“Sully! Help me.”
The door was off its hinges and flying through the air before I’d consciously decided on the best course of action. I flew into the cabin, ready for anything. That was what I thought, but I was wrong. I wasn’t ready for what I saw. Jules was in the middle of the room, shirtless, barefoot and in jeans. His arms were stretched up over his head. His wrists were tightly restrained in those weird fucking cuffs.
“Jules! What the hell?”
“Please help me,” he groaned through gritted teeth.
I raced over to him, grabbed the cuffs, and jerked my hand back at the sudden shock I received upon making contact with them. I tried again. The same thing happened, but harder the second time.
Shit.
The cuffs appeared to have been imbued with some sort of magick. I couldn’t touch them.
“Where’s the key?”
He shook his head at me. His eyes were dull and unfocused.
“Jules! Where the fuck is the key?” I started to look around the cabin, tipping things over and shaking them out in a frenzy.
“No. Sully. I need to . . . be here.” He was panting so much he could hardly talk.
I took his jaw in my hand and made him focus on me. “Listen to me, Jules. You can’t stay like this. I need to get you down. Tell me where the key is.”
“No.”
We were at a standoff. His voice was clear and decisive that time. I knew Jules well enough to know when he’d dug his heels in. I stepped back. He groaned and his abs contracted hard. Deep indentations cut a grid into his lower belly. I couldn’t take my eyes off him. Despite the concerning chain of events that had brought him to this point, Jules looked unbelievably beautiful suspended like that. His arms were stretched up. His torso, too. His muscles were taut. Pulled tight. Hard. He looked harder than ever. He also looked more vulnerable than I’d ever seen him. My wolf liked that. It liked it a lot.
Jules closed his eyes and made a long, anguished sound. “Help me, Sully.”
“Tell me how.”
“It’s my—my jeans. They’re too tight. They’re hurting me. I should have taken them off. I wasn’t thinking.” He was starting to sound delirious. He was wriggling his hips and fighting his restraints.
“Hold still. I’ll get them off.”
I unbuttoned his top button with some difficulty. His erection was straining so hard, his fly was at the breaking point. I had to fight with the fabric to get it open, forcing a pitiful sound from him. It was the same with the zipper. Once it was undone, I wrestled his jeans down to his ankles and got down onto my knees to ease them off his feet. He kept struggling once he was free of them. His boxers were strangling him, too. His dick was pressing hard against the elastic. His head was peeking out, swollen and red, weeping excessively from the tip. It looked painful and angry.
“These too.Please,” he said.
I dug my fingers into his waistband, pulled the band away from his body, and carefully lowered his boxers. He sighed in relief. I threw his underwear toward the bed and sank back onto my heels, looking up at him. The sight of him was unreal. Every bulge and dent in his body was accentuated and highlighted by the dim light of the kerosene lamp glimmering on the kitchen table. If my designation as alpha had made me bulky, his had given him definition, and believe me, it wasn’t like he needed it. Jules had always been hot. Ripped. Shredded. Now he was off the charts. His legs were long and muscular, ever so slightly bowed, and his hips were narrow. His chest was broad, accentuated by being strung up. His skin was covered in a fine sheen of sweat from his heat. It seemed to glitter in the low light of the lamp. I knew I was in the presence of magick. I was mesmerized. I couldn’t move.
Jules’s abs contracted viciously, raising him up onto his toes and making his arms shake against his restraints as another heat wave hit him. It caused me pain to see him like that. Physical pain. A pit formed low in my belly, cramping, aching, as I watched him.
“Please, Jules, tell me how to help you. I can’t stand seeing you like this. I can’t leave you like this. Tell me where the keys are. I can free one hand, so you can…”
“It doesn’t help!” he all but yelled. “Don’t you think I’ve tried that? Jerking off isn’t helping. Every time I do it, it makes me feel worse, not better.”
I knew what I was going to say before I said it. I heard it in my mind before I said it aloud. I could almost see the letters of the words floating up around me. I didn’t know how to feel about it. On the one hand, I knew it was gross and possibly predatorial of me. I knew I wanted Jules. I knew I’d been fantasizing about him being more than a friend for a long time. Now, he was the weakest he’d ever been and I was taking advantage of the situation. No doubt about that. At the same time, Jules needed help. He really did. He was in pain. He was not in a good way, and above everything I’d ever been, first and foremost, I was his friend.
“Do you want to see if it helps if I do it for you?”
His eyes slammed shut and he let out a long sigh. When he opened his eyes again, he looked straight into mine. I knew him well enough to read him. I saw nothing but palpable gratitude mixed with relief. He nodded at me slowly. I reached out and caught his straining cock in my hand. It was burning hot. He flinched and hissed as I made contact.
“Try not to yank my whole cock off, okay, alpha wolf?”
His eyes danced in amusement as he said it. It broke the tension. Just like that, he was Jules again. Not Jules-in-heat. Not Jules-the-wolf. Just Jules. I laughed as I wrapped my fingers around him and started stroking. It was awkward and I was so horny I could hardly think straight, but there was also a strange kind of kinship about it. It didn’t feel nearly as weird as it should have.
His dick felt good in my hand. I liked it as much as I thought I would. Maybe more. It twitched as soon as I touched it. It was thick and sinewy. Uncut, with a fat head and a gentle curve to the right. I rolled my thumb over his crown and used the copious amount of precum he was producing to lubricate his length. He wheezed his thanks. His breathing was irregular. He was panting and blowing air through his teeth. It didn’t take long for his body to stiffen. He rattled the cuffs and their chains, crying out loudly as he came in long spurts over my chest.
