead was furrowed, conflicted, as if he was contemplating whether or not to tell me what was on his mind. After a long moment, he finally answered.
“I’m planning to get revenge on my brother,” he said plainly.
I couldn’t hide the shock on my face. “For what?”
Caleb turned his face away to look at the window, even though the blinds were shut. “You wouldn’t understand.”
“Try me.”
He simply shook his head.
For some reason, that made my blood boil. I took a couple of deep breaths before my thoughts spilled out.
The words came out in a rush. “When I was seven, my alpha was killed by one from a larger pack. They killed everyone but the women. The women were their prize. They didn’t want the children, though. So they just left us behind.”
Caleb’s expression completely changed. “Is that what happened to—”
“Yes.”
It was my turn to look away. My heart was beating wildly like I’d sprinted half a mile, and my palms were damp. I could still remember the screams of the burning wolves, the children, the mothers as they were torn from their offspring. The only thing I couldn’t remember was the color of my mother’s eyes and the sound of her voice.
I cleared my throat. “I think I know a thing or two about wanting to get revenge. So tell me what you’re planning. Maybe I can help.”
That last part was a lie. In my head, I recited what I really meant: Maybe I can stop it before it gets too bad.
Silently, he held m
y gaze, his expression unyielding. But there was a softness in his eyes that I’d never seen before.
“If you promise not to get in the way,” he finally began, “then fine. I’ll tell you what I’ve planned so far.”
Chapter 10: Caleb
The plan required me to get back in touch with Stevie Bishop, who promised to get me the information I needed within a week. In the meantime, Liam had to wait out the duration of the heat at the motel, which ended up petering out over the course of a few days. With the wilderness stinking of female heat and crawling with shifters, both of us were stuck inside, with each other.
By the second day, I’d fucked and knotted with Liam so much that he couldn’t even stand up anymore.
On day five, Stevie finally called me back.
“Carl Henderson. He’s the one you want,” she said.
I got out of bed, pulled on some jeans, and walked to the table. The flashdrive from Garland’s office was plugged into my laptop. The screen displayed a long list of his contacts.
“I found him,” I said. When Liam groaned and stirred in bed, I turned my back to him and dropped my voice. “So out of all the other shareholders, he is the least familiar with Garland?”
“I think so,” Stevie said.
My eyebrows rose sharply. “You think so?”
Stevie’s voice exhaled into my ear. I imagined that she’d just sighed. “Well, he’s had the least appointments with Garland over the past year. That’s according to his secretary’s appointment book.”
I turned back around and collapsed into an armchair with a sunken back. “You got this information out of a secretary’s appointment book?”
“I figured out what you wanted, didn’t I? What else was I supposed to do? Walk right up to him and ask which shareholder doesn’t know about the truce?” Stevie snapped back. Without giving me a chance to respond, she cleared her throat and continued, “Look. The last time Garland saw Carl was over three months ago, at the last big shareholder’s meeting. I saw no appointments for tee times, or happy hour drinks, or even phone calls between the two of them. Their relationship is professional. I don’t think Carl’s even interested in Garland’s pack drama.”
I pinched the bridge of my nose. “Okay. I think I can work with that. You’ve been helpful, Stevie. Thank you.”
I hung up the call and immediately logged into the fake email account I’d made under Kaden’s name. When I finished typing in Carl Henderson’s email address, my heart suddenly began pounding.
Finally, I thought, the wait is over.
After all these long months, my delicately constructed plan was finally in motion. First, I typed the subject header of the email, “Mid-quarter meeting.” Then, I typed out a message inviting Carl Henderson to meet me to discuss private business matters. I signed it:
Kaden Daniels.
The moment I sent it off, Liam coughed softly from under the bedsheets.
“You should be nicer to people trying to help you,” he said.
I lifted my gaze to see him propped up on his elbows, both eyes open as he grinned across the room at me.
“You heard that?” I’d been living alone for so long, I’d almost forgotten that shifters could hear so well, even though I was one myself.
Liam nodded as I got up from my seat to walk towards him. He was still naked under the sheets when I slid into bed beside him. The bedding was still warm, sweetly smelling of sex and of the final, intoxicating tendrils of Liam’s heat.
I breathed in once and felt myself go hard immediately.
“What’s the next step?” Liam asked. He turned onto his side to face me, resting his head on top of his folded right arm.
Blood surged out of my head into my groin. “We wait for Henderson to respond. Then, I’ll go meet him as Kaden, and I’ll make sure we’re seen. Once Garland finds out Kaden was trying to make moves behind his back, he’ll be pissed off enough to break the truce himself.”
“And then?”
“Kaden will be distracted enough for me to finally make my move, and he won’t have Grayback there to back him up.”
I grabbed Liam’s hip, and a light seemed to go on behind his brown eyes.
“You’ll challenge him to an alpha fight,” Liam said. His eyes drifted down to linger on my bare chest.
“Yes.” I pulled him closer.
“That’s a fight to the death,” Liam continued.
“Which I’ll win. Want me to show you how strong I am?”
Liam gasped as I turned him onto his stomach. I ripped the sheets away to expose his naked back. Instantly, he spread his legs apart to make room for me as I moved into position behind him.
Starting from his shoulders, I ran my hands down along his spine. When I reached his thick, shapely ass, I pulled his cheeks apart to reveal his tight, puckering entrance.
My entire body was hot and clenching with lust. My chest felt hollow, as if I was constantly out of breath. Biting my lip, I unbuttoned my jeans.
“What am I to you?” I whispered.
“My alpha,” Liam said without wasting a second.
My cock was painfully swollen. I pushed my jeans down to my thighs and guided my tip to his asshole.
“Say it again,” I said. I grabbed a fistful of his soft hair and steered his face until he could see me from the corner of his eye.
“You’re my alpha, Caleb—”
His words were choked off when I pushed my cock into him, taking him from behind.
I always took Liam from behind. Looking him in the face while I was inside of him was just too intense. The way he looked at me, like he was begging with his eyes, it was all too much to bear. Maybe it was better before, when it was just sex and nothing more. But even I knew I couldn’t go back to just sex with him. If there was a drug I could inject into my veins that made me feel as good as knotting with Liam, I wouldn’t have needed him at all. But that drug didn’t exist.
I didn’t like needing anybody. It was those people you needed, who ended up hurting you the most.
So I focused on hurting Liam instead, on fucking him so hard that he’d start screaming, tortured by this beautiful pleasure.
The muscles in Liam’s back rippled as I ground my hips up against him. His slick, hot channel was tight on my cock, sucking me into his depths. My eyes rolled to the back of my head. The sensation was like being dipped in liquid bliss.
I thrust into him until I came. All it took was a few minutes. Hearing Liam squeal and whimper while his asshole pulsed on my dick was all I needed to get me going.
One final plunge, and I was emptying my balls into Liam’s ass. His entire body was tense. The first orgasm was quick, underwhelming, like a sneeze. The second, which came a moment later, was like getting hit by a train.
The knot swelled up in my shaft, locking our sweaty bodies together. My brain, my skin, every part of me sparked with ecstasy as I collapsed on top of him. Liam shuddered below me, shaking from his own climax.
“That…that was amazing,” he gasped.
I lay on top of him, my cheek pressed to the back of his shoulder, rising and falling with his breath. This was a familiar feeling. Being with Liam, being inside him, resting to catch our breaths. It was familiar, and it was comforting.
Focus on the plan, I told myself. Having a little side action was nice and all, but I couldn’t forget what had brought me to Riverrun in the first place.
When my cock softened, I finally pulled myself out. I grabbed Liam’s shoulder and turned him back around. He reached for me, but I caught his wrist in midair and pinned it down over his head. We kissed, and it was…familiar. Comforting.
It scared me. I broke the kiss and got out of bed, pulling my jeans off completely as I began crossing the room.
“Are you going to take a shower?” Liam asked.
“Yes.”
“Should I get in with you?”
“No, I—” When I spun around, I could see that Liam had already pushed the sheets back with one foot off th
e bed. “It’s just going to be a quick shower.”
And a cold one, I mentally added.
Chapter 11: Liam
“Why the woods?” I asked.
I geared my car into park. We’d left the highway behind about ten minutes ago. Now, there was nothing but trees surrounding us and hard, frozen dirt beneath the tires.
“Maybe Henderson is more comfortable out in the wilderness. He’s a shifter,” Caleb explained.
My eyebrows rose. “How do you know that?”
“All the majority shareholders of Grayback Industries are shifters. Kaden told me.” He smirked as he unbuckled his seatbelt.
“Oh.”
The two of us got out of the car. The whole world was cold and gray, from the clouds to the ice that had frozen into a thick crust, hard as glass under the soles of my boots. For the fiftieth time that day, I had to remind myself that I was with Caleb, not Kaden. Caleb’s recent shave and haircut to look more like his twin was working a little too well.
I didn’t bother locking the car. There wasn’t a soul out here. We started walking, crunching our way through the pines. I blew out a wispy puff of vapor and rubbed my stiff fingers together.
“Doesn’t this defeat the whole purpose of Kaden being seen with Henderson?” I said.
Caleb studied the GPS on his phone, leading the way to the coordinates that Carl Henderson had emailed to him yesterday morning. “It does. But that’s why you’re here. I figured if anything, a photo and an anonymous note in Garland’s inbox will be just as effective.”
“Simple. Elegant,” I said. Caleb laughed, and my heart soared. Then, when he turned his attention back to his phone, it sank back down.
I was gripped by a strange sense of anxiety as I followed Caleb through the woods. The heat had long since faded, but my body still ached from the days we’d spent locked up in his motel room, doing nothing but each other.
I’d tried so hard to stay detached and appreciate this for what it was: a hook-up and nothing more. But Caleb and I had gotten closer during those days. Now, he treated me like I was a friend.
And that was making me feel hopeful.
