Page 57 of Feral

Nothing existed but pain and battle. Nothing but enemies to kill before they killed him.

And yet when he attacked the little female whose face and scent stirred up thoughts he couldn’t place—images that were something other than fighting and blood—he couldn’t end her life.

He dug his fingers into her flesh, pulling her up against him to crush her frail bones, but as his muscles strained to finish her, he found himself incapable.

Snarling, he stared into her wide, scared eyes, unable to grasp why she seemed… sofamiliar.What were those flickers in his mind calling to him? Why did her scent, struck through with fear as it was, fill him with…warmth?

He sniffed her again, closing his eyes when a tremor made its way up his spine.

“Zach,”she said.

He frowned and looked back down at her. That word… it was like hearing someone speaking through water. Vaguely familiar, but too muddled to understand.

“Zach. It’s me. I’m here.” She managed to wrench a hand free from his grasp. Slowly, she eased it toward his chest.

The warmth of her palm nearly made him lose his grip on her. It wasn’t painful, but the electric buzz that went through him reminded him all too clearly of his tormentor’s favored tool. Fury blazed in his mind and he snarled a warning, wishing he could kill the female and end this confusing encounter beforetheyreturned and punished him for his failings.

“Do you need help?” The garbled speech from outside the cell reminded him of the other alphas’ presence, and his anger spiked as he clutched the female tighter and pulled on his chains, challenging them to return and finish what they’d started when they encroached on his domain.

“Don’t come in!” The female didn’t look away from him. Slowly, she let her hand slide from his chest to the side of his face, seemingly unconcerned with the threat of his bared teeth. “Zach, don’t be scared. I’ll help you remember.”

Her voice was so soft—as soft as her body against his. He dragged her scent in through his nostrils, filling his lungs with it, knowing he shouldn’t—that feeling anything other than anger and terror would be punished until he wished for death. He should kill her now, before it was too late. Just squeeze her small body a little harder and she’d break, and it’d be over—

His pained contemplations came to a full stop when she slid her hand back down his chest and wrapped it around his cock. He jolted violently as sharp, hot tendrils ofneedrocketed up his body and down his thighs.

Pleasure.

His mind fogged as images of her face, contorted in pain and pleasure underneath him, came rushing back from the dark.

Mating.

He remembered what it felt like to rut. To fuck.

That was why she smelled so good. That was why he couldn’t kill her—she wasn’t to be killed, she was to be mounted. Her hand around his cock filled him with a craving that intensified with each harsh breath he expelled, urging his body to thrust. Her touch sent hot, violent yearning up his spine, licking like flames, infecting him with an insurmountable fever.

He growled again, eyes narrowed as he searched her for any sign she might attack him. That this might be a trick. There was none—and finally, from the very depths of the darkness came the knowledge of what he had to do.

She screeched when he tossed her to the floor, but to his surprise she didn’t fight when he knelt over her. Her gaze flickered from his hard and throbbing cock, but the hesitance evident in her eyes at the sight of his anatomy softened when she looked at his face. Gently, she reached out and brushed a palm over his face before she relaxed on the dirty floor, offering him… permission?

He froze, unsure how to proceed without fighting for dominance, but when she tilted her hips up, he remembered. He shredded the cloth covering her lower half, yanking it off her long limbs until the place between her legs was bared to him. He didn’t think; he acted on instincts alone as the sweet call from her cunt made him bury his mouth where her alluring scent was strongest.

She yelped and jerked, hands flying to his head, and he snarled without lifting his mouth from her soft flesh. But she didn’t try to shove him away, instead clutching him tighter against her as he delved in between her folds.

She tasted exactly like she smelled—divine, feminine, salty musk, and something more. Something that pulled so hard at the aching chord in his chest he struggled for breath. But what was air, when he had this? Hadher?

He licked and rubbed and sucked between her spread lips until she was bucking and panting, her pink folds slick and flushed open, revealing her opening.

“It’s okay,” she whispered, her voice hoarse and breathy now. “It’s okay. I’ll help you remember.”

He ignored her words; he didn’t understand them and didn’t much care what they meant. All he cared about, all heneeded,was that glistening opening between her legs.

Her cunt.

The word rang through his brain as he fell on top of her and rocked his hips forward, desperate to be inside of her. But the broad head of his cock was too big to go in, instead rubbing up her slit, catching in the mouth of her opening.

The female shuddered and reached between them, but he pushed her hand away with a snarl and fisted his cock in one hand, aiming it at her entrance.

Her cunt resisted again, but he wasn’t about to be denied. Not when every instinct in his body roared at him, promised him thatthiswas all he needed to survive. That nothing would ever hurt again once he was buried inside this little female’s body. With a growl and a brutal shove, he breached her, the wet sound of her pussy swallowing him drowned out by her pained scream.

---