by Marie Harte
He and Logan looked at each other then back at her in bewilderment. “Crying?” Logan asked. “I had no idea a human could become queen, but I was thrilled. Eric finally had a real pack, and the clan finally had a queen. A queen means more young, children I’d hoped to someday have with you.”
Jesse nodded. “Logan and I never really belonged with Eric, and we knew it. But we were with you in the pack, so it didn’t matter.” He frowned. “Until we were finally given a chance to make you see us as more than Eric’s fuck toys.”
“I never thought that.” She flushed. In some of her more annoyed moments, she had thought that very thing.
“Yeah,” Jesse sneered. “You did. I knew it and Logan knew it. But we thought we still had a chance, because you liked to watch us fuck. We knew you were there, Kate. Oh not at first, but after. And we didn’t care. We wanted your attention. But we only had it for a split second, just long enough for you to twist the knife when you walked away from us at the claiming ceremony.”
Logan nodded, his mouth in a tight, unhappy line.
Kate hadn’t thought about anything but her own pain that night. “I didn’t think you’d miss me,” she said bluntly. “And how the hell would I know anything about what you felt, since you never told me any of this? After the ceremony, you left me alone.” She blinked back her tears at the reminder. “I need mates who wanted me enough to do whatever it took to have me. Males who were strong enough to hold onto me and show me how much they cared. No matter what.”
Jesse scowled and tugged on her chain again. He reiterated through his teeth, “We left you alone as a sign we cared for and respected you. Ravager tradition is about the female choosing worthy mates, not the other way around. You know that. You chose us then walked away,” his voice rose. Jesse never yelled, never screamed.
She stared up at him in astonishment.
“How could you walk away from us?” Logan asked, suppressed anger and pain vibrating in his voice. “I’ve always known you were mine. But you were too young, and you weren’t ready. So I buried my feelings. Ravagers aren’t supposed to love, are we?” He shot Jesse a side glance that the other male ignored. Then he turned back to her with his fists clenched. “So I bided my time, never knowing Jesse felt the same until we figured out we both wanted you as more than a friend, as more than a female to respect,” he choked on the word. “I love you, Kate. I’ve always loved you, and I’ve been waiting for you to grow the hell up and see me. But instead you threw us away. You didn’t even ask what we thought or felt. You didn’t care. Hell, maybe we’re just too late.”
To her shock, Logan grabbed his clothes, threw them on and left the room.
Kate didn’t know what to say. Love? Logan loved her, not Vicki?
“That Ravager has never gone a few days without sex since he matured. Not in all the time I’ve known him,” Jesse said quietly, the burn of rage in his dark eyes. “But for you we waited. For an entire month we went without, until I forced it on him. His guer suffered for you, Kate. And you couldn’t give a shit.”
Tears blurred her vision. “That’s not true. I wanted him. Him and you, but I thought…I was scared that you…”
Jesse removed the restraints from her wrists and ankles. He rubbed her skin until the feeling came back, treasuring her, treating her like a cherished mate. The way he always had. But he didn’t speak.
“Jesse?” she whispered, confused, ashamed and overjoyed all at once. God, if what they’d said was true…
Jesse rolled onto her, levering his weight on his forearms. She felt his hard cock against her belly and shivered under his intense stare. “You hurt him, Kate.”
She didn’t like feeling this way. Lonely was bad enough, but that she’d made Logan hurt pained her guer. To her astonishment, she again felt the tentative reach of his animal energy and tried to pull him to her. But he shied away, and she was left grasping nothing. Jesse, as usual, remained closed to her.
“Go get him,” she said. “Please. I didn’t understand. I thought you both wanted Vicki. And I was—I was jealous.” She swallowed hard.
“Logan needs time to cool off. He gets overemotional. Besides, all that feeling bullshit gives me a rash.” Jesse’s eyes narrowed and cruel amusement lingered around his mouth. “So you’ve been treating us like trash because of Vicki.”
“Not exactly.” God, out loud like that, she sounded petty and immature. “There was a lot more to it.” Her insecurities played out, but that just made her sound self-involved.
“She’s our queen, Kate. Not our mate, our ‘love’ or the future mother of our young.” Jesse removed the clamps from her breasts and tossed them to the floor.
The rush of blood back to her nipples hurt, and she exhaled on a moan. Jesse sucked a hard bud into his mouth. The pleasure nearly made her come.
“I’d never do this to Vicki.” Jesse sucked the other nipple before nipping it with a slight sting. “She’s not my responsibility.”
“Y-you slept with her.”
“Technically, no, I didn’t. I helped initiate her into the pack.”
“Using sex,” Kate spat, totally losing her perspective at thoughts of her mate with another woman. The thought of Jesse or Logan with any other female made her want to kill.
“Kate, we’re Ravager. Nearly everything we do involves fucking.” Jesse shook his head. “Hell, you want the details? I came down her throat, once. Happy now?”
She wasn’t, but the fact he hadn’t planted his seed inside the woman somewhat soothed the animal inside her.
“My guer grabbed onto hers, the same way Logan’s did, and we held her for Eric. For our prime,” he emphasized and gripped her wrists tight. “Have Logan or I given you a hard time about having sex with Diana’s mate? Have we punished you for giving a human what clearly belongs to us?” he growled.
She panted, scenting the violence and raw need riding Jesse hard. “Wh-what?”
He ground against her, his body hot and unforgiving. Like living steel caging her to the bed. She couldn’t move under him, and her inability to maneuver him made her wet and wild, wanting more.
Jesse grinned at her with wicked intent. “You’re a lot more like Vicki than you think, sweet,” he said, twisting the knife, and he knew it. “So human, wanting love, wanting your mates to claim you.” Even as he insulted her, he nuzzled her cheek, kissing and whispering words of praise…at first. “So strong, so beautiful. So incredibly stupid.”
“What?”
“How hard would it have been to ask us what we wanted instead of assuming?” Jesse roughly kneed her thighs wider.
She obeyed without thinking.
“Why couldn’t you have told your mates what you needed? Why leave us floundering to find out on our own, after you ditched us?”
She writhed, caught in a voracious hunger. It didn’t help matters when Jesse’s nails scored her wrists, the scent of her blood and his skin a potent combination. “What’s wrong?” she taunted, unable to acquiesce too easily. “Can’t handle the clan thinking you’re weak? That you can’t satisfy your mate?”
Kate knew how much Ravagers respected strength, how much they relished the challenge, because she felt the same. One thing she could say about her mates. They weren’t easy, not in any way, shape or form. And even though some part of her wanted to submit to Jesse and Logan, the warrior inside her couldn’t. Her submission had to be taken, earned.
When Jesse bared fangs and his irises swallowed the slimming band of his pupil, his guer staring out at her through dark brown eyes, she knew she’d scored a direct hit. “You little bitch.”
Normally, Kate would have sliced off the balls of any man who talked to her like that, but on Jesse’s lips, bitch came out as a compliment.
His eyes glittered with barely suppressed excitement. His thick cock was wet with arousal. “You want satisfaction? Let this satisfy you,” he growled and plunged inside her. He slid through her easily, but his girth made it a tight fit all the same.
He took her brutally, and she loved it. Because with each push, he pressed deeper inside her. Working her, owning her. Jesse mastered her body and her responses, claiming her the way she’d dreamed of being claimed. Yet even through his rough taking, Kate saw the care he tried to hide in his fathomless gaze. She could almost feel the love he held inside, though she knew he’d be the first to deny himself capable of such soft emotion.
“No, not like this,” he rasped and withdrew, leaving her on the verge of begging for more.
She wanted to cry, being denied his ultimate possession. Until he flipped her onto her hands and knees and took her from behind. “Like this, mate. You’re mine now.” Jesse buried himself balls-deep in her pussy. He withdrew and slammed inside her again, hitting that spot that made her see stars.
As his strokes pummeled her, he knocked her flat onto the bed and grabbed her by the hair, drilling her with pure animal intensity.
“So good, oh yes, yes,” she cried as he dragged her orgasm from her in a huge wail. The cathartic release eased the last wall inside her preventing her from taking what belonged to her—what had always belonged to her.
Her guer probed but found Jesse’s protective shields still in place. Her Jesse, such a cautious warrior. But when he came a few seconds later, she took the opportunity and stabbed between his inner walls. Grabbing onto his guer and fusing it with her own, she sealed the bond between them.
“Oh fuck, shit.” He swore and ground into her, coming so hard she felt her thighs slick with it. “Yes, baby. So good.”
It took Kate a minute to understand the sheer bliss she felt wasn’t hers alone, but Jesse’s as well. The echo of pride, satisfaction and joy arced through her with a masculine feel she recognized.
“Fuck, Kate. Why the hell have you been holding out so long?” He rotated his shaft inside her and groaned, pumping a few more times before he finally pulled out.
She had a hard time catching her breath. The minute Jesse parted from her body, she felt his guer try to withdraw and held tight until the wild animal relaxed, recognizing her.
A glance beside her showed him frowning.
“What’s wrong?” she asked softly.
“I feel weird.”
She snorted, too worn out to do more than relax into his warmth as he pulled her closer. “You feel me.”
He blinked in surprise. “So you finally claimed me, huh?”
For all his bluster before about her leaving him behind, he didn’t sound happy that she’d given him what he’d been asking for. “Jesse?”
“You’re a mess.” He sniffed and relaxed next to her, pulling her into his warmth. “You smell like sex. Like me.”
She knew she needed to clean up, but he wouldn’t let her.
“Uh-uh. I like you this way. Soft, sexy and messy.”
Kate yawned. “We really should find Logan.”
“So you can apologize?” His arms tightened around her.
“Jesse—yes, okay? So I can apologize. Asshole,” she muttered.
He chuckled. “Always knew you’d be a handful. Don’t worry about Logan. He’ll be fine. Ravager needs to stop thinking like a woman and act like a man.”
“Oh?”
He held her against his chest, ignoring the claws she dug into his biceps. “Scratch me up, baby. Yeah, I like that,” he rumbled. “I like a bit of pain, just like you. Logan likes everything to feel good, so we’ll have to be gentle with him.”
As they lay together, her mind drifted to the three of them in her own happily-ever-after. After a while, she said, “Do you think he’ll forgive me? I never meant to hurt him. Or you.”
Jesse sighed. “The man is in love, Kate. Of course he’ll forgive you. Though it wouldn’t hurt if you groveled a bit. We’ve had more than a few fantasies of you on your knees, begging to make it up to us.”
“Jerk.”
“Bitch.”
“Yeah, but I’m your bitch.”
“You sure the hell are. Now go to sleep.”
She wanted to argue, but pushed past her limit, she promptly fell asleep.
Chapter Four
Logan kicked a plastic bottle out of his way and swore under his breath as he walked the halls of this shitty human hotel. A woman walking back to her room at this late hour stared at him with wide eyes, her fear ripe in the air.
“I’m not going to eat you,” he snapped and continued down the hall, not pleased at her shriek as she scurried away.
The only woman he wanted to eat thought him a social climber. Christ, how the hell could she think he’d want anything to do with clan hierarchy? He’d gratefully left the prime’s pack just so he could be with her. Her rejection hurt more than it should have, and not for the first time did he consider Jesse might have the right of it.
Love didn’t fit the Ravager lifestyle.
Ravagers needed sex like they needed to breathe. Jealousy had no part in their lives. Yet the thought of Kate with anyone but Jesse or him bugged the shit out of Logan. He still wanted to pound Sean Morely into the ground. The man was now happily mated to Kate’s sister, yet Logan couldn’t forget the fact that Sean had fucked Kate. The woman who’d rejected Logan had taken a human for a plaything.
How fucked up was that?
He growled and muttered to himself as he stalked past another stupefied couple and made his way to the stairs. Descending a few flights, he wondered again why Kate had chosen this hotel in midtown. Not all the humans in Cross Step liked the Voiders who’d invaded their world. Rumors swirled that a group of them had formed to exterminate any Voiders unlucky enough to be caught alone and unaware. Just what he needed, to find himself abducted by Voider-haters in the middle of midtown.
Annoyed with his own paranoia, Logan pushed open the door to the fourth floor. He walked down the hall, wondering about his new pack and when, if ever, he’d finally think of them as a family.
Jesse could be a pain in the ass, but he was solid. Though the Ravager might never admit it, he loved Logan as much as he loved Kate. Jesse didn’t do softness and feeling. His youth had been a warzone. Tender emotion wasn’t the Ravager way, at least not in the homeworld. But here they didn’t have to scavenge for every scrap of food or affection.
In Cross Step, a male didn’t have to hide his female for fear she’d be taken from him, raped and killed if she failed to reproduce. Ravagers could afford to feel something other than pride in a mate. Hell, look how strong the prime’s pack was. All four of them loved the hell out of each other.
Logan wanted that for himself, for Jesse and Kate. The stubborn woman needed them. Jesse would temper her wildness, and Logan would encourage her humor and her need to be free.
In retrospect, he knew it wasn’t fair to blame their distance solely on Kate. Jesse was a hardcase, but Logan could have talked to her. He could have tried to reason with her, to get her to see how much he cared. But he’d been afraid she might not want him. Not wanting an answer he wasn’t ready for, he’d left Kate alone, hoping she’d eventually come to them.
But she hadn’t. It had taken Jesse and his fuck-the-world attitude to claim their mate.
Logan took a few deep breaths as he paced the empty hallway. The darkness outside told him it was still too early for most humans to be up and moving about. And much too late to undo what had already been done.
He needed to fix things, and feeling sorry for himself at three or four in the morning in a crappy hotel in midtown wasn’t solving anything.
He turned to make his way back to the stairs when the familiar scent of blood hit him. Human blood. His guer perked up, and he followed the scent to one of the rooms. Staring at the closed door, Logan had second thoughts about intruding. But the idea of someone in trouble forced him to intervene.
He banged on the door. “Hello? Anyone in there?”
He listened close but didn’t hear anything. Then the doorknob turned and he stepped back, prepared for the worst. The pungent scent of blood and entrails hit him hard, awakening his need to shift in
to his guer. Past the room’s short hallway, he could see the lit bedroom. Dark red handprints covered the white duvet of the bed. A small hand reached out to him, hanging off the edge, the body smothering in pillows and rolled in a thick blanket.
“What the hell?” He took two steps into the room when the door slammed shut behind him and the sense of danger overwhelmed. Logan would know that fucked-up scent anywhere. “Will Lawless,” he hissed. But before he could do anything about it, something solid slammed into his head and he saw nothing more.
* * * * *
Jesse sat up, breathing hard. His heart pounded and he felt as if he’d just wakened from a nightmare. He looked beside him at the clock and noted the hour. It was nearing eleven in the morning. He and Kate had slept the night and the morning away. Little wonder after their marathon sexcapade.
He glanced around him in concern. Where the hell was Logan?
Jesse left Kate still sleeping soundly and showered and dressed. When he rejoined her in the bedroom again, he saw her stirring.
“Morning.” She looked so cute, sleepy-eyed as she yawned and sat up. Then the covers slid off her, exposing her beautiful body, and cute became sexy.
“Good morning,” he murmured, wishing he hadn’t dressed yet. He was hard from just the sight of her. A feminine hum sounded deep inside him, and he shifted, uncomfortable. Especially when his hard-on throbbed. He did his best to mute the connection.
“That’s me making you nervous,” Kate offered and stood, not at all modest about her nudity. Another plus to having a Ravager mate. They had no problems with their bodies.
“Not nervous, hard.” He cupped his erection, pleased when her gaze narrowed on it and she smiled. “I’m always hard around you, Kate.”
“Good.”
“Easy for you to say.”
“Ah, no it’s not. Remember who’s in heat?”
“Oh, right.” He coughed to distract himself. Because the thought of her heat turned his thoughts from Logan to impregnating Kate. And the last thing he wanted in his life right now was a kid. Thank God she wouldn’t be fertile during this first heat. “I want you again, believe me,” he said with feeling. “But Logan’s not back. Something’s not right.”
