Page 12 of Through Battle and Blades (The Wolf Queen 2)

“You were always the best of us, so it makes sense she would come to you first. Take your mate, brother, tend to her in a way I can smell she needs. No one will try to take that away from you, not while I’m here.”

I was turned around then, every other man fading away as I faced Gael. My legs straddled his and now our bodies were pressed against each other, I could feel that he needed me, just like I needed him. I frowned slightly as I trailed a finger down the side of his face, feeling the prickle of his stubble.

“Tell me you want me,” Gael asked, his tone urgent. “Tell me you want this. I’ll do whatever the fuck you want, if you just do that.”

I smiled then, just for a second and then answered him the best way I could. I pressed my mouth to his, just to get the feel of him, but that was never going to be enough. Once I felt the soft surface give, my mouth was nipping at his, wanting the texture, the taste. His hands surged up and into my hair, raking across my scalp as he pulled me harder against him into a brutal kind of kiss. Lips, teeth, tongues, fangs, it was all a big mess of sensation until finally we drew away panting.

“Yes…” I said finally, though to what, I wasn’t entirely clear. “Yes, I want you. I’ll always want you, won’t I?”

“Gods, I hope so, Darcy,” Gael growled.

“Because there’s this ache inside me…” His expression fell then and I remembered the first time, the pain, the blood. “Not that,” I corrected, “a need. When you’re not with me, when I can’t feel you, it hurts.”

That was a quiet little admission, one I was almost ashamed of, but Gael transformed as a result. His grin was bright, his hands gripping me tight as he swung me off his lap and into his arms as soon as he was standing, then over to the big bed that sat on one side of the room.

“I can bloody walk,” I grumped. “I have done so for quite some time.”

“Hush,” Gael replied, his fingers going to the lacing of my jerkin, but then he paused. I nodded quickly and he worked fast then, undoing the bindings and pulling the garment off, then moving to do the same to my blouse. His pace slowed then, as he revealed one inch, then another of me, and it was like the first time all over again.

Would he always look at me like this, with a reverence I felt entirely undeserving of? Would his fingers smooth slowly over the sensitive skin of my collarbone ten, twenty years from now? The fact I could wonder that, that I knew I would find out, filled me with a kind of pleasure I’d never thought I’d experience. He caught my spreading smile, a brow rising in response.

“What?”

“I was just wondering if you’ll look at me like this when I’m old and grey,” I replied.

“Gods, lass…”

Gael hissed that out before his lips slammed down on mine, our clothes feeling like they just fell away, no longer needed here. But when it was just me and just Gael, naked as the day we were born, that’s when I remembered we weren’t alone. I nestled into his body, but peered over his shoulder to watch them.

Axe shook his head and then let out a huff of breath, stripping down to just his trews before throwing himself down on the bed. He patted the space between his legs, then gestured for me to come closer.

“Lie here, my beautiful. I’ll hold you as Gael does his level best to make you scream, eating your sweet little pussy.”

“How did you know that’s what I had planned?” Gael said, taking my hand and drawing me closer.

“It’d be what I’d do. Not sure if she’d be able to remove my head from between her legs with a pinch bar.”

But despite Axe’s jocular tone, I crawled onto the bed with some trepidation.

The room was suddenly crowded, and not just with the four men. Our baggage, our individual histories roiled in the air around us, along with all of the rubbish I’d been raised with. My assumptions of how it would be between me and my husband, it never ever allowed for this. But I had to trust Axe’s willingness, the way he laid my back against his chest, cradling me against him until he reached down and hooked my thighs over the broad expanse of his. Axe then slid our legs open, revealing my most intimate flesh to the room.

“Look at him,” he urged. “Look at the way Gael stares at you. His beast is riding him.” And sure enough, I could see just that in the slow crawl of my mate across the bed, something lupine in the way he moved. Or was it in the blue fire of his gaze? But as Gael approached, Weyland removed his clothes, all of them, pulling back the covers to lounge some distance away from us, but I was left with the knowledge he did so naked. Then there was Dane.

He looked drawn, his eyes too bright, his skin too pale as he held himself in the exact same spot. Even as Gael gripped my ankle, turning it slightly to press a kiss there. But Dane followed his brother’s slow progress, seeming to watch every single kiss Gael placed as he worked his way up the length of my leg. He didn’t break until Gael reached the soft skin of my inner thigh, when his brother paused, breathing me in.

“This is a needy little cunt, lass,” Gael said in a dark tone. “You shouldn’t have let yourself get this way.” But before I could reply, he slid a finger through my folds and that made my back arch.

Somehow, I’d managed to ignore this all day, but that one movement drew my attention rudely back to my body’s needs. Because I did need him, I felt that twist like a knife in my guts, my gasps of pleasure/pain filling the room. Gael was right. My body, my heart wasn’t primed to endure the trauma of discovering the queen’s tricks, it was for him.

“Gael…!”

I ground out his name, it feeling like a great hungry wave rose inside me, one that was about to come crashing down on me.

“You need me.”

My fingers clawing at the bedspread, my spine arching up against Axe’s chest, surely that communicated that clearly enough? I couldn’t force the words out, especially when I looked down to watch Gael lick his finger clean with all the narrow focus of a cat with a saucer of cream.

“Hold her, brother,” Gael ordered. “The first one’s going to hurt. I should’ve been tending to her all day.”

---