Chapter Seven #2
Arslan dismissed the suggestion with a shake of the head.
“No. Go downstairs—to the meeting room.” For all he annoyed the hell out of Marrick, he had the same way about him that some of the truly magnificent older doms in the local clubs had.
Completely confident in his ability to control of the whole world and entirely sure that everyone around him would do as he said—and probably right on both counts.
“Blaine and Luther—”
“They’re already here. They’ve been looking for you,” Arslan said.
There didn’t seem to be any point in arguing about it. Marrick walked out of the room and down the stairs.
The room was empty, for now at least. The door soon swung open, but again, it was Ryland who stepped in, not Luther and Blaine.
“Are you in trouble?” Marrick asked, cautiously.
Ryland shook his head, but he didn’t have time to utter a sound.
Luther and Blaine burst into the room, travelling at full speed. They each stopped barely an inch away from him.
“You came back.”
Marrick looked up, relishing both the sight of them and the way something had started to settle inside his soul the moment they appeared. “You were right. I shouldn’t have left like that.”
Blaine reached out. His hand came to rest very gently on Marrick’s cheek. Without even thinking about it, Marrick turned his face into Blaine’s palm. That seemed to be the cue they’d been waiting for. No longer halting an inch away, they surrounded him completely, barely giving him room to breathe.
For the first time since they’d walked out of his house, he felt entirely at peace inside his own skin. Closing his eyes, he rested his temple on Blaine’s shoulder, arching his spine against Luther’s hand as he stroked his back.
Blaine touched Marrick’s cheek again, guiding him to offer his mouth up to be kissed. Marrick let their lips meet. He let Blaine turn his head so Luther could kiss him, too.
All Marrick wanted right then was for the three of them to go up to their room, screw themselves senseless and sleep for a lifetime, and he was pretty sure that idea would be a very easy sell to both the lions.
“It’s not that simple.”
Marrick looked over Blaine’s shoulder. Arslan had appeared in the doorway.
“What?” Blaine demanded.
“It’s not that simple,” Arslan repeated. “Keeping a man, human or feline, happy for as long as it takes to have sex with him is easy. But, if you don’t address what that drove you apart in the first place, he won’t remain here for long.”
Marrick felt Luther and Blaine tense.
“There can be no question of you making him any sort of official offer until you can prove you can take care of him.”
A moment later, the door clicked closed behind Arslan and Ryland.
Marrick continued to stare at the wooden panels for what felt like several lifetimes. As much as he wanted to hate Arslan, Marrick had to admit he had a really annoying habit of being right about certain things.
“I won’t belong to men who treat me as if I’m made of glass.
I won’t let you treat me as if I’m not strong—or as if I should be scared of the whole damn world.
I’m not that person.” And, suddenly, the words were all out there, hanging in the air between them.
“If that’s the kind of pet you want, you’ve got the wrong guy. ”
Blaine’s hand came to rest on Marrick’s shoulder. Marrick tried not to care that his touch was still overtly careful. “You will tell us what kind of pet you want to be—what kind of master you want?” he asked.
There was no room left for lies. No energy left for lies either. “Someone who’s willing to let me feel alive,” Marrick whispered.
“Alive?” Luther echoed, blankly.
Marrick felt every muscle in his body tense as he pushed forward despite all his reservations, all his fears. “What my parents were talking about—when they said I was ill when I was little. It wasn’t just a normal kids-get-sick kind of thing.”
Luther stroked his fingers up and down Marrick’s spine, obviously trying to soothe him.
“Can you imagine lying in a hospital bed for years, watching life go on around you, passing you by? I didn’t feel like I was dying—I felt like I was already dead. Can you imagine how that makes you feel?”
Blaine pulled him closer as if to protect him from the very memory of it.
“I promised. I don’t know if I believe in God or not, but I know that I promised someone—something—that if I got the chance to get out of that hospital, if I got the chance to feel alive, then I’d do it. Nothing would stop me.”
Luther’s temple came to rest on the back of Marrick’s head as he wrapped his arms around Marrick’s waist.
Eyes closed now, Marrick kept going when a huge part of him wanted nothing more than to stop, to just let the lions pat him on the head and tell him everything was okay.
“I’m not an idiot. I don’t have a death wish.
I don’t take stupid risks. But I won’t live my life following the rules of any man, or any lion, who makes me feel as if I’m suffocating under a million layers of cotton wool. ”
“You…want to be scared?” Blaine asked.
“Scared. Hurt. I want to go the edge of what I can take and ride the crest of it. Feeling the fear and doing it anyway—that’s what makes someone feel more alive than anything,” Marrick whispered.
For several long seconds, the whole world was silent but for the sound of his racing pulse. “Can you accept that?” he eventually forced himself to ask.
“It’s not that simple. A master has to look after his pet,” Luther said.
“Because Arslan says that’s the way it has to be?” Marrick asked.
“Because it’s the way things have always been between lions and humans. Because…”
Marrick looked up as Blaine hesitated.
Suddenly, the lion’s expression changed. “We should all rest now. We’ll talk when we wake up.”
Marrick parted his lips to respond.
“I know you won’t obey every order we ever give you,” Blaine told him, very seriously. “But just this once—obey this one just because we ask you to?”
Marrick wasn’t sure if it was the need in Blaine’s voice or if it was his own desire to take what was being offered that made him nod his agreement.
He was too exhausted to care about the future. If it wasn’t going to work, if he’d come back only to find he was going to have to leave again the next day, then at least he could get a good night’s sleep first.
* * * * *
Blaine stalked slowly along the edge of the shrubbery, hunting for the perfect moment.
His paws didn’t make a sound, they barely even disturbed the grass, as he watched his prey wander out into the middle of the lawn behind Arslan’s home.
The human looked in every direction before turning back towards the patio that extended out from the back of the house.
Just as the human lifted his hand to shield his eyes from the sun, Blaine pounced.
Marrick’s back hit the ground hard. His eyes opened very wide as he came face to face with Blaine in his feline form for the first time. “What the—!” His words deserted him. His mouth opened and closed, but no sound emerged.
One set of instincts demanded that Blaine should pull away, he should apologise for forgetting his manners with a human, for forgetting that they were not designed for rough play—especially not when he was in his shifted form.
But another kind of instinct, just as strong, demanded that he claim his mate—that he hold on to this human, that he keep his human both safe and exactly where he wanted him to be.
The two impulses warred against each other, and as the seconds passed even Blaine didn’t know which one would win out—which one he should want win out.
Then, very slowly, Marrick smiled. It was a cautious little expression, as if he wasn’t entirely sure the world was going to continue in this way that seemed to please him so much, but it was enough.
He squirmed a little under the weight of Blaine’s feline form, and Blaine didn’t even try to hold back his snarl.
He was doing exactly what their human had always wanted.
He was pleasing his mate. He didn’t want anything to change, and he didn’t see why it should—not when it so obviously delighted Marrick just as much as it thrilled him.
Any hint of hesitation faded from Marrick’s smile. A look of pure bliss passed through his expression, and, for the first time Blaine could remember, there was no other emotion clouding it.
Triumphant with success, Blaine morphed seamlessly back into his human form. The paws that had pinned Marrick’s arms clumsily to the ground shifted into hands and allowed him to wrap his fingers deftly around Marrick’s wrists and take a much better hold on him.
As Marrick murmured his pleasure, Blaine tightened his grip further, just as he would if it was Luther laying beneath him, as if he needed to hold a lion just as strong he was in place.
Just for the briefest moment, something else flashed into Marrick’s expression. Pain.
Snatching his hands away from Marrick’s skin, Blaine sprung away from him, scrambling backwards on the grass.
Marrick’s reactions were quicker than any humans should have been. He caught hold of Blaine’s fingers just before they slipped out of his range and kept him close.
“I hurt you.”
“No!”
“Scared you then,” Blaine snapped, anger giving him no patience with semantics.
“No.”
“Don’t lie to me. Lions can sense pain and fear. You’re afraid. You’ve been afraid ever since you came back to us.” And it had been killing part of Blaine every time he sensed it.
Marrick stared back at him for a moment, holding their gazes locked when Blaine could tell he wanted to look away. Marrick swallowed rapidly, several times before he nodded. “Yes, I’ve been scared.”
“Scared of us?” Luther asked, softly as he approached from his vantage point on the other side of the garden, from where he’d been watching over them. “The way we can shift into—”
“No!” The way Marrick said it made it difficult to doubt it was the truth.
“Scared how then?” Luther asked.