Page 55 of Settle Down, Princess

“Do not put that fucking monster of yours inside a virgin’s cunt,” Roan snapped, his eyes wide and staring.

We all stared. Washing up in the barracks’ showers meant we were all too familiar with what everyone else had in their pants, so Creed was legendary. On the slack, he was doubly blessed compared to many, but now… I wondered idly, with a vaguely hysterical edge, how a woman as tiny as Jessalyn would ever be able to take such a thing into her body, but it wasn’t an issue for tonight. Creed eased her up and onto his length, not to ram his cock home, but to let it rub along her seam.

Her sigh was what I seized upon to help work out how she was feeling, but that wasn’t enough for me. Jessalyn’s eyes were closed tight, her mouth open, as she was rocked back and forth.

“Tell me how you’re feeling,” I demanded, not letting up until her eyes fluttered open. “Tell me how Creed’s making you feel.”

“Good…” Her brows creased as if in pain, but it was a sweet one I knew well. I rode its vicious edge any time I was around her. A pleasure so intense it hurt, but you leaned into the blade anyway. “So good… Creed…!”

“I’ve got you, my mate.” He moved her harder, faster, his cock glistening with her slick, each time it pushed past her seam, before sliding back. Then his focus shifted to me, then Arik and Roan. “We’ve got you.”

“That’s a call to action if ever I heard one,” Roan said, licking his fingers, then dipped them in roseblood, before grabbing her with his other hand. He licked a stripe across her nipples, then her little yelp letting us know when he closed his roseblood-covered fingers around her tight little bead. Then he dived forward, licking and sucking the mess he’d made, devoting his attention to the sensitive tip.

“Yes!” she cried out, giving me all the confirmation I needed. “Yes!”

I stroked my hand down her sternum, wanting to caress, touch, claim every inch of her, but the moment we became a pack was the moment I accepted this. Arik’s head might lead us, but Creed’s heart was the compass that would always take us in the right direction, no matter what our hearts might have to say. I tugged her mouth down and claimed it with mine.

“Ours, Princess,” I said between kisses, not letting her get a word in edgewise because there would be no arguments about this. “From now on, you belong to us.”

Chapter 31

Creed

Fuck. Bite. Claim.

I didn’t want to simply slide my mate up and down my cock, even though her cunt felt like a slick little hand trying to wrap itself around me. I didn’t want to only feel the head of my dick nudge her pearl with every stroke. Her coos of pleasure that came with each pass, I liked them just fine, but they made me wonder about what it would be like to have more. What would it be like if I cut her down from that rope, catching her before she fell, then forced her down to the ground? Head down, back arched, hips tilted up in presentation. What would it be like to kneel between those satin-smooth thighs and then rub the head of my cock against—

“You’ll hurt her.”

Silas was a thorn in my side as he appeared at my left, regarding everything that was happening like this was just any other day. He watched me snarl at him, the wolf letting him know that neither of us liked him near our mate, not right now. She was mine and I needed to claim her and—

“You’ll hurt her, then if you claim her, you’ll be bound to her for eternity.” His lips thinned. “And she’ll hate you for exactly that long.”

No.

The wolf was definite about that. There was no reality he would accept where Jessalyn was in danger, or hurting, or… I swallowed hard, where she hated us. Our claws threatened to pierce her skin as our grip tightened, as if he was the one taking her away from me.

Not me.

“I need—” I started to say.

“I know.”

That was the thing that saved him. Even though wolf shifters mated in packs, we experienced moments of extreme territorialism, but there was something in his eyes that made clear he understood the fight raging inside me. Twin impulses: to just take her, make her mine and damn the consequences; or to slow things down and do as the alphas had always instructed and put her first. Somehow, while he would never have a wolf, he knew that struggle. He nodded to me, then pulled away, that small distance helping, right up until he moved to stand in front of Jessalyn.

It should’ve been my hand sliding down her throat, thumbing her pulse before going to her hair and grabbing a handful of it to drag her lips down. It should’ve been my lips on hers, kissing her so slowly, so thoroughly it was as if he was learning the terrain of her with his mouth to memorise and store away for later. But she was mine—that throbbed hard and deep inside of me, a twin to the pulse in my balls.

My claws dimpled her flesh and that showed me I was losing control. Fear and desire, like the feeling of standing close to the edge of a cliff unsure of whether to step back or jump off, raged inside me, slowing my strokes. And then I just stood there holding Jessalyn but not knowing what to do.

“Does it feel good?” Silas asked her as he stared over her shoulder at me. “Do you like what your mate is doing to you?”

She couldn’t answer in words, but the wolf and I didn’t need them. We knew what that little moan meant, especially the edge to it. It was like catching a rabbit when you wanted to gorge yourself on deer. You had just enough to quiet the ache in your stomach, but what you really wanted was to be full to the point of bursting and the bone-deep satisfaction that came from it. But Silas evidently didn’t know what her sounds meant because he pushed her to answer.

“Use your words.”

“Need…”

I moved at her words, feeling how my shaft was so hard it wanted to snap back against my belly, feeling the tension that came from spearing it instead between her thighs and forcing it to drag roughly through her folds, feeling that slippery flesh part. But when I glided along part of her, I felt that indentation, and my cock caught there, wanting to push in, not brush past. She started to writhe as soon as she felt it.

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