Page 119 of With Fangs and Claws (The Wolf Queen 1)

Chapter 47

“Strip,” I ordered after we’d got to Weyland’s very nice, very large bedroom and he’d set a fire, chasing the chill from the air. He was working to pull the covers back when I spoke. At my words he went very still, then turned to me.

“Darcy?”

“If there is no future or no past for tonight,” I said, “then it doesn’t matter what I do. So, strip.”

“You want to—”

“I don’t know what I want, but I’d like a chance to explore. If you don’t want that then…”

Weyland’s fingers went to the leather jacket he wore, undoing the clasps with remarkable speed, then tossing it on a chair behind him. Next he yanked his shirt up and over his head. He’d given me a glass of wine before we came up to the room, and I sipped at it, then set it down and moved closer.

The first time I touched him, just the pads of a few fingers against his chest, I fought the urge to hiss and snatch them back. He felt too hard, too hot, too male, and yet I couldn’t seem to pull away. Instead, my questing fingertips moved, trailing through the sprinkle of hair on his chest, tracing the lazy loop of his pectoral muscle that flexed under my attention.

“Trying to make yourself seem bigger?” I asked with a slight smile.

“I feel about ten feet tall and invincible right now, so that would be a no,” he replied in a gentle rasp.

He went to cover my hand with his, to encourage me to explore further, but I was determined to do this myself. I kept my clothes on, shied away when he reached for me, until he learned: I would touch him, not vice versa.

No one had taught me about desire because, in Grania, women ‘didn’t’ experience it. A need for children, for peace and quiet, for a safe and secure home perhaps, but never desire. But those servants I’d caught rutting, their faces contorted by what they felt, I saw them in my mind. My fingers moved on, tracing the shape of him, trying to find myself in this.

Our mate, a deep growl of a voice said inside me, filling me with certainty, my nails turning to claws as I set them against his skin. I left red trailing marks, and he filled the room with the noisy sound of his exhalations in response.

Mine, I agreed, completely sure on one level and totally unprepared on another. Because in amongst all those Darcys was apparently another one. Her hands slid over his taut stomach, ignoring those cobblestone muscles in her haste to undo the laces of his trews, like a child opening a present on her birthday.

“Darcy…” Weyland hissed as I tugged them loose, as I wrenched his pants down over his hips. “Darcy, love…”

I glanced up then, feeling like I’d been caught with my hand in the biscuit jar, suddenly realising that this might not be what he wanted. I hadn’t asked. Like a man, I’d just taken.

“I want you to take every damn part of me in any way you want,” he said, his voice coarse with need. “But I want you to be sure. You said you wanted to explore. Why don’t we talk about that and—?”

His words became a groan as I set my palm low on his hips, carefully avoiding the proud curve of his cock.

“Fuck…” he hissed, his head thrown back. “I take it all back. Do whatever the hell you want to me. Just touch me.”

He toed off his boots as I removed the rest of his clothes, leaving him utterly bare before me, a golden god in the low light. I frowned slightly, trying to take in the broad expanse of him, but it was a bit like staring at a mountain. He was too big, there was too much of him to take in. But his pleasure seemed to focus down on one area in particular.

I stared at his cock, never really having been this up close and personal with one before. I was almost afraid to touch it, as it looked so red, swollen and angry. But when I did, his hand went to my hair, and he called me a thousand pretty names. My fingertip traced the impudent curve and felt the bumps of the veins along the shaft. The skin was like velvet over steel and that softness surprised me, resulting in more fingers testing its texture.

“Gods, yes… I’ve waited so bloody long for you to reach out and touch me. Yes, Darcy, just like that.”

Flushed by early success, my mind raced. I wanted to ask him exactly how he wanted to be touched, yet also wanted to be able to sort that myself. I was an adult. Sex was a part of this. Strelan men seemed to expect more than for me to lie there in virginal white and think of the Empire as he rutted inside me, but what was I supposed to do?

Men wanted to thrust their cocks into a woman, work themselves in and out until they reached their climax, or so I’d been able to glean from the opaque instructions I’d received from Linnea. From that, I assumed Weyland would like something similar. I watched him as I wrapped my hand around his shaft, saw his brow crease, his eyelashes fluttering as I tightened my grip and then moved.

“Mm…” Just a small sound, followed by another and another as I palmed the length of him, moving my hand like my body might if we were rutting. “Gods, yes…”

I twisted my hand on the downstroke and that seemed to please him inordinately, his hips shifting slightly. Highborn women always spoke of this as some distasteful process, but I didn’t feel that. I felt powerful.

I held him in my hand, literally. I set the pace. I stroked him faster and faster. I made him let out a string of strange, strangled noises. I made the hard glittery carapace of Weyland crack, to reveal something much more naked, more vulnerable beneath it. And then, when I forced a small bead of clear liquid from the head of his cock, my strokes slowed.

I knew a man’s seed shot from the end, but this seemed to be a much smaller thing than I expected. The stories I’d heard told of men ejaculating wildly, filling a woman up or making a damn mess of her dress didn’t fit with this. I dabbed my finger in the bead, the surface tension of it breaking as soon as I did, then, possessed by some strange impulse, I licked my finger. Salty and sweet, I found it, and apparently my exploration hadn’t gone unnoticed.

“There’ll be a whole lot more if you keep touching me like that,” he warned me. “That stuff’s just the precursor. Gods, Darcy…”

So I dared do more. When I wrapped my hand around his shaft, when I licked across the head, I felt some of the dance we’d performed endlessly today being repeated. The Maiden didn’t passively allow herself to be stroked. She went hunting for what she wanted, and was rewarded for her efforts. Weyland was transformed as a result. Something terrible and hungry rose in his eyes, transforming his face.

---