Does he want me to beg?
“No, I just know you’re going to make me come again the moment I get inside you.” If his voice wasn’t so soft and sincere, I might think he was teasing me, but I can feel he’s telling the truth. He’s worried about satisfying me.
I reach between our bodies, and the moment I circle him with my fingers, he stills, making me wonder if he’s even stillbreathing. “I need you,” I say and loosen my grip just enough to work my fingers over him. He sucks in a shaky breath then positions himself where I need him. I’m so wet, it only takes a couple of short strokes before he pushes deep inside me. I tip my head back as my inner walls quiver around him. When he continues to circle my clit while slowly sliding in and out of me, I know he doesn’t need to worry about coming too fast, because I’m already right there with him. “Don’t stop,” I plead, digging my nails into his back.
Moros kisses my neck then nibbles my shoulder until I feel his lips hit the sensitive spot he already bit. My heart skips a beat in the time it takes him to fit his mouth back over the same place. My brain says it should hurt, but my body isn’t getting the same message, because the only thing I feel is orgasm inducing pleasure.
Moros curls over me, his teeth locked on my shoulder and hips slamming into mine while I convulse around him. When my cries get too loud, I bite the palm of my hand to stifle the sound. I don’t want anyone infringing on this moment. Just as my mind starts to clear, Moros thrusts deep inside me, and his entire body stills other than his dick, which pulses just as intensely as my inner muscles spasm.
A slight ache registers when he unlocks his teeth from my shoulder, but the throb it sends through my body is pure pleasure. I quiver on the inside, eliciting a soft groan from Moros who then begins kissing me again. I make an effort to lift my arm to wrap it around his back, but it takes a few seconds for my brain to send the memo.
“How can you even move?” I mumble, feeling like I melted into the bed.
He chuckles darkly, and the sound rolls over my skin with as much effect as a tender caress. “Sweet Briar, I’m just getting started. Before I’m done, you really won’t be able to move.”
KAGE
Ijolt awake with the fuzziness of a dream still clouding my mind. Briar is heavy in my thoughts, but she always is. Even while slumbering, I can’t escape her. I grab my head, wishing I could remember what woke me but dreading it at the same time. It was definitely a nightmare, but it felt so real.
I look around the room. Being in her bed is the closest I can get to her. Even though she didn’t even sleep on this fucking mattress long, the fabric still touched her skin. The space is bare, and her scent hardly even remains, but I still see the ghost of her everywhere.
The door creaks open, and I bolt upright, my heart thundering in my chest. There’s some small part of me that thinks it’s her, even when I know it’s impossible. Ziv’s large frame comes into view when he swings the wood fully open.
My heart falls, and I drop back to the bed. “What do you want?” I haven’t spoken to him in weeks, not since he tried to use me to kill himself.
“Nothing you can give me, demon,” he mutters but slinks farther into the room. If he tries to touch me again, I’m not sure I’ll have the willpower to stop him. Some days I want to kill him myself, but I know he’s my only hope for getting Briar back. I’ve tried talking to the instructors, even Syrinx, but if they know anything about my creature, they aren’t talking to me.
“Why are you here, fallen?”
“I can’t remember what she smells like.”
His words puncture something in my chest. I’ve had moments when I can’t see her face as clearly or wonder if she really does smell like I remember. They are worse than the times I can’t get the image of her out of my head, or when I think if I round the corner, she will be right there because I’m certain I can scent her. “Yes, you do.” I clear my throat. “She smells like the forest after a rainfall, fresh and a little sweet.”
He nearly falls into the wall before allowing himself to slide down and thump his ass on the floor. I hate that I feel sorry for him, but I do, even when he got to touch her, to bond with her in a way I never will and it’s his fault she’s gone in the first place. I know I’m cursed, but I’m starting to think he is as well.
“She has another mate,” he mutters with his head hanging low. A heartbeat passes, and I think there’s no way I heard him clearly, but the pain in his voice can’t be denied. The nightmare I thought I forgot trickles into my thoughts—my creature with another male. She still doesn’t smile often, but the rawnessinside her is healing. She’s moving on and adapting while we do nothing.
“I wonder if he will be the one to keep her safe,” I muse out loud.
“He has a brother here, a shifter, but the male is weak. His name and family lineage along with a very generous donation are the only reasons he was accepted into the Ivy.”
I huff. Can’t anything be easy? This entire time I’ve worried for Briar, I haven’t once considered just how much the gods must have abhorred her to pair her with us—a useless shadow, a fallen God, and now a weak shifter. Surely there’s a reason for her torments we don’t yet see.
“His name is Moros, and he is the next alpha of the Ashcroft Pack.”
I lift my head off the pillow, confused. “An alpha? I don’t understand,” I say. There is a reason the Ivy always wins the Undertaking. They recruit ordemandthe best novices. Why would they have invited the lesser brother?
“Vyron, his father, is the current alpha of their pack. He is the one who made the deal with Syrinx for his son Eris to come here. Eris seems to thinkheis the favored son and will be alpha when his brother dies, which was the intent when the alpha was sent to Windsheer to attend Frostburn.”
“Fuck!”
“I doubt he views the arrangement as a punishment now,” Ziv sneers, and it takes a moment for his words and the meaning behind them to sink in. The fallen is talking about the other male and the fact that he is with Briar. My full nightmare comes into focus, allowing me to recall the reason for the dread I felt when I woke up. A bitter laugh escapes my chest.
“What the fuck could you find funny?”
“You, you selfish prick. I would give my life to touch her once, yet you had her and want to be pissed that the Fates chosesomeone else for her? Someone needs to get off their ass to protect her. Maybe it will be him.” I’m an asshole. I’m just as selfish and pissed as he is, but at least he got to hold her and bond with her the way he was supposed to, so I feel justified rubbing this shit in his face.
“Yeah,” he agrees so softly I barely hear him over the silence of the room. “I also know exactly what I’m missing, and it isn’t just the way she feels wrapped around my dick like you’re implying.”
