Page 52 of With Fangs and Claws (The Wolf Queen 1)

Chapter 23

I dreamed of a rich, red sea. I floated within it, wafting back and forth with a kind of unconscious sensuality that dominated my awareness. I didn’t exist, I just felt. But as I swayed in the rosy gloom, something surged up. A loud, regular sound thundered in the background, but that wasn’t what was most persistent. The low booming noise just provided a slow drumbeat for everything else to follow. Sensation, that’s what I got first. A great swelling feeling that seemed to grow and grow and take me with it. It was filled with a heat I didn’t understand, that had me writhing and shifting inside the red tide. But as I did, I found I wasn’t alone. Something, someone clamped down on me and that’s what brought all those feelings to a head.

“Mmh…”

An entirely masculine grunt was delivered against the back of my neck, my eyes flicking open to see the thin grey light of early morning coming in through the windows, but it wasn’t the light or the sound that had roused me. What I’d felt as a heavy anchor, weighing me down in the red tide, was evidently Dane’s hand. It shifted slowly, creating a burning path across the borrowed shirt I wore and my skin below it. He’d tucked me in against him, hard, allowing no gap at all between us and that’s when I felt just how he was responding to assumedly the same dream.

It suddenly occurred to me that I hadn’t thought too much about Kris since we’d left. No doubt that made me the kind of fickle flibbertigibbet the priests preached about, but something had changed when we escaped the keep. Girl Darcy had been left behind, broken on my father’s floor, but this Darcy, me, here and now, I felt some of the same things Kris had managed to stir in my younger self. Dane’s hardness ground into my softness, just as Kris’ had, and his rocking motion replicated that of the tide I’d dreamed of. But it was Dane’s hand, placed low on my pelvis, that resulted in a deep, throbbing pulse that had my lips falling open.

One little gasp, that’s all it took for Gael to become awake, one dark blue eye staring into mine, his hair, his hand covering the other side of his face. That eye studied me, taking in my shameful state with a curious kind of watchfulness. He noted my mouth and the soft panting noises that escaped it, the grip his brother held me in and the way it made me squirm. Then there were the low grunts of pleasure as I writhed against Dane. But what I didn’t expect was for that gaze to sharpen and for those long, sensitive fingers to reach out and press against the skin just above where his brother held me.

I slapped my hand over my mouth to try and stifle my cries as the bliss Dane had stirred amplified exponentially. Gael seemed to know something about that, his own teeth baring, his elongated fangs clear from this angle. But he didn’t let up, his face questing towards mine, as if he would swallow the distance between us, while he sandwiched me between him and his brother so that I would die of ecstasy.

Instead, a thin little moan escaped me, mostly smothered by my hand, but not quite enough, it appeared. My groan was joined by others, the other wargen rousing, rolling over so that Axe now peered over Gael’s shoulder. Gael snatched his hand back then, like a child caught with his fingers in the biscuit jar, but what was done, was done. I panted once, twice, three times before that red tide rose and dumped a wave on top of me, drowning me utterly in pleasure.

I would do a lot to feel such perfect bliss again. So much of what went on in the castle made sense now. My body jerked, twitched, unable to contain what clenched inside me as I was burned whole and left bereft, wanting more tinder thrown on those flames.

I went limp against the mattress, against a now waking Dane.

“Someone got a little morning glory,” Axe said with a smirk. “You going to share, lass, or leave all of us hard and wanting?”

He meant it as a joke if the wicked grin was anything to go by, but as I came back to myself, I found I shrank away, anyway.

“Let me guess,” Weyland said, in a terse voice. “She said no.” His eyes were bright blue as he rolled up into a seated position and cast his eyes over the lot of us. “I need to go see a man about a dog.”

“And by dog, he means raging hard-on,” Axe said with a chuckle.

“Brother…” Dane growled.

“Bastard hasn’t been this cranky since the first time he got his end wet,” Axe continued unrepentantly. “Tasted heaven, didn’t he, and wasn’t happy until he was able to get more.” His grin widened. “Treat ‘em mean and keep ‘em keen, lass. That’s what the old women say. He’ll try to convince you his balls are going blue, but he’ll survive, don’t you worry.”

There was so much in his words I didn’t really understand, but that was alright. I was too busy burying my face in the pillow. Then a hand slid down my neck.

“I’m sorry, lass. Gael and I, we thought we were the most likely to leave you unmolested.” The hand pulled away then. “It appears our instincts got the best of us, anyway. Are you well?”

I was very quietly horrified, that was what I was. Moments before, I’d been feeling more pleasure than I’d had a right to experience and then, just as the priests said, I was left to reap the wages of my sins. I was fairly sure I’d do it again, though, especially as the benefit far outweighed the cost, so I flopped on my back, chancing a look at the three men, though not for long. Might as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb, Nordred had always told me, so there was no point in bewailing what had gone on.

“What… was that?” I asked.

“What…?” Dane frowned slightly, scanning my face for clues.

“What he did to you?” Axe asked. “How he made you feel? Some call it a woman’s peak.”

“Axe—” Dane said with a frown.

“Some call it her climax, her crisis, taking her satisfaction—”

“For the love of all the gods, Axe,” Gael said, driving his elbow into his brother’s ribs before climbing off the bed in an awful hurry. The big man moved, within seconds, into the space his brother’d left.

“Human women are kept wilfully ignorant about these things,” Dane said to him before looking down at me. “Did the…? Has anyone spoken to you about the way a woman comes to bear a child?”

“You mean sex?” I asked, cocking an eyebrow. “I may be inexperienced, but I’m not entirely wet behind the ears.”

“Oh, thank the gods,” Dane rasped as he scrubbed his hand across his face. “Well, since that’s established, do they speak of the way women can find pleasure in the experience?”

I thought then, of the feel of Kris grinding against me, then Weyland’s hands pressing against my pelvis. I saw flashes of the maid and the knight rutting like dogs in an alleyway, of my father’s men pulling women onto their laps, tearing at their dresses, baring their breasts. My eyelids flickered as it felt like I re-experienced all of that and then finally they came to rest on Dane’s handsome face.

He wasn’t the dark prince right now, the one always in control. His hair might be rumpled, his eyes still crinkled with sleep, but his changed demeanour went beyond that. I reached up then, touching his lips and they were just as soft as I thought they’d be before I pushed past them to what lay beneath. Sharp fangs, ready to snap and sink their way into my flesh, right as he made me utterly vulnerable. I jerked my hand back, and he smiled in response.

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