Chapter
Four
VOKNAR
Porcha was a warrior with words, not with weapons.
It was written in her body posture, uncertainty and determination colliding across her frame, causing it to tremble with the force of the willpower she had to use to make herself swing the weapon. It was just like when she stabbed me at the party, her motion jerky and rapid, a woman terrified of her own movements yet refusing to give into that fear.
She wanted me more than her inhibitions.
I had read through the contract I had signed while riding back to my brother and Lamia's domicile, my desired mate's fighting spirit outlined in the choice she made of what to write down.
The contract didn't just outline the boundaries of mating behavior, it included her expectations of me as a mate, and what would happen if I didn't meet them. It was as terrifying to me to read that as it was for her to attack me with the small axe. The thought that she needed to list out how she would abandon me if I tried to take another mate, something that wasn't even possible for my kind. When we mate-locked, there would be no other forme. Even so, she included it in the contract, along with the fact that if I didn't wish to participate in her streaming business, that was acceptable, but I couldn't drive away other males that she wished to bring in as guests. There were so many things in there, clauses that protected her assets, her physical safety, her emotional wellbeing - reading that contract made me think very poorly of human males as a whole. Just the fact that she felt she had to list all those things out was distressing.
Reading those words, a written attack, a defense against my possible negative intentions, had triggered my desire for her even more than the motion of her blow.
Having her pounce on me in the hallway, dragging me into her live stream where I couldn't act on my desires, was another attack, a test of my ability to perform as her mate beyond the limits of protection and provision. She made me prove that I could fit into her idea of a family.
I closed my hand around her fist, stopping the weapon midswing.
She looked up at me with wide eyes, her mouth parting in a little o.
I didn't need anything else to be ready to mate-lock her.
"I'm going to take you to your bedroom and mate lock you now," I growled.
Her eyes widened even further as her entire body softened in submission before she remembered what the contract said. She threw her weight back, trying to yank herself free from my grip. I kept my hold on her as gently as I could make it without letting go of her wrist. I plucked the ax from her hand and tossed it over on the table behind her, before I grabbed her around the waist and lifted her, pinning her body against mine as I hauled her through the door behind me.
She struggled, her soft body writhing sensually against my front. I wrapped my arms around her body as she pushed at mewith her arms, thrashing. She was a handful, and I had to shift my grip and grab hold of her legs to keep her from nailing me with a knee.
What I didn't see was what she held in her other hand.
The crackle of electricity took me by surprise as my muscles seized up, locking in place as my jaw clenched together, the sharp sting of it overridden by my own horror as I heard the small grunt of her own pain as my arms tightened involuntarily around her. I began to tilt, falling towards the ground, Porcha still held in my arms. She released the button on the device she had pressed against my arm as we fell, and I twisted midair, hauling her up as I threw myself down. I hit the soft carpeted floor of the hallway with my back as she landed on top of me.
She pushed down hard against my chest, rolling off of me.
I reached after her, grasping at the air as she brought the device back down on my arm with another sharp crackle of electricity.
I grunted, my hands curling in on themselves as I lost control of my body, my muscles contracting all at once with the urgent demands of the electrical current. She lifted the device away from my skin as she scrambled up, trying to get away from me, spurring my delight in her ingenuity. The axe had been a feint, a distraction for the real weapon she intended to use on me. She wasn't a skilled fighter, but she was a determined one, and she wasn't going to let me have her without a proper fight.
I knew I could bring her down easily just by grabbing her ankle, but then she would fall hard. Courtship required that I dominate my mate without harming her, and my heart required the same. It was clear that my mate would fight without thought to her own safety, using an electrical device on me while I held onto her, and the current could pass into her.
So instead of tripping her, I rolled to the side and used my hands to help launch myself up after her. I careened downthe hallway after her, my arms catching only air as she darted through the open door to her bedroom. I shoved off the wall to redirect myself after her, and she was waiting, electricity crackling in the air as she swung it at me. I caught her forearm as I careened into her, lifting her up off her feet to spin her in the air, plucking the device from her hand like I would a rose from the thorns.
"Caught you," I growled.
I didn't give her time to enact whatever devious plan she might have concocted and instead danced her back towards her bed, dropping the device on the ground as I toppled her backwards onto the soft covers and fell on top of her, covering her body with my own as I pinned her down with my weight, trapping her yet not enough to cause her discomfort. She writhed against me as I used my hips to secure her lower body, and I pinned her wrists up above her head with one hand. I shifted my upper body off of her just enough to use my other hand to stroke down her body, checking her for any more hidden weapons.
She let out a sharp moan as my hand passed over the rounded mounds of her chest.
"You going to fuck me or what?" she demanded, her hips bucking against me as she tried, and failed, to dislodge me.
"I am going to breed you," I told her as I continued my methodical search of her body. I shoved one knee in between her legs to part them, then reached down to stroke the inside of her thigh, finding it still sticky from our earlier joining. It had taken my brother's human mate weeks to acknowledge his presence after he marked her with his seed. I thought it would take Porcha at least as much time. I didn't expect to be set upon a few moments after I found my way into her home, and I was utterly enraptured by her impatience.
She didn't want to wait for me to mate-lock her. I could feel her wetness on my fingertips as my fingers found their way up between her legs, stroking the soft hair of her mound as she let out another deep, guttural moan, her head tilting back as her hips twitched beneath my touch. She had removed the undergarment she was wearing earlier.
"Yeeeeesss," she groaned out as I slipped a finger inside of her, testing the soft heat of her channel. She was drenched, still coated in the slick of my seed, and I needed to push it back in there, to fill her and lock into her and change for her so that there would be no other. I released her wrists and grabbed the front of her shirt. She lifted her upper body just enough for me to slide it up off her head, and then I was looking at those two petite mounds of flesh, free from any restraint. I ran my thumb over the peak of one of them even as I stroked her between her legs, matching the tilt and rock of her hips.
