Page 36 of Zodiac Beasts

Maybe he liked having so much control over me right now, and maybe I liked it too.

“I can’t.” I said the words, but my body was still moving, and stopping myself felt impossible.

“You’re already doing so good for me, Baby Doll. I know you can.”

Suddenly I heard a rustle of leaves. A footstep. I didn’t have time to keep holding back. I should have been scrambling off of him and hiding behind the kissing booth, but the fear that spiked in me, as the sound neared, only had me driving harder and more eagerly onto his lap.

“It’s too much.” I breathed out in something between a sob and a desperate plea. I knew someone was watching now, but instead of stopping myself, I was letting myself moan louder. “Please, I can’t take it anymore.”

Marcus’ cock tensed inside me, and I could tell he knew exactly what I was doing.

“You can come, Lila.” When he said my name out loud, that was my breaking point. I shifted my hips, driving down on my g-spot, and rubbing all the right pressure into my clit until my mind was crashing and rebooting in white hot orgasm. I dropped my hands to his chest, holding myself up, while I drenched his lap in a gushing release. Another footstep crunched in the distance, and a sudden rationality snapped me out of my trance faster than I could fully appreciate the quaking perfection that was still reverberating through every cell in my body. The bull stopped moving as I scrambled to unsheathe him. As soon as his still firm cock slipped out of my pussy, fluid dribbled from me and soaked his hips. I covered my breasts from whoever might be watching us, as if that would lessen the social damage somehow, while he unthreaded his arms from the rope and sat up to hold me steady. His body slowly changed back into the Vampire I knew, while I stared at the wetness all over the saddle beneath me.

Marcus hugged me against him, resting his chin atop my head and squeezing me into his chest. Heavy breaths filled and released from his lungs, then we both shook atop the bull as he… laughed.

“S-sorry—” I started to apologize when I realized how much I’d soaked him. “I swear I didn’t—I mean it’s not—”

“If you’re trying to apologize for squirting all over me, I just want you to know I’m permanently writing every motion you used to get there into my memory, until I can make you do that on command.”

That only made me blush harder. Was that what that was? I’d never felt anything quite like it. I was too speechless to respond.

Marcus swiped his hand through the glistening mess I’d left on him, then he slipped his index finger between his lips and sucked it clean. He then placed his still wet ring finger against my lips, and I complied. I let him enter my mouth and share my own fluids with me, and I let that neutral flavor cover my tongue.

Marcus ruffled my hair, then held me by the shoulders as he gazed lovingly into my flustered expression.

“You’ve always felt good, but being mated to you is a completely new level.” He exhaled with elation. “I guess the ‘romantic gesture’ of protecting you is what got me, according to the beast instincts in my head after I transformed. It makes sense that I’ve never triggered it, considering I’ve never been particularly romantic on a night like this.” He shook his head at his own self-deprecation, but he was still overflowing with a sense of joy and amusement. He leaned forward and placed a kiss on my forehead. “Mating with you might be the best thing I’ve ever done.”

That rustle grew louder, ripping us both back to reality entirely too soon. In a flash of motion that I couldn’t track with my human-ish eyes, I somehow went from mounted on a mechanical bovine to being cradled in Marcus’ arms, as he gently set me down on my dorm room bed.

“Vampire speed is ridiculous.” I muttered, blinking rapidly as I processed whatever the hell just happened.

“I’m your man now. Enjoy the benefits of mating with the most powerful species in the magic kingdom.” He said as he habitually plugged my phone into the charger. Not that I’d suspected it was anyone else who always did this for me, but it was somehow comical to see ‘the most powerful species in the magic kingdom’ doing menial tasks like plugging in my phone then cleaning the lenses of my glasses.

So arrogant, yet so sweet.

“So does this mean we’re officially dating?”

Marcus rolled his eyes and sat on the bed with me. “Baby Doll, we’ve been dating for months. You’re the only one who didn’t seem to notice.” He stole a kiss using that impossible speed, then he shoved me down onto the bed with a hand on my chest. “But if this makes it feel more real for you, I can ask you officially. Will you go steady with me, Lila? I would love to be your boyfriend if you’re willing to be my girlfriend.” Seriously the shared feeling of his genuine happiness as he asked me that was overwhelming in the best way. “I guess it sounds a little silly considering we’re already magically bound as mates, but I understand that you spent your whole life among human culture, so I don’t mind adapting to your ways.”

The stupid grin on my lips was permanent with him. “I do.” I shook my head with pure amusement, then I pulled him down for another kiss. It wasn’t long before we were tangled up again, and I was coming undone on the new sensation of his unshifted cock. The endorphins paired with his affection had me drifting off into the most contented sleep.

I was happy, I was satisfied, and that all should have been enough. But when his lips were the last sensation I felt before I was lost to the sweetest dreams, I couldn’t help thinking about the fact that he was still touching another shifter’s mark.

Chapter 19

I stood against the wall, my arms crossed, and staring listlessly into the distance, while I listened to the two most problematic people in my life enjoying the night. If I thought about it deeper, I’d long been such a solitary person that these two were also the only significant people in my life. I spoke to the half-brother I used to hate more often than I spoke to my coworkers, and not an hour went by that I didn’t have a passing thought about little Miss Denton.

I pinched the bridge of my nose, preemptive of a headache.

Marcus had shifted. I didn’t know what had triggered him, and I doubted he knew himself. Oddly, while I didn’t trust Marcus for much, and he was very much a manipulative asshole, he wasn’t really a liar when it mattered. He was more likely to avoid an answer than he was to give a false one. I believed him when he said he’d never triggered the Taurus before.

I should feel self-conscious for being such a voyeur, hiding in the shadows, listening to every grunt and moan, choosing not to reveal myself so as not to interrupt, and letting my monster feed on her energy as she fucked herself on him, but I’d done far worse to satiate my needs in the past. I saw no reason to come between two mated shifters. Not on an Earth sign’s moon. It was better I keep a distance.

I thought back to my conversation with Lila in the storage shed, where she’d asked me if I’d been feeding on anyone else since I met her. A probing, jealous question that should seem unreasonable considering it came from a girl who was currently riding another man’s cock on the mechanical bull I’d set up, while in open air where anyone at all could see them, and literally in my place of employment.

But also… it was an interesting question. Sex had always been burdensome for me, and yet I needed it in the deepest parts of my DNA, just like a vampire needed blood or a Baku needed dreams. So why had I been able to go an entire month abstinent?

I’d been pulled in so many directions, emotionally and otherwise, I hadn’t had the mental capacity left to think about it. For a girl so oblivious to social cues and blatant manipulation, her observation skills constantly surprised me. She memorized every rule I taught her about our kind, and she threw it back at me with the kind of analytical logic that comes from the fresh eyes of an ambitious scientist.