Chapter 10 The Bite Refused #2
“Shirt and trousers off. Keep the knife sheath at your ankle empty and visible.”
He obeyed.
His body carried scars I had not expected. Long white lines across his chest. A black covenant mark over his sternum. Bite impressions on one shoulder, too large and irregular to belong to a human mouth.
His erection pressed hard against his abdomen.
My body tightened in anticipation.
Ivo remained at the foot of the bed.
“Do you want me closer?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“Kneel between my legs.”
He did.
The mattress dipped.
His scent surrounded me. My hips lifted before he touched me.
He noticed.
“Your body moved,” he said.
“It isn’t permission.”
“What do you permit?”
“Hands on my thighs. Mouth between them.”
His eyes closed once.
“Do you want to continue?”
“Yes.”
His palms settled above my knees.
Warm. Rough. Still.
He waited until I relaxed beneath them before sliding higher. No grip. No pressure that could become restraint. His thumbs traced the inside of my thighs where slick had cooled, and the contact sent heat climbing through my belly.
When his breath touched my cunt, my hands seized the bedding.
“Mireya.”
“Continue.”
His mouth met me.
Pleasure struck hard enough to empty my mind.
His tongue moved through my folds in a slow, deliberate stroke that found the ache at the center and pressed against it. My hips jerked. He did not chase the movement. He waited, mouth open and warm against me, until I settled back onto the mattress.
Then he licked again.
Slow.
Precise.
Ivo did not rush. His restraint shaped every movement. He learned the rhythm that eased the pain — long, flat strokes of his tongue that spread slick and heat together — then held it even when my body demanded more. His fingers remained on my thighs. His mouth stayed where I had permitted it.
I felt each exhale against my clit.
Every nerve in my body narrowed to the point of contact.
“Harder,” I said.
He obeyed without hesitation.
His mouth sealed around my clit and sucked. The pressure buckled my spine. I arched off the bed and his hands steadied my thighs — not gripping, not pinning, just enough resistance to keep me from pulling away from the sensation.
The Hunt tried to enter through sensation.
Claim.
Mine.
I opened my eyes and found the door.
Davor’s shadow remained at the stairs.
My key lay beside my hand.
Ivo’s weapons stayed in the hall.
Choice had an architecture.
I had built it.
His tongue circled my clit in tight, relentless strokes. I felt each one in my teeth, my nipples, the scarred gland at my throat. He added a second rhythm — his lower lip dragging against the swollen flesh below my clit — and the dual sensation made my thighs shake.
“Ivo.”
He stopped.
“Don’t stop.”
He returned. Hungrier. His mouth moved lower and his tongue pushed inside me.
I gasped.
The stretch was slight but the intimacy of it — his face between my thighs, his tongue inside my body, his breath against my soaked skin — sent pleasure cascading through me in waves that overlapped before each could finish.
He fucked me with his tongue in short, firm strokes, then dragged it upward to my clit and sealed his mouth there.
The first orgasm tore through me without warning.
My back arched. My cry broke against the ceiling. My cunt clenched around nothing, pulsing hard enough that I felt each contraction in my spine.
Ivo stopped immediately.
“Continue?” he asked against my thigh.
His lips were slick. His breath came in controlled bursts against my oversensitive skin. The question cost him — I heard it in his voice.
My body convulsed.
“Yes.”
He returned to me.
His tongue flattened against my clit and moved in slow circles while the aftershocks still rolled through me. The second build was faster. He read the change in my breathing and matched it, quickening his rhythm until the pressure gathered into a hard knot low in my abdomen.
I came again with my fingers knotted in the blanket and his name on my tongue.
The pain in my abdomen loosened. Heat remained, but its teeth withdrew. Need changed from medical desperation into something I could recognize as desire.
I reached for him.
He froze.
My fingers closed around his shoulder.
“Touch permitted?” he asked.
“Yes. My waist. Not my wrists.”
He rose over me.
I stopped him with one palm against his chest.
“I choose position.”
“Yes.”
I pushed.
He rolled onto his back.
The reversal startled the Hunt.
Power flared beneath the bed and vanished.
I straddled his hips.
His cock lay hard against his abdomen, thick and flushed. Pre-come wet the skin below his navel. I felt the heat of him against my inner thigh before I touched him.
His hands remained flat on the mattress.
“May I touch your waist?”
“Yes.”
His palms settled there.
I wrapped my hand around him.
He hissed through his teeth.
His cock was hot in my grip, hard enough that my fingers did not meet around the shaft. I stroked once, base to tip, and watched his jaw clench.
“Mireya.”
“What?”
“If you keep that up, the knot will begin early.”
“Good.”
His hands tightened on my waist.
Not pulling.
Holding on.
I held his gaze and lowered myself onto him.
His cock pressed against my entrance and the stretch burned. I stopped. Breathed. Took him one slow inch.
Ivo did not move.
“Continue?” he asked.
“Slowly.”
“You control it.”
I sank lower.
My body opened around him, resisting and yielding in waves.
The sensation of being filled after the brutal emptiness of heat made my eyes close.
He was thick enough to feel at every angle, and each fraction of an inch sent a new current of pleasure branching from my core into my thighs, my belly, the base of my spine.
His jaw clenched. Blood appeared where his canine cut his lip, but his hands did not tighten.
When he was fully inside me, relief moved through my body like warm water.
“Fuck,” I breathed.
The word surprised us both.
His cock twitched inside me.
“Move,” he said. “Please.”
“That sounded like a request.”
“It is.”
I rocked my hips.
The drag of his cock against the front wall of my cunt sent white light through my skull. I set a rhythm — slow rolls that took him almost out and then back to the hilt — and his breath broke beneath me.
“Mireya.”
“What?”
“You feel—” His hands flexed on my waist. “Tight. Wet. I can feel your pulse.”
“Name what you want.”
“To thrust.”
“Once.”
He drove upward.
The angle changed. His cock hit deep enough to blur the line between pleasure and pain, and the sound that came from my throat was nothing I recognized.
“Again?” he asked.
“Yes.”
He thrust again. Harder.
I met him halfway. Our bodies found a rhythm that was neither slow nor careful. I rode him with my hands braced on his chest, his cock driving into me in deep strokes that made my breasts move and my breath come in sharp gasps.
The Hunt tried to enter through the pleasure.
Complete.
Claim.
I increased the pace.
His cock swelled at the base.
“The knot,” he warned.
“I feel it.”
The pressure at my entrance grew with each stroke — a stretching fullness that sent heat radiating outward from the point of contact. His knot thickened against me, pressing at the rim of my cunt with every downstroke.
“Do you want it?” His voice was raw.
Fear moved beneath the pleasure.
Connected meant unable to leave.
The room flickered into white walls.
Leather straps.
Oren’s hand on my shoulder.
I stopped moving.
Ivo’s palms lifted away from my waist.
“Look at the door,” he said.
I did.
Open.
“Look at the key.”
Beside my hand.
“Look at me.”
His eyes were gray, lucid, and afraid for the correct reason.
“Do you want to continue?”
My body clenched around him.
Not consent.
I breathed until I could answer with more than instinct.
“Yes. I want the knot.”
“May I move?”
“Once.”
He drove upward.
His knot breached me.
The stretch burned fierce and full, my cunt forced open around the widest part of him, and for one searing instant every nerve in my body fired at once.
Then the knot locked inside and I was full — impossibly, completely full — and pleasure broke over me in a wave that started at the base of my spine and did not stop.
I cried out and folded over his chest.
His cock pulsed inside me. I felt each throb against the walls of my cunt, felt his come fill me in hot spurts that sent aftershocks rolling through my legs.
The knot held us sealed together. Every small movement — his breath, a shift of his hips, the clench of my own body — amplified into sensation that lived at the border of too much.
Ivo’s hands hovered beside my ribs.
“May I hold your waist?”
“Yes.”
He held me.
Not down.
Together.
The relief was immediate. The violent pressure in my glands eased. My heartbeat found his and slowed. Fir smoke moved through my scent, not covering it but threading beside the rain.
A temporary link opened between us.
I felt the hounds outside.
Seven spectral bodies arranged around the lodge.
Vuk at the front steps.
Two at the gate.
One beneath my window.
Three moving through the trees.
Their senses entered me in fragments: cold soil, silver bells far east, the pulse of prey beneath roots.
Command waited behind them.
Mine to take.
The Hunt noticed.
Pain struck Ivo.
His body arched beneath me. The knot pulled, sending a sharp warning through my pelvis.
“Still,” I said.
He froze.
Black veins spread from the covenant mark on his chest.
His pupils vanished.
The curse drove his head toward my throat.
I caught his hair and pulled him back.
“No.”
His teeth descended.
“Mireya,” he choked.
“No bite.”
“Move.”
“I can’t.”
“Knife.”
My knife was under the pillow.
Reaching it meant leaning closer to his mouth.
Ivo’s hands left my waist and seized the bedframe instead. Wood cracked.
“Use it.”
“Not yet.”
The Hunt roared through the room.
Complete the claim.
His mouth lowered.
I shoved my forearm beneath his throat and held him away from the scar. The effort shook through both of us. The knot locked us together. Pain and pleasure blurred at the edges.
“Ivo, look at me.”
His eyes were black.
“Name, location, risk.”
“Can’t.”
“Try.”
“Ivo.”
His voice sounded torn out of him.
“Lodge.”
His teeth snapped inches from my gland.
“Bite.”
“What do you choose?”
Blood ran from his hands where the broken bedframe cut his palms.
“No.”
The Hunt punished him.
His body convulsed. The knot dragged against me. I nearly screamed.
“Still!”
He locked every muscle.
“No bite,” he repeated.
The command struck again.
Something vanished behind his eyes.
Memory taken.
He remained.
“No bite.”
The words became a rhythm.
Each refusal cost him.
No bite.
Pain.
No bite.
Absence.
No bite.
Choice.
I reached through the temporary link.
The hounds turned toward me.
I felt Vuk rise.
“Guard the door,” I commanded.
Spectral bodies moved.
Vuk entered first and lay across the threshold. The other hounds formed a line in the hall, facing inward.
Not guarding me from the world.
Guarding my exits from every alpha.
The Hunt’s pressure split.
Ivo dragged in a breath.
Gray returned around his pupils.
His teeth remained extended, but he turned his face into the mattress away from my throat.
“No bite,” he said again.
This time, the curse did not answer.
I kept my hand in his hair.
“Can you remain still?”
“Yes.”
“Do you want to continue contact until the knot releases?”
“Only if you do.”
I checked my body.
Pain, but no tearing.
Fear, but not captivity.
Pleasure fading into a deep biological calm.
“Yes,” I said. “Same terms. No movement.”
“Agreed.”
We stayed connected.
My scent mixed with his across the bed. The temporary bond pulsed between us, carrying no ownership. Only heartbeat, breath, and the distant awareness of hounds waiting for my next command.
Ivo’s hands remained on the broken frame.
“What did it take?” I asked.
He searched his memory.
“My mother’s voice.”
The answer hollowed the room.
“Do you remember her?”
“Her hands. Not her voice.”
I wanted to apologize.
The curse had done it, not me.
The distinction did not erase my place in the moment.
“I’m sorry.”
“You did not take it.”
“It happened because you refused me.”
“It happened because the Hunt does not understand refusal.”
The knot softened.
Ivo felt it too.
“Separation soon,” he said.
“No movement until I choose.”
“Yes.”
When my body released him, I lifted carefully and moved to the far side of the bed.
Distance returned.
The temporary link remained.
Faint. Fir smoke beneath rain.
I pulled the blanket around myself.
Ivo stayed on his back, hands open where I could see them.
“Aftermath,” I said.
My voice shook.
“Temporary knot completed,” he said. “No restraint. No scent-gland contact. No mark. No bite.”
“Check-ins before penetration, before knotting, and after locking.”
“Confirmed.”
“Stop command honored.”
“Confirmed.”
“The curse attempted to force a bite.”
“Confirmed.”
“You refused.”
“Yes.”
“A temporary bond formed.”
“Yes.”
“It gave me command of the hounds.”
Ivo turned his head toward the doorway.
Vuk remained across it, watching him.
“Yes,” he said.
“Does permission remain in effect?”
His gaze returned to mine.
“No.”
Relief moved through me.
“Correct.”
I picked up my key.
“You need to leave when you can stand.”
“Yes.”
“I want the hounds to stay.”
“They are yours to command.”
The statement altered something fundamental in the lodge.
The floor symbols flared.
Contracting person remained.
Beneath it, a new word appeared.
Commander.
Ivo saw it.
He rolled to his knees, slow with pain and exhaustion.
Not because the Hunt ordered him.
Because the room now answered to me.
“Mireya.”
“What?”
“The bite would have made you the Hunt’s offering.”
I looked at the hounds guarding my open door.
“And refusing it?”
His expression held something like awe.
“Made the Hunt yours.”