Page 20 of There's No Place Like Oz

He kept rubbing in that perfect position, seeming to revel in the way my heartbeat was climbing as I soaked his palm.

Then he upped the ante. His thumb followed a line up my center until the tip was up against my clit. He rubbed small circles in a way that communicated he knew exactly what he was doing with me. He had my whole body shaking, and I was near drawing blood from biting my lip harder and harder in my efforts to avoid audible moans. Butfuck, he was good. Really fucking good. “If you could see your face right now… You’re so responsive, little fireball.”

He continued inching pleasure up my spine, adding in a third finger, while varying the pressure on my clit. Two fingers was usually more than enough, but three was a new kind of thickness and pressure. I opened my legs for him, and he leaned in and flicked my nipple with his tongue. My whole body was hot and blushing at the way he was working me, and I’d lost any desire to protest. I’m not sure I ever had any. Why I closed my eyes and let myself focus on how good it felt, I couldn’t explain. Why I let myself start to express that heady orgasm through my moans, I also couldn’t explain. Maybe it’d been too long since someone other than my own hand and a vibrator had been able to make me come like this. Maybe it had been too long since I’d been with a man who sought my pleasure instead of his own.

Or maybe I was just a cheap whore like all those men told me I was, and I just wanted to feel something that was purely sex without strings attached.

There wasn’t a transaction out of this. There was no“get on your knees, and you can have any role you want.”He wasn’t taking pictures to blackmail me with. He was simply pleasuring me. Was it okay to like it?

I don’t know when that sense of fear slipped into fantasy, or when abduction turned into a willing one-night stand, but when he grazed my breasts with his teeth, I couldn’t take it anymore. I was losing myself on his fingers. A rush of perfect adrenaline and ecstasy drove through my core, rippling through my every muscle until I was practically seeing stars. I writhed on him shamelessly, and I felt every ounce of tension in my body slipping away.

He stilled, watching me through the whole ride, just savoring the way he’d played me all the way off the edge. With a slow and controlled motion, he withdrew his fingers, and he sucked them into his mouth.

He closed his eyes and groaned as he indulged in my flavor. “You even taste good.”

I was at a loss for words. I just stared at him as I inhaled deeply and exhaled slowly, trying to gather my wits. “W-why did you…”

“Did you like that?” He asked in a measured way that somehow still made me feel more a specimen than a sex object.

“I… I didn’t hate it.” I heard myself say. Honest. I shouldn’t be so honest, but orgasms seemed to function as truth serums for me.

“Good. Because I think I want to keep you.” He made a show of biting his lip until blood bloomed on his skin. Then he leaned in again, and this time he pressed his teeth into the inside of my breast. I yelped as he sucked the sensitive skin with a punishing bite—more than hard enough for his fangs to penetrate my flesh. He skated his lips over the wound, fluttering soft kisses to my nipple, then he returned to his bite and licked me languidly.

With the eyes of a hungry beast, he withdrew and smiled lovingly at the first traces of a bruise that appeared in my cleavage. I hesitated to look down, but my curiosity got the best of me. That bruise settled in the shape of a fang, and the flesh darkened as if it was a sharp tattoo. Like some sort of magic, he’d left a mark.

He was claiming me, yet I was such a disheveled mess, still so high on orgasm, that I didn’t even try to argue.

He cupped both of my breasts again, then he met my gaze. “Have you ever been fucked by a lion,myfireball?”

I bit my lip and drew a long breath through my nose. “Bigger ones than you.” I said calmly. A taunt. Though I couldn’t say if it was mockery out of spite or if I wanted him to do it.

This was crazy. He was a wild and dangerous stranger who just fingered fucked me without my consent. Sure, he had the body of a god and the face of a Viking, but he’d kidnapped me. I… I couldn’t let some monster inside me just because he was hot and good with his fingers. I couldn’t let him mark me and make me his, just because he’d sent my soul flying. I… I needed to get back to my friends. My mission. My home. Right I… had a home.

His laugh interrupted my moral dilemma. “Good answer. I like that.” He tightened his grip on my breasts. “It’s not true, but I like your spunk.” Then he released me and sat up straight, making distance between us.

“Is that what you are? A lion?” I managed as his new, more casual position subsided any remaining tension in my gut.

He frowned. “That’s what I was. I was Alpha of the Lion Shifters until Gwen sealed my ability to shift.” His eyes fell back down my body, then he carefully and delicately returned my dress to my shoulders.

“Gwen?”

“The Wicked Witch of the West.” He clarified.

“Oh, so you’re…” another cursed puppet. I hesitated to say it. Who would want to be reminded that they were little more than someone else’s toy? I’d lived that life, and I still held that shame so deeply that it slowly killed me every day.

“A discarded fuck boy.” He finished the sentence for me completely unironically. “But I’d prefer if you’d just call me Leon if you’re deciding between the two.”

Leon. I liked that name. It suited him. “I’m Dorothy.” It was suddenly so casual between us. He had a charisma about him that was completely disarming. It was almost disturbing how quickly I was finding empathy and common ground with each of these fucked up men. I should have been livid. I should have been angry. I should have punched him in the face.

But… I didn’t want to. There was no fear left in my system. From the moment he marked me, all I felt was calm. A trauma bond.

“Dor-o-thy.” He pronounced each syllable like he was turning it around on his tongue, tasting it as it settled in his mouth. “Such a pretty name for my warm little fireball.”

Thatlittle tick, however… I couldn’t help but notice the way he now kept referring to me by possessives. “What do you mean by—”

My words were immediately cut off as a hard fist connected with the side of Leon’s face. In a flash of black and gold, Tobias had Leon against the wall, held by his neck, with his thumb ready to press down on his pulse and cut off his consciousness.

“Get the fuck away from Dorothy.” He growled with a viciousness I’d never seen from my gentle friend.

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