My shoulders relaxed back against the wall; I hadn’t even realized I’d been holding myself with that much tension. With the easing of it came a sudden welling-up of anger. I shouldn’t care what Matthew thought of me. I didn’t care what anyone thought of me, least of all some overbearing alpha dickhead with delusions of grandeur because he was in charge of a raggedy-ass pack out in the wilds of buttfuck nowhere, and because he was an alpha with a knot.
Fuck that. My spell was messing with me, that was all, and I wasn’t going to let it. I lifted my hands, shoving them against his chest to get him off me. He didn’t so much as budge, and my anger only grew, tightening my chest and rising up to choke me.
“Yeah, you were,” I said. “You were unfair. But what difference does it make? It’s not going to change anything. You’re not going to let me go, right? So why the fuck should I care that you’ve decided you want to absolve yourself of being a dick by admitting it?”
A dark-red flush spread across his cheeks. “I’m trying to apologize to you! Fuck, I —” He broke off, and his gaze skittered away for a second before he looked back at me. My mouth opened to retort, but he beat me to it. “And maybe I’m doing a shitty job, okay? But I’m trying.”
Trying? He was trying? Fucking awesome. That and five bucks would get me a latte.
My hands were still on his chest, my fingers digging in. He hissed in pain as my rage started to trigger my shift and my claws came out, puncturing his shirt and drawing beads of blood from his skin.
“Don’t push me,” he growled, leaning in until his lips were a breath away from mine. “I’m sorry you didn’t have anywhere to go but the Kimballs. I’m sorry you — none of what Taft did to you was your fault, even remotely. But Nate never did half the shit you did, even when he didn’t have any good choices to make. The only person he hurt was himself.”
I shoved again, twisting my body to try to throw him off, and he lunged forward, pinning me to the wall with his hips. He was hard again. Fuck, it seemed like he was always hard when he was pressed against me.
And this time, I wasn’t afraid of him — I was furious, my pulse racing and my blood pumping through me and making me ready to fight or to fuck. Every inch of me lit up, my cock pushing up to meet his. Fuck, I hated alphas. I forced my claws in deeper, blood dripping down his chest — and he closed the tiny gap between our mouths, slamming his down over mine.
This time it didn’t hurt. It didn’t feel wrong. It felt like he was drawing out every one of my secrets, every one of my fears, and swallowing them down, leaving nothing but longing and need in their place.
One of his hands came up to wrap around the back of my neck and he held me still, thrusting his tongue into my mouth and devouring me. His alpha heat was almost too much, searing me from the inside, like his cock would if he threw me down on the bed or the floor, or turned me and shoved me face-first against the wall and took me then and there…
And if he had, right then I wouldn’t have wanted to stop him.
I wrenched my head to the side, breaking the kiss with the last of my willpower. I couldn’t do this. I couldn’t give in to this, take the path of least resistance, let my frustration and my body’s weakness and need take over like this. I knew what happened when an alpha took what he wanted.
“Stop,” I gasped, even as my hips surged up to meet his. “I’m not doing this. You’ll take — everything. I didn’t escape Parker to end up like this.”
He froze in place, like I’d turned him to stone with a particularly fucked-up bit of magic. The hand on my waist gripped me so hard I knew I’d have bruises.
“I’m not him,” he said, very low. I felt the brush of his lips against my cheek as he spoke, and those feather-light touches sent shivers all the way down to my toes. “I’m not — fuck. I want you. And I want what’s best for my pack. But that’s not why he — I’m not him.” Matthew pulled back, only his hands still on me. He was breathing hard, his lips parted and his face still flushed. But he pulled back. “Arik, let me show you I’m not him.”
“You said you’d enjoy it. Fuck, Matthew, you — you said you’d enjoy it,” I repeated desperately, as the hand behind my neck tangled in my hair, tugging with enough force to hold me, but not enough to hurt me. “You’d enjoy — mating me whether I wanted it or not.”
I squirmed in his grasp, and he let out a helpless moan and bent to press his lips to my neck, worrying a tiny bit of my flesh between his lips. My head tipped back against my will. I was baring myself to him — submitting to him, and I couldn’t seem to stop myself.
“I like the way you say my name.” He moved an inch to the left, latching on and flicking my skin with his tongue. He pressed kisses along my collarbone and then lifted his head, looking me in the eyes. His were dilated, glowing faintly, and — completely sane.
He was in control, and that maybe scared me more than insanity would have. I had no control left, and if he did — I was fucked.
“Yeah,” he said, more gently than I’d thought he could speak to me. “Yeah, I would have. With that fucking spell driving me out of my mind, I would have. And I would’ve hated myself for it as soon as I wasn’t crazy.” He pressed his mouth to mine again, softly, coaxingly. He licked along the seam, teasing me open, and then withdrew a little, just enough to whisper against my lips. “I wouldn’t enjoy it now. And I won’t do it. Arik. I’m not him.”
His lips found mine again, and I opened up for him. I couldn’t help it. And this time, the kiss went on long enough that my hands slid up his chest, my arms wrapping around his neck. My lungs burned for air, but I tumbled deeper and deeper, giving in, my cock hard and throbbing against his thigh. Every bit of me surged with instinct: to submit, to give the alpha what he wanted and let him give me what I needed. I’d spent my whole life running from this. What a horrible irony it was that I’d done this to myself when I put Matthew in my thrall.
We broke for air, and then kissed again, and the hand on my waist eased down, sliding around my hip to cup my ass and lift me onto my toes.
“That’s not what this is,” Matthew whispered against my mouth. His breath was coming raggedly, like he was barely keeping it together. “I needed you to cooperate, earlier, when I was asking you about the Kimballs. I was threatening you…but this isn’t an interrogation.”
“And you don’t need me to cooperate now? You’ll take what you want?”
A pause. “I’ll take whatever you give me. Whatever you want to give.”
Matthew’s big body pressed against mine from chest to knees, the wall against my back more yielding than he was. Stuck between a rock and a very, very hard place…I stifled a laugh and a moan all at once.
Why not? Why not give in? I had choices — and all of them were bad. Parker’s slave or Matthew’s plaything. Freedom wasn’t in the cards. Maybe it never had been, when freedom was just endless paranoia, looking over my shoulder for the next threat. A shaman without family or allies was always going to be a target for the next power-hungry alpha, and maybe letting Matthew fuck me and get it over with was better than being afraid of what might happen next.
Maybe I should let him mate me. No, no, not that…I shoved that part of my mind down, hard, trying to forget I’d even let the thought surface.
What I gave him. Right. Like he’d stop with what I offered.
But maybe he would.
What I wanted to give…
And my body did want it, aching to be filled and used, my cock throbbing. His hands on me burned like brands. I wanted that feeling on the rest of my skin, on my thighs and my ass and around my throat, on my legs as he shoved them apart, on my shoulder blades as he shoved me down and mounted me.
No matter how much I craved his knot right at that moment, how ready I was to beg for it, I couldn’t let him have that. If he knotted me, if we were tied together like that…there was too much that could happen while he was stuck there inside me. Too much that could be said and felt.
“You can have me,” I said.
“But you can’t knot me. And you can’t bite me.”
It was like a switch flipped, and all of Matthew’s restraint went up in smoke, incinerated the second he had my permission. With a growl, he yanked me into his arms — and I’d thought we were as close as we could get before, but this was like being absorbed into him, the heat of him melting me into his body. His hands were everywhere, tearing at my clothes and stroking and pulling me closer.
My head spun as he dragged me to the bed, flinging me down and landing on top. It was a blur of his mouth on my throat, his glowing eyes, my hands clinging to his shoulders, my shirt ripped from my torso and the shreds flung aside, and then he was moving down, nipping and sucking and licking at my chest and stomach. I arched, biting my lip to keep in my moans.
He ripped my jeans open and pulled them down my legs, where they tangled at my ankles. He didn’t bother getting them the rest of the way off. An instant later, he ducked his head and swallowed my aching cock in one motion.
I had a split-second to be impressed, since my cock wasn’t small, before sheer sensation took over. He used his lips and his tongue and even his teeth — not wolfed out, thank the gods — to bring me to the brink within moments, the suction nearly unbearably intense. My flailing hands landed in his thick wavy hair, grasping onto the strands like a lifeline. It had to hurt, but it only spurred him on. He growled his satisfaction around my cock, the vibrations traveling up into my balls and ending my fight for self-control.
I spilled down his throat, shaking, squeezing my eyes shut and riding the wave of my orgasm like a swimmer caught in a riptide. It pulsed through me, through and through, spiraling along the magical pathways my spell had forged from him to me and echoing in the shared space between us, over and over.
My body ached like I’d been running. I collapsed, coated in sweat and shaking. My fingers trembled in his hair. It probably felt like I was stroking him.
Maybe I was stroking him.
The cool air from the window caught every droplet of moisture on my skin, an icy counterpoint to the burning heat where his hands still pinned my hips.
Slowly, Matthew let my cock slide out of his mouth. I couldn’t look. I didn’t want to see whatever was written on his face. For weeks, while he ‘negotiated’ with Sam Kimball, Matthew had looked at me, his serious blue eyes rarely resting anywhere else if he had the choice. Even before I cast my spell he’d watched me more often than he needed to. Before the spell, I hadn’t been able to interpret those looks.
After the spell, I’d known exactly what was on his mind, because I’d put it there. Desire. Lust. Possession. And I’d responded to it anyway, somewhere deep inside where I tried not to look, because who wouldn’t? How were you supposed to stay totally indifferent to a man like Matthew, an alpha like Matthew, constantly focusing his formidable attention on you?
Especially when Matthew was so easy on the eyes. And so rational, so devoted to his pack.
When he wasn’t being manipulated by a shaman, of course.
But still. Even when I had my spell on him, he tried to do the right thing. And once the spell put me in the category of things Matthew needed to protect, he’d tried to do the right thing by me, too. If I’d been what he hoped I was, what his addled brain was convinced I was so briefly, before it all went to shit, he would’ve protected me from Parker not because it was necessary to keep him and his pack alive, but because he loved me.
Matthew nuzzled my too-sensitive cock and then went lower, licking my balls, pressing kisses to my inner thighs. Why wasn’t he flipping me over and mounting me? I’d told him he could. I even wanted him to, if I was being honest.
That would be honest. A hard, brutal fuck, driving everything else out. Proof that Matthew was the kind of alpha I knew, the kind of alpha he’d shown himself capable of being earlier that day when he ripped Tyler’s guts out.
This was a lie. His tongue, teasing behind my balls and carefully seeking out my hole, was a lie. The huff of his breath on the inner curve of my cheek was a lie. And when he let go of me for a moment to shove my jeans off of my feet and then slide his hands down my thighs and push my knees apart, that was a lie too, because he wasn’t rough, and he wasn’t demanding.
He was gentle and inexorable, like this was something that had to be done. Something we both needed.
I dared to crack my eyes open. His hair was wildly tousled from my hands. His cheeks were flushed and his eyes were pure gold now, without a trace of blue. Somehow he was keeping the rest of his shift in check. I wasn’t; I could feel my own teeth lengthening and sharpening.
Matthew bent again and put his face between my legs. I’d only had a guy do this once before, and it hadn’t been very good: perfunctory, and we were both drunk.
This was different. Matthew ate me out like there’d be an AP exam on it later, swirling his tongue in circles and then prodding at my hole, kissing and licking and treating me like a French delicacy made by a famous chef, something to be savored as slowly as possible.
The pleasure of it burrowed into the core of me and sent out concentric ripples of sensation through my belly and my hips and my legs and my chest, expanding and contracting and overwhelming me. My cock was hard again. It hardly mattered. All that mattered was that Matthew never stopped doing that.
I arched into his mouth and took hold of his hair again, pressing him into me.
And then I froze. He was an alpha. I was trying to direct him, I wasn’t passive enough and he was going to flip out on me — but he didn’t. He went where I pushed him, muttering something against my wet flesh that sounded like, “Fuck, Arik, you taste so fucking good.”
I was groaning and thrashing by the time he slipped a finger inside.
I’d been right. His skin did feel even better inside my body than out. He found my prostate and worked it without stopping, his tongue still circling around, tracing my rim and pushing in next to his finger.
Gods, I was going to come again, and I hadn’t even gotten fucked yet. I started to tighten around him, all my muscles seizing with the first wave of an orgasm I knew was going to be even more powerful than the last.
Abruptly, Matthew slipped his finger out of me and sat up, letting go of me to tear at the fastenings of his own jeans. “I can’t fuck you. I’m sorry. I don’t think I’ll be able to keep from knotting you,” he said hoarsely. I opened my mouth to protest, like a fucking idiot, to take back everything I’d said. I needed him. I wanted his knot like I wanted to keep breathing, my hole so wet and ready and eager for him. He cut me off, saying, “We’ll do it like this.”
He winced as he tugged his cock out from where it’d been trapped down the side of his jeans and fell on me, taking both of us in hand and squeezing hard enough to make my eyes roll back in my head.
All right. We’d do it like that. I thrust up against him, pushed one of my own hands between us to grasp the base of his erection, and wrapped my legs around his waist.
My cock was pretty big; his was huge. Even his large hand couldn’t quite get around both of them. The friction still sent me into the stratosphere. I couldn’t get my fingers around the base of his cock, and I moaned, imagining that thickness stretching me open.
That was it, and I went over the edge like a runaway freight train.
Matthew shuddered and came, groaning, his head falling forward to hang between his shoulders. Come spattered my chest and ran down over our hands.
I lay gasping, covered in our mingled come, unable to move a muscle. Maybe I’d never move again. Maybe I’d just stay there until Matthew recovered enough to knot me after all.
He let go and fell over onto his back beside me, crossways across the bed, like someone had knocked him over the head with a sledgehammer. The bed jounced and creaked, and then the room was still. I listened to his breathing slowly calm and grow deep and even.
Was he asleep? I took a careful look from under my lashes. He was smiling, and my own lips curved in response. I was so glad his eyes were closed, and even
more glad there wasn’t a mirror to show me how fond and stupid I must’ve looked. It had to be pheromones. Hormones. Whatever-mones. Something other than the helpless welling of affection that had spilled over into my expression.
I needed him to be asleep. I couldn’t have whatever conversation he might initiate, and for that matter…I was afraid of what I might say, cast adrift on a sticky, loose, post-coital sea and barely able to categorize my own thoughts, let alone express them without humiliating myself or giving too much away.
Nate’s spell was still working, now that I could take a second to check on it, but it seemed to have weakened a little. Maybe Nate was asleep. At the very least, he was farther away and not focusing on it as closely.
Cautiously, making sure not to attract Nate’s attention, I drew a little bit of power and nudged Matthew into unconsciousness. It didn’t hurt him. I found that right at that moment, the last thing I wanted to do was hurt him. But it did give me a little breathing room.
I sat up, propping myself on shaky arms. Matthew didn’t stir. He let out a soft snore, still smiling, and stayed completely out. His broad chest rose and fell, and his arms lay at his sides, one hand extended a little bit toward me like he wanted me to set mine in it.
He was dead to the world.
Well. Now I had time to think undisturbed. And I wasn’t sure that was a good thing after all.
Chapter 11
Cats Always Land on Their Feet
Thinking started with taking a shower. Matthew wasn’t waking up for a while, and my skin was crawling with the sensation of filthiness. Washing off Matthew’s come was priority one. It felt like he’d marked me as his, and I didn’t know what to do with the mix of reflexive horror — I didn’t belong to anyone, dammit! — and arousal that left me with.
Once I’d washed, extensively and thoroughly, it still felt like he’d marked me, like physically removing the evidence of how he’d had me wasn’t close to enough.
Captive Mate (Mismatched Mates Book 2) Page 10
