Shivs #2
The air was full of sweat and the ghost of spilled whiskey, the distant thump of the gala band vibrating through the glass. I could have fucked her forever like that, but the monster had its own ideas.
As she started to tense, her body shuddering around my cock, I felt the wolf claw up inside me, demanding to be let out.
I gripped her shoulder and, without even thinking, bit down at the join of neck and shoulder—hard, harder than any human lover ever would, but not enough to break the skin.
She gasped, froze, then came so hard I thought she’d snap my dick clean off.
The taste of her, the pulse under my teeth, sent me over.
I came inside her, deep, my whole body shaking, my jaw still latched at her neck.
For a moment, I felt something electric—a jolt of heat, a bright white haze in my brain, like I’d just mainlined pure sunlight.
It flooded from my mouth to the rest of me, then into her, a current that linked us from crown to toe.
We stayed like that, pressed together, her arms around my head, my cock still twitching inside her, until the sweat cooled and the windows started to clear. I licked the mark I’d made, then kissed it. She flinched, but only a little.
“What the fuck was that,” she said, her voice shredded.
I couldn’t answer. The animal in me was sated, but the man was scared shitless. I’d marked her a third time, and not in any way that would ever heal right.
She slid off the desk, legs wobbly, and straightened her dress as best she could. The neckline was fucked, but she didn’t bother to cover herself. She found her panties, pulled them on, and shot me a look—equal parts satisfaction and warning.
My pants were still around my knees. I tucked myself in, zipped up, and wiped my mouth. There was blood—just a smear, nothing bad. She saw it, smiled, and wiped it away with her thumb.
We caught our breath together, leaning side by side against the desk. I reached for her hand, but she moved it, grabbing the neck of the closest bourbon bottle and pouring two shots.
We downed them in silence.
She turned, adjusted her hair in the reflection of the window, and said, “We can’t let them see us like this.”
I nodded. “Give it a minute.”
She ducked into a side closet, found a shawl, and wrapped it over her torn dress. She looked almost put-together, except for the bite mark at her neck, already darkening to a bruise.
She looked at me in the glass, her reflection sharper than the real thing. “You okay?”
I wasn’t, but I said, “Yeah.”
She opened the office door a crack, checked for witnesses, then slipped out. I waited sixty seconds, counted every heartbeat, then followed. Us fucking had just saved Marcus’ life, for now.
The party had thinned, the real deals happening now in back rooms and VIP suites. I kept my head down, but eyes followed me anyway—the club tattoos, the bruises on my face, the scent of sex and violence that never quite left after a kill.
I found Carrie by the bar, holding court with a new crop of executives, her voice smooth and unshakable. Nobody looked twice at her dress. Nobody dared.
She caught my eye, and there was a message in it: Don’t you fucking dare leave me alone.
I got a drink, parked myself near the back wall, and kept her in sight.
The wolf inside was quiet, for now. But I knew, with a certainty that was almost holy, that this was just the beginning.
I’d marked her. We were bound. And nothing—not Marcus, not the industry, not even death—was going to break us apart.
Hours later, after the last bottle was emptied and the last deal inked, we rode home in silence. She pressed her hand to her neck, fingers worrying at the mark. I watched the road, the world already looking different with her scent inside me, under my skin.
She would feel it soon. The heat. The hunger. The bond.
And when she did, I’d be ready.
Carrie didn’t come straight to bed after the gala.
Instead, she locked herself in the master bath for nearly an hour, and the only sound from behind the door was the soft click of glass on porcelain, repeated over and over.
I left her alone—self-preservation, and respect, and also the hope that maybe the space would buy me a second before she started asking questions I couldn’t answer without lying.
Eventually, I heard the water shut off. The door opened, and she padded out in a towel and nothing else.
Her skin glistened, but not from the steam.
The color was back in her cheeks, the fire in her eye.
She carried herself the way she did in the boardroom: at the edge of violence, waiting for an excuse to draw blood.
She didn’t say my name. Didn’t look at me, either. She went straight to the dresser, pulled on a silk nightgown, then turned to face me with her hands on her hips. “Take off your shirt,” she said.
I slipped off the Henley, exposing the swirl of old ink and new bruises, the wolf’s jaw tattoo at my shoulder, the crescent of bite marks low on my neck. She stared at my chest like she was reading a book in a language she used to know.
She reached out, tracing the bite with her index finger. “It changed,” she said. Her voice was calm, almost clinical.
I looked. The bruise from the gala—where I’d clamped down on her—had deepened, gone almost black, but the shape was different.
Instead of the red blob I’d expected, it was a perfect ring of teeth, each point distinct, the pattern inside swirling in a way that looked intentional.
Like a tribal tattoo, except alive: the outline was crisp, but the color seemed to shift under the skin.
She poked it. Hard. “It hurts,” she said. “And I can feel it spreading.”
I swallowed. “It’s supposed to.”
“Explain.”
She didn’t yell. She didn’t threaten. She just stood, naked under the silk, looking at me with the expectation that I would finally stop bullshitting her. It hurt worse than being shot.
I tried to find the words. “You ever hear of a mate bond?” I asked.
She didn’t move. “I read every urban fantasy series in college, Shivs. Try me.”
“It’s real. The mark. It’s the first stage. For wolves like me. The bite signals the bond, but it isn’t final until…” I trailed off. Couldn’t say it. Wouldn’t.
She crossed her arms. “Until what?”
I felt the heat in my cheeks, hated it. “Until I knot you.”
The words hung in the room, vibrating against the old plaster and the cold Kentucky air. She didn’t look away. Didn’t flinch. But I saw the pulse jump at her throat, quickening.
She stepped into my space, almost nose to nose, her body radiating both anger and hunger. “You did this without asking.”
“I couldn’t help it.” It was pathetic, but true.
She put a hand to her neck, fingers splayed across the bruise. “So now I’m your property? Is that how it works?”
“No,” I said, but the answer didn’t satisfy either of us. I tried again. “It’s not about ownership. It’s about survival. Instinct. Once it starts, it’s all I can think about.”
She stared at my lips as I spoke, her eyes narrowing. “And what happens to me?”
“The same thing. The bond goes both ways. You’ll feel it. The heat, the need. But if you don’t want it—if you fight it—it’ll fade. Eventually.” The lie burned in my mouth, but I let it stand.
She considered that. “How long?”
“Depends on the person. The will.” I almost added how much you want me, but didn’t.
She let her hand fall, then ran both through her hair, pushing it back from her face. “You should have warned me,” she said, but the anger had drained out of her voice, replaced by something else.
“I should have.” I meant it. “But I’m warning you now: the bond is strong. It’ll get stronger. And the next time I lose control, I don’t know if I’ll be able to stop.”
She let out a breath, slow and careful. “What does it feel like?”
“Like I can smell you in my bones. Like I’d kill anyone who touched you. Like I want to fuck you until there’s nothing left of me.”
She blinked, and for a second, her face softened. Then the boardroom mask slammed back into place. “Sit down,” she said.
I sat, perched on the edge of the bed.
She came over, straddled my lap, and the skimpy silk robe hiked up over her hips. She leaned in, teeth grazing my ear, and whispered, “If you want it so bad, you’d better prove it.”
I grabbed her by the waist and pulled her against me, hard enough to bruise. She rocked her hips, grinding against my cock until it hurt. I reached for her neck, massaged the mark, and she gasped, the sound low and wanting.
She pushed me back onto the bed, then slid down my body, lips and tongue tracing a line from my throat to my stomach.
She yanked my pants open, freeing my cock, and wrapped her lips around the head, sucking with a slow, deliberate rhythm that made my vision blur.
She took me deep, throat muscles clenching, then pulled off and grinned up at me, face smeared with spit and determination.
“Thought you were the animal,” she said.
I gave her a maniacal laugh, grabbed her by he hips, and forced her down onto the bed, ripping the robe apart before wolfishly burying my face between her legs.
I licked her, slow at first, savoring the taste of her.
She was sharp and sweet and dangerous as a line of coke off a switchblade.
Her thighs clamped on my ears, nails scoring tracks down my scalp.
I worked her with my tongue until she moaned, until the sounds coming out of her throat were impossibly desperate and completely hers.
Ate her pussy as if I’d never eat again.
That’s what it felt like—greedy, endless, unsatisfied.
I tongued her clit, then sucked it between my lips, then flicked it as if I could whittle her down to the nerve.
The more I sucked, the more she bucked under me, her hands in fists in my hair, yanking me closer.
When she came, it was sudden and violent, thighs crushing my face, the taste flooding my tongue as she grunted my name.
I looked up and saw her, hair wild, cheeks bright with color, chest heaving. I could smell our need in the room, and before I could make my next move, she climbed back onto me, lining herself up and sinking down, inch by inch, until she was filled to the hilt. I knew what she wanted.
She set the pace—fast, hard, relentless.
Her hands on my chest, nails digging in, using me for leverage.
Every time I thrust up, she met me with equal force, her breath hot against my face.
The bruise at her neck pulsed, the colors shifting, and I could feel the bond in my skull: a live wire, burning through both of us.
She fucked me until I couldn’t see straight, until the whole world shrank to the slick heat of her and the sound of our bodies slamming together.
When I felt the edge coming, I warned her—“Carrie, if you want me to stop, do it now”—but she just grabbed the back of my head and kissed me, my tongue fucking her mouth as hard as she rode my cock.
I felt the wolf rise to claim her forever. I bit her again, just above the bruise, and when she came, she screamed, her whole body shaking around me.
I came too, harder than I ever had, my cock swelling at the base, locking inside her. The knot. The final act.
She screamed but didn’t try to get away.
Didn’t try to stop me. The pressure rose from my cock, into my stomach, and up my chest, stopping in my head.
The world around me exploded into an artist’s palette of colors.
I saw Carrie, I saw me, I saw the future.
I saw us running alone in the woods, she, like me, as a wolf, her fur white, the tips shimmering gold.
I saw our own pack, additional wolves that had nothing to do with the club or bourbon.
I saw us running, feasting, and fucking, howling at the top of a ridge at a moon so red I could have sworn blood dripped from its edges to the Earth.
She collapsed on top of me, shuddering, sweat and tears and spit mixing on our skin. We stayed joined, unable to separate, our pulses thrumming in perfect sync. I felt her heart, her need, her everything, bleeding into me.
“Fuck me,” she said. “Don’t fucking move.”
I didn’t. I had no choice. Neither of us did.
“You fucking rocked my world,” she said. “Tell me that doesn’t happen just once.”
I shook my head. “From here on, it will happen every time. Sometimes more gentle.” I paused long enough for her to take a breath. “Sometimes more violent, depending on what the wolf wants.”
“You’ve changed me,” she said.
“Yeah, and now, you’re like me.”
‘Fuck, Shivs.” She seemed to think for a moment. “I’m going to become a wolf?”
I nodded. “It’s in you now. We’re linked for eternity.”
She rested her head on my chest, and after a while, she rolled off, pulling me with her, still joined, still trembling. She lay on her back, staring at the ceiling, and said, “No more secrets.”
“None,” I promised. And this time, I meant it.
I reached for her hand, laced our fingers together, and held on tight until the sun came up.
That was how it started: not with a fairy tale, or a love story, or even a single, clean break—but with blood and heat and the kind of hunger you can’t ever walk off. I’d marked her. I’d bound her. And she’d done the same to me.
The rest of the world would just have to catch up.