Luna
When my eyes flutter open, I’m lying on the ground. Axel is kneeling over me. He slips a couple fingers into me before drawing them out and rubbing the musky-smelling cream into the gashes his teeth left in my neck. My wolf growls with pleasure though it burns. He dips his fingers in me again, then rubs it into the wounds I left on his own shoulders.
“What are you doing?” I demand, sitting up and closing my knees.
“It’s a mating practice,” he says.
“What is that?” I ask, looking down as more of the stuff trickles out of me, running down my thighs.
“It’s my seed,” he says. “You can rub it into your cuts to bond with me.
You can rub yours into mine, too.”
“What kind of seeds?” I ask, narrowing my eyes.
“Wolf seed,” he says. “When we mate during your heat, that’s what will makes the baby grow inside you.”
“I don’t want your baby inside me,” I say, wiping the stuff off my thighs. I sniff my fingers, and my wolf nearly swoons with pleasure. I had extra liquid after I mated with Warrick, but I went to the bathroom, and it
came out pretty fast. And it didn’t smell like this, like desire itself, like a male’s dominance that makes me want to throw myself on the ground and open my legs and beg for more. I narrow my eyes at Axel, waiting for his explanation.
“You’re not in heat, so it won’t happen,” Axel says. “Why didn’t you have seeds before?” I ask.
“I never came before,” he says. “Never?” I ask.
“Not with you,” he says.
We stare at each other a long minute. “What does that mean?” I ask.
“It means… I finished,” he says. “I climaxed. Like you do every time.” “You mean the thing you said you wouldn’t do, because it was only for my pleasure?”
He purses his lips. “Yes,” he grits out at last. “Do you expect me to fuck you to orgasm every time, and then you leave me wanting?”
“You promised me you wouldn’t take your own pleasure with me,” I say, glaring at him.
“So this is my punishment?” he asks. “Fucking you until I feel you come all over my cock, your tight cunt pulsing around me, and I’m not allowed to orgasm? Fuck that, Luna. I’m going to come inside you, and I’m going to keep coming inside you until you’re stuffed full of my babies. And
every time you have one, I’m going to fill you with another one until we have a hundred pups underfoot. I’m going to love every single one of them because they’re our babies, because they show you how much I love you and want you and want to be your mate. And we’re going to raise them to be strong, proud, brave wolves instead of teaching them to be afraid of their own shadow and everyone else.”
“Are you talking about Mama?” I ask, my eyes narrowing with fury.
Before he can answer, I whirl and stomp off through the underbrush.
“Where are you going?” he says, rushing by my side.
“To the fucking truck. Our hunting game is finished, don’t you think?” As I storm through the marshland, we pass the carcass of the Key deer we caught and killed. I don’t want to remember that moment-I don’t even want to think about how fun it was to hunt by Axel’s side, working together to bring down our prey. I let out a growl of exasperation and quicken my pace.
Axel stalks beside me. His expression is as dark as the clouds overhead. We continue to power forward, silent save for the rumble of thunder that ripples through the sky. When we get to the truck, Axel lifts me onto the seat. “You want my cum out of you?” he demands.
Without waiting for an answer, he pushes me flat on the seat and dives between my legs, sucking and fucking me with his tongue until all the fight
is drained from me, and in its place is the pleasure he keeps drowning me with until I forget what’s real. I can’t stop myself, though. I come hard again, whimpering and trembling as my walls clench around his long, skillful tongue.
When he’s done, we dress, and then he buckles me in and climbs in the driver’s seat. He doesn’t say a word all the way home, and neither do I. Fury and frustration pours from his body in waves-he doesn’t need words to convey how he’s feeling. My wolf can feel it.
Rain spatters the windshield as he speeds through the soggy streets, and his wipers sluice the water back and forth. It’s not a fierce storm, not yet. It’s only a preview of what’s to come if it blows in off the ocean. I’ve lived through the same storms as the civilized world, only in the untamed wilderness of Bogbeast Waters, and I know them well.
Axel parks the truck outside his house, exits the driver’s side, and strides around the front bumper to open my door for me. I don’t need his help. I don’t want him to erase my anger again, to make me feel good when I want to keep hating him. I push past him and stalk toward his stupid little house. The whole city of Jacksonville can fall into the sea for all I care.
I intend to head straight to my bedroom and lock the door, but I halt when I see Ama lounging on Axel’s couch as usual. She’s watching the television like she lives here, and an angry feeling rises in me, a feeling like
she shouldn’t be here even if I’m not. I shouldn’t care. I’ve been living away from Axel, connecting with three other men. But the thought of him connecting with her that way makes me want to rip out her entrails like we did the Key deer.
Ama bolts to her feet, sniffing the air and glowering like she’s picturing our entrails, too. “You fucked, didn’t you?”
“None of your fucking business,” Axel snaps from behind me. “Get out of my house.”
A pout forms on Ama’s pretty face, and her chin quivers. “I knew it.” Axel only points toward the screen door we just entered. “Out.”
She folds her arms over her small breasts and stands her ground. “I can smell it on the two of you. You had sex.
I know what your cum smells like.”
Axel grinds his teeth and glares. “What I do or don’t do with Luna is none of your business, Ama. You’re my Second, not my mother.”
“You mean, not your mate,” she snaps.
“That, too,” he says coldly. “Now leave before I lose my temper.”
Though Axel only uses words and not his dominance display-I notice he almost never uses that-Ama stomps across the room and out the front door. A smug little seed of happiness sprouts in my belly. He defended me, picked me over her. I don’t want him, but I also don’t want her to have him.
I just don’t like her, and she doesn’t deserve the kind of pleasure he gives me.
When she’s gone, a wave of relief like a thorn plucked from my paw passes through me.
“Get cleaned up,” Axel says. “I’ll make us a drink, and we can talk.”
I gawk at him, blinking. He’s speaking calmly like we haven’t been fighting or fucking all day. “What if I don’t want to?”
“Do it anyway,” he says before striding into the kitchen like he doesn’t have the energy for my defiance right now. I’m not sure which of us will wear the other down first.
I obey him, just like Ama did, though. As I stand beneath the warm spray of water, I wonder how he gets us to do his bidding without involving his wolf. Does he get Ama to do things by making her feel as good as me? And why does she know what his explosion smells like? Does he do that with her, too? If she makes him feel as good as he makes me when I explode, why isn’t he with her?
He must know that there’s something better-me. Just like I know that no matter how good he makes my body feel, I want someone else, too.
But until I can escape, I’ll just have to see what exactly Axel is planning. When I’m clean, dry, and dressed, I head out to the kitchen.