“Yeah,” he said, more gently than I’d thought he could speak to me. “Yeah, I would have. With that fucking spell driving me out of my mind, I would have. And I would’ve hated myself for it as soon as I wasn’t crazy.” He pressed his mouth to mine again, softly, coaxingly. He licked along the seam, teasing me open, and then withdrew a little, just enough to whisper against my lips. “I wouldn’t enjoy it now. And I won’t do it. Arik. I’m not him.”
His lips found mine again, and I opened up for him. I couldn’t help it. And this time, the kiss went on long enough that my hands slid up his chest, my arms wrapping around his neck. My lungs burned for air, but I tumbled deeper and deeper, giving in, my cock hard and throbbing against his thigh. Every bit of me surged with instinct: to submit, to give the alpha what he wanted and let him give me what I needed. I’d spent my whole life running from this. What a horrible irony it was that I’d done this to myself when I put Matthew in my thrall.
We broke for air, and then kissed again, and the hand on my waist eased down, sliding around my hip to cup my ass and lift me onto my toes.
“That’s not what this is,” Matthew whispered against my mouth. His breath was coming raggedly, like he was barely keeping it together. “I needed you to cooperate, earlier, when I was asking you about the Kimballs. I was threatening you…but this isn’t an interrogation.”
“And you don’t need me to cooperate now? You’ll take what you want?”
A pause. “I’ll take whatever you give me. Whatever you want to give.”
Matthew’s big body pressed against mine from chest to knees, the wall against my back more yielding than he was. Stuck between a rock and a very, very hard place…I stifled a laugh and a moan all at once.
Why not? Why not give in? I had choices — and all of them were bad. Parker’s slave or Matthew’s plaything. Freedom wasn’t in the cards. Maybe it never had been, when freedom was just endless paranoia, looking over my shoulder for the next threat. A shaman without family or allies was always going to be a target for the next power-hungry alpha, and maybe letting Matthew fuck me and get it over with was better than being afraid of what might happen next.
Maybe I should let him mate me. No, no, not that…I shoved that part of my mind down, hard, trying to forget I’d even let the thought surface.
What I gave him. Right. Like he’d stop with what I offered.
But maybe he would.
What I wanted to give…
And my bodydidwant it, aching to be filled and used, my cock throbbing. His hands on me burned like brands. I wanted that feeling on the rest of my skin, on my thighs and my ass and around my throat, on my legs as he shoved them apart, on my shoulder blades as he shoved me down and mounted me.
No matter how much I craved his knot right at that moment, how ready I was to beg for it, I couldn’t let him have that. If he knotted me, if we were tied together like that…there was too much that could happen while he was stuck there inside me. Too much that could be said and felt.
“You can have me,” I said. “But you can’t knot me. And you can’t bite me.”
It was like a switch flipped, and all of Matthew’s restraint went up in smoke, incinerated the second he had my permission. With a growl, he yanked me into his arms — and I’d thought we were as close as we could get before, but this was like being absorbed into him, the heat of him melting me into his body. His hands were everywhere, tearing at my clothes and stroking and pulling me closer.
My head spun as he dragged me to the bed, flinging me down and landing on top. It was a blur of his mouth on my throat, his glowing eyes, my hands clinging to his shoulders, my shirt ripped from my torso and the shreds flung aside, and then he was moving down, nipping and sucking and licking at my chest and stomach. I arched, biting my lip to keep in my moans.
He ripped my jeans open and pulled them down my legs, where they tangled at my ankles. He didn’t bother getting them the rest of the way off. An instant later, he ducked his head and swallowed my aching cock in one motion.
I had a split-second to be impressed, since my cock wasn’t small, before sheer sensation took over. He used his lips and his tongue and even his teeth — not wolfed out, thank the gods — to bring me to the brink within moments, the suction nearly unbearably intense. My flailing hands landed in his thick wavy hair, grasping onto the strands like a lifeline. It had to hurt, but it only spurred him on. He growled his satisfaction around my cock, the vibrations traveling up into my balls and ending my fight for self-control.
I spilled down his throat, shaking, squeezing my eyes shut and riding the wave of my orgasm like a swimmer caught in a riptide. It pulsed through me, through and through, spiraling along the magical pathways my spell had forged from him to me and echoing in the shared space between us, over and over.
My body ached like I’d been running. I collapsed, coated in sweat and shaking. My fingers trembled in his hair. It probably felt like I was stroking him.
Maybe I was stroking him.
The cool air from the window caught every droplet of moisture on my skin, an icy counterpoint to the burning heat where his hands still pinned my hips.
Slowly, Matthew let my cock slide out of his mouth. I couldn’t look. I didn’t want to see whatever was written on his face. For weeks, while he ‘negotiated’ with Sam Kimball, Matthew had looked at me, his serious blue eyes rarely resting anywhere else if he had the choice. Even before I cast my spell he’d watched me more often than he needed to. Before the spell, I hadn’t been able to interpret those looks.
After the spell, I’d known exactly what was on his mind, because I’d put it there. Desire. Lust. Possession. And I’d responded to it anyway, somewhere deep inside where I tried not to look, because who wouldn’t? How were you supposed to stay totally indifferent to a man like Matthew, analphalike Matthew, constantly focusing his formidable attention on you?
Especially when Matthew was so easy on the eyes. And so rational, so devoted to his pack.
When he wasn’t being manipulated by a shaman, of course.
But still. Even when I had my spell on him, he tried to do the right thing. And once the spell put me in the category of things Matthew needed to protect, he’d tried to do the right thing by me, too. If I’d been what he hoped I was, what his addled brain was convinced I was so briefly, before it all went to shit, he would’ve protected me from Parker not because it was necessary to keep him and his pack alive, but because he loved me.
Matthew nuzzled my too-sensitive cock and then went lower, licking my balls, pressing kisses to my inner thighs. Why wasn’t he flipping me over and mounting me? I’d told him he could. I even wanted him to, if I was being honest.
Thatwould be honest. A hard, brutal fuck, driving everything else out. Proof that Matthew was the kind of alpha I knew, the kind of alpha he’d shown himself capable of being earlier that day when he ripped Tyler’s guts out.