With one decisive, unhurried pull, Jules drew her flush. Chest to chest, her spine molded to the pressure of his forearm, and let her feel the shape of what was hers.
The thick line of his hard cock pressed against her lower belly, hot and heavy through saturated fabric. Fabric soaked and sticky because he too had been forced to come, over and over, in the chain reaction of Jacques’s physical pleasure. Because Brenya was his pair-bound mate, and what she felt, he felt.
Yet, through every spill, not a grunt. Not one hitched breath as seed had pumped from his cock.
A deliberate shift against her. Just enough to smear his scent on her rumpled shirt, dragging her into his rhythm as he dipped his head to nuzzle the soft, vulnerable skin beneath her ear.
His breath was warm, his stubble sinful as it scraped just so.
A cunning grin wove into tone and intention, Jules murmuring along the shell of her ear, “Let me make it all better.” Each syllable like a kiss. “Choose me.”
Under his control, every last cell in her body already had, a strangled vibration thrumming from the very throat he gripped in his palm as she fisted his shirt and held on for dear life.
The throat he tilted and kissed, altering his hold to expose the jagged claiming mark.
His mark.
When the edges of Jules’s teeth found their home in that tender, ruined skin. A nip. A quick, wicked flick of his tongue…
Molten glory rushed under her skin and slick splattered onto the floor, hot and humiliating, as if her bladder had emptied.
“More.” A female murmur. A softly uttered call for comfort. For something Brenya could not name.
He hummed in a way that told her there would be a cost. “More?”
To bid her follow where he would lead.
Carefully coaxing her gently toward the mental brink, daring her to take a good, long look into that endless abyss that prowled around her little island. Toseewhat kept her safe from Jacques.
To really peer into his depths. To open fully to him.
Dip in a toe, submerge herself in their bond.
Jules crooking a mental finger, his sea seducing in undulating waves where her mind was raw and her body in pain. Made silent promises she couldn’t fathom.
Warned that there would be no more sneaking glances through her hair. No more pretending not to obsess over patterns on his skin.
And as Jules slipped up her shores, Jacques scrambled to recapture her attention, thrashing wildly in their link as he felt her drift away to a place he could not reach.“Mon chou, do not trust him!”
The relentless pull of one and the overpowering gravity of another. Yet where the Alpha roared, Jules whispered. Where Jacques demanded, Jules invited.
The cunning Beta who’d stolen an Alpha’s power, his pride, and his mate, cupped her face in his hands, met her eyes, and said again, “Choose me, Brenya.”
The hidden monster licking its lips in excited anticipation.
“Yes.” Soft as breath on bare skin.
The second her affirmation took shape, his presence surged in the bond, and she was caught. Dragged under the surface, swallowed whole. It wasn’t calm waters that rushed like inky poison into her mouth, her lungs, her ears, eyes. Filling everything with creeping, inexorablecarnage. But a crawling personal hellscape full of unnamable, hideous thoughts. Writhing corpses scrambling over one another to seize the shores of her island as if she were the haven.
A little flickering candle flame, a single light in the dark.
And it was terrifying to be so coveted.
Yet the very hand of death itself caressed Brenya inside and out. The void’s infinite tar-black eyes fixated, starved for every last crumb of her attention.
Drinking her down.
Openly plotting how to get more of her, how to steal her from the Alpha fool.
