Page 67 of Through Battle and Blades (The Wolf Queen 2)

Axe went to pull away, but my hand shot out to stop him and for a second, we both stared at my grip on him.

“If you don’t want to do this, say ‘Arden’,” Dane said. “Darcy?”

“Shut up, brother!” Axe snapped. “Not everything is a fucking game.” His massive chest heaved as he turned back to me. “You don’t have to listen to him… well, ever. Listen to me.”

That big hand reached out and tipped my chin upwards until there was no escaping his intent gaze. For a long moment, he just stared at me before his hand traced the line of my jaw.

“I’m willing to wait, for however long it takes. I want you to be ready.” His voice started strong, confident, but then inexplicably trailed away. “I want you to want to be with me. Not drunk, not tired, not under my brother’s spell. Me. I want you to want my touch.”

He went to pull away then, figuring his job was done here, but my hand whipped out again, stopping him from moving.

“Maybe…” My voice was just a tiny sliver of a thing, the sound of it drowned out by the hush of the trees outside, the cries of the night birds. “Can you kiss me first?”

A small sound of pain, of need escaped him before Axe shifted forward, pressing me hard against Gael, wedging me between the two of them.

“You never need ask, Darcy. My lips, my body, my breath, they’re all yours, love. I’ve been dying to kiss you every day since the moment I saw you bloody-handed and fierce on the moors on your father’s land.” Both hands lifted now to cup my jaw. “That little taste in the bathtub wasn’t nearly enough.”

Power, that’s what I felt as Axe leaned down, his massive body blocking out the whole room, everything but Gael, and then I was the recipient of a very singular pleasure. Little kisses along the line of my shoulder at the same time as a hard, demanding one on my lips.

I parted them automatically, letting Axe in, and he groaned his pleasure at that, his tongue surging and tangling with mine, though not for long. He seemed to want to taste me, sink his fangs into my lips, press our mouths together, searching deeper, harder, for more, until our lungs were fit to burst. Then he pulled away, pressing his forehead to mine as we panted, his mouth curving up into a smile, my own following suit until both of us let out a little laugh.

“That what you were looking for, lass?” he asked, all that hesitation gone. This was the man who’d set me on his saddle before him and talked frankly about how my arse felt rubbing on his cock.

“More…”

He grinned at that, wild and free again. That didn’t stop him from giving me exactly what I wanted, kissing and kissing me until my lips stung. But when he went to pull away, my mouth followed his, and that made him smile all the more.

“Not so bad now, love?” Gael asked, but I couldn’t seem to find it in me to reply. I twisted around, finding his lips with mine and tasting them too.

That was the thing I was now discovering about having multiple mates. Each one had twice the hungers of a human man, I would wager, but they only had one girl on which to lavish them. So they drowned me instead in a sea of sensation until Weyland edged forward.

“I like seeing this Darcy,” he told me as I looked up at him muzzily. “My mate drunk on pleasure. Can you spare just a little for me?”

I was leaning over, offering my mouth to him without a thought, but the others just chuckled.

“Golden boy Weyland, begging like an urchin for scraps.”

“Not scraps,” he corrected between light little kisses. “Something to be treasured. That’s how it’s going to be, isn’t it, lass? You’re going to let your poor fool mates treasure every inch of you. Because that’s all we want to do; what this is.”

My eyes jerked up to meet his, and he grinned then, all lazy and indolent like he usually did. Yet beneath that good humour was something much cannier, though it was easy to overlook.

“We just need you to be ready for that, to receive the obeisance of your first courtiers, your best. To be worshipped.”

“You always did have a way with fucking words,” Axe said, eyeing his brother with a combination of suspicion and a smile, but his attention slid back to me, as it always would. Whether I felt like I was worthy of it or not, whether I could understand the strange instincts that ruled them, this remained. A kind of pull between us that I could almost reach out and touch.

So I did.

I wrapped my hand around Axe’s head, forcing him to bend his neck to make that possible. But once I had a grip on him, I drew him down so his lips grazed my collarbone.

“That’s it, lass,” Gael growled before he moved in earnest. He held me against his body, his hands unable to stop moving as his brother explored me. “Just let us in.”

He made it sound like a voluntary thing, something I could pick or choose, but that’s not what it felt like. For me, it was a little like taking fur. I was reaching out for a part of myself I hadn’t even known existed. And when I did? I discovered who I really was.

I listened to the hiss of Axe’s breath as he kissed his way across my neckline, but pretty soon that wasn’t enough for either of us. He let out a needy little grunt as his hand rose, cupping my breast, dwarfing it in his massive palm before his fingers sank into the soft flesh.

“Fuck, lass…” he groaned, staring down at my hardened nipple before lunging for it, sucking the tip into his mouth, turning my body to fire.

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