Page 77 of The World Undone

His tongue peeked out against his bottom lip again, a recognizable flare of hunger in his eyes as he watched me. “When I bit Charlie, there was something about her—something subtle, but it was there. And the first time I had you, your blood—” my cheeks warmed at that memory, and I shifted, uncomfortable with the flare of need chasing me in this entirely inappropriate moment, with Charlie right here, “so much more. I was always meant for you, Little Protector. Even before I met you, I knew your taste, hunted you.”

Charlie cleared her throat, reminding us both that she was witness to the heat building between us. And when I turned back, half in a haze, there was a knowing look in her eyes, one half-teasing, half-embarrassed to be witness to the very obvious desire in Darius’s stare as he watched me, unblinking.

I cleared my throat, as understanding flooded me. “My uncle,” I licked my lips, trying to calm the sudden excitement expanding in my chest, “his name was Saif.”

She leaned back, confusion bleeding into realization as she processed that. “We’re cousins?”

“Half cousins,” Darius clarified, eyes still boring into me. I could tell he was very ready to be done with this conversation now that he’d pieced everything together, and was doing everything in his power to resist the desire to pull me back to the cabin.

You have no idea, Little Protector, what just the memory of the taste of you does to me.

“Half cousins,” I said, my voice pitched higher than usual with Darius’s words in my thoughts.

I’m pleased that you’re pleased, so I’ll wait, however impatiently, for this conversation to conclude, but then I’m taking you back to my room and devouring you until I’ve had my fill. My hunger has been—insatiable—lately…and it’s been weeks since I’ve had you.

It had only been two days, but my own desire matched his all the same, and the promise of his teeth inside my neck while our bodies coiled together sent a pang of longing through me that I fought to push down. Not right now. Later.

Charlie’s face split into a large smile, her hand reaching for mine.

I felt my own expression mirror hers as I swallowed down the out-of-place lust flooding my system.

I had a cousin. Family.

“Is anyone else here a relation of yours?” I asked, suddenly greedy for more.

She shook her head, squeezed my hand. “No, not that I’m aware of. It’s why this place passed to me, a half-niece he’d never even met, who had no knowledge of the supernatural community that often traipsed through these woods. Saif had no other living family.” Her head tilted in apology, “except for you, I suppose. Though given the circumstances of your life with Cyrus, it’s likely he didn’t even know about you.”

The lightness of finding kin faded slightly as another realization hit me.

Saif passed this place to Charlie.

Saif—just like my mother, just like Cyrus—was dead.

16

ATLAS

Iwoke up with a start, my skin clammy with sweat and heart racing in a panic. Max’s side of my bed was empty, but I shoved my face into the pillow she usually slept on, shamelessly breathing in the smell of her.

I bit back my frustrated groan at the shadow of her, the echo I wanted so badly to be solid right now. My dick was already stiffening, and I felt the wolf settle deep in my chest as her scent engulfed us. He liked having her scent nearby.

But I wanted more than her smell right now, more than just the knowledge that she was near, that she was ours. I wanted to be buried into her wet cunt, dripping and pleading for me as I filled her.

I had half a mind to go storming through the cabin until I found her, so that I could take her before the rest of the house woke up—let them hear her moans of pleasure as their morning alarm.

I shoved my hand down my sweatpants and ran it over my shaft, the nightmare that had woken me shifting into a much more pleasant fantasy.

Fucking hell, that girl drove me wild, even when she wasn’t here.

I imagined her lips wrapped around me, large eyes watching my groan of pleasure as she took me deeper into her mouth. Licked my lips at the memory of her slick heat on my tongue. I could practically hear the little moans she made when I touched her a little more roughly than she’d anticipated, her pleasure deepening in surprise, excitement as I pounded into her, teeth buried into her shoulder. The fanghole wasn’t the only one who liked to bite, to mark her.

My dick throbbed, hard and demanding. There was no going back to sleep now, not until I took care of this.

My strokes grew hurried as I thought of her sleeping, naked and sated, the golden-brown expanse of her skin pebbled and shivering. Fuck, even the thought of her folded against one of my team members, grinding and finding release on a hand that wasn’t mine, sent me to the very edge.

She’d gotten a lot better at closing us out in those moments, though there’d been a few times where her orgasm ripped through her with too much intensity, and she’d lost control. We didn’t care anymore. Those moments quickly devolved into all of us panting at her side, passing her from one to the next in a bubble of lust that pulsed through the cabin.

The memory of a few nights ago, when the vampire took her pussy while I filled her ass, both of our teeth buried on either side of her neck as she writhed between us and screamed to oblivion, took me over the edge.

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