Chapter One
“Mr Ellery!”
Marlin Ellery turned his face toward the voice, as if that might make the leather blindfold covering eyes conveniently disappear. Of course, it didn’t. Ellery remained surrounded by darkness and an unknown number of men.
Rough hands pressed against his shoulders, forcing him down onto his knees.
A thick rug softened his landing. A second pair of hands caught hold of his arm and stopped him from falling flat on his face. Neither of those facts provided a great deal of consolation.
Ellery was bound, blindfolded, naked, and now, he was on his knees in a room full of men. The realisation that all the men weren’t strangers to him didn’t particularly feel like a blessing.
Eventually, the voice who’d said Mr Ellery matched itself with a name in the back of Ellery’s mind. “Marrick?”
“You know him?” one of the men who’d led Ellery into the room, the one standing to his left, asked, but he wasn’t talking to Ellery.
“Yeah, kind of. From the clubs. He’s a…dom?” That was Marrick’s voice again. And the fact that the boy stumbled over the word dom immediately set Ellery’s hackles up.
After so many visits to those local clubs, the boy really should have more sense by now.
But, even if Marrick was far more clueless than he had any had real right to be, at least his presence confirmed that Ellery was in the right place.
This was definitely the lions’ den that the local subs kept disappearing into.
All Ellery had to do now was keep his cool and keep to the game plan.
“He’s a what? How do you know him?” the man to Ellery’s left demanded. His voice was louder now. He sounded jealous. If he wasn’t Marrick’s boyfriend, he definitely wanted to be.
“Um…are you two sure you got the right guy?” someone cut in from the far side of the room.
“How many men do you think land on our doorstep dressed like this by accident?” Marrick’s friend snarled.
“He’s just not very like the other sacrifices…” That was Mr Worried from the corner again.
And, suddenly, everyone was talking at once.
Voices chased each other back and forth above Ellery’s head.
He did his best to build some sort of mental map of the room, but there were too many people, and they moved around too damn much.
It was impossible for him to even be sure how many men were present, let alone calculate which were human men and how many were werelions.
“He’s not very like most of the other sacrifices…
“Older…”
“Bigger…”
“Stronger…”
“Not very pet-like…”
“He’s beautiful…”
The last two words were softly spoken, yet they seemed to catch the attention of everyone present. Silence fell over the room, broken only when a log crackled in the fire.
In the hush, Ellery got the distinct impression that someone was creeping cautiously closer to him.
Fingers stroked very softly down his cheek, caressing Ellery’s skin more gently than he’d imagined possible. And he found himself remaining still and simply accepting the person’s touch.
“Kefir?”
All the man in front of Ellery managed in response to the query was a hesitant little “I…”, but it was enough to confirm a name at least.
Kefir hesitated; his fingers left Ellery’s face. Ellery sensed him retreat a little but thought perhaps he could still sense him lingering just a few inches away.
“You know what you need to say?” It was the same voice that had called Kefir’s name.
The speaker sounded older than the men who had been arguing with each other a few moments before.
His voice was deeper, richer. Even though he seemed to be making an effort to speak gently to Kefir, his voice was still strong. He sounded like a dom.
Ellery instinctively squared his shoulders as he realised he was probably meeting the leader of the pride.
“You can’t be serious!” Marrick’s friend cut in before Kefir had a chance to speak again.
“Are you declaring an interest in him, Blaine?” the pride’s leader demanded.
“No, but—”
“Then, be silent!” His tone couldn’t have been more different than when’d he’d spoken to Kefir.
“But—”
A roar echoed through the room. Survival instinct meant fight or flight tried to kick in. Ellery tensed every muscle in his body and forced himself to remain motionless.
Besides, he could hardly blame the lions’ leader for losing patience. Marrick was obviously screwing a brat.
“Let him go, both of you.”
The hands that had led Ellery into the room released him. He sensed the lions they belonged to step back.
A moment later, bare skin brushed against Ellery’s knee as Kefir crept closer again.
“You know what you need to say?” the leader asked Kefir again.
“If you say ‘spear’, you’re free to go,” Kefir whispered, making no attempt to make his voice sound stronger, or more dominant, the way Blaine had seemed to.
Ellery was so focused on trying to work out if there was anything else he could tell about Kefir from his tone of voice, it took a moment for the meaning of his words to sink in. The lions knew about safe words, then? That seemed like a good sign.
An answer appeared to be required. “I understand.”
“Neatly done, Kefir.” The leader sounded very pleased with him. “He’s yours for the night.”
“But—”
The leader didn’t give the brat a chance to say another word. “The decision’s been made. There will be no arguments about it.”
Other words floated through the darkness that surrounded Ellery, infantile silliness warring with impatience at every turn, but they grew fainter as the men speaking moved away from the fireside and into another part of the room.
The only presence Ellery sensed remaining close was Kefir’s.
“No one will hurt you,” Kefir whispered. “You don’t need to be afraid.”
Ellery raised an eyebrow behind the blindfold. “I’m not afraid of you.”
Fingertips touched his cheek again, stroking along his jaw, before hesitating. “May I…?”
A great many widely varying possibilities had occurred to Ellery when he’d decided, in his infinite wisdom, to volunteer to be thrown to the lions. But the idea that he could somehow end up being handed over to a sub had never even entered his mind.
Kefir’s hand disappeared from his skin when Ellery failed to provide immediate permission for it to linger there.
“You may.”
“You’re sure you don’t mind?”
“I don’t give orders I’m not sure of,” Ellery informed him, not sure he entirely succeeded in hiding his amusement at the possibility.
The fingers didn’t immediately come back to rest on his skin, and Ellery suddenly realised that he wanted them to return far more than he should. Unable to reach out and make that very clear, he chafed at the bondage and the absurdity of the situation more than ever.
Several seconds passed, and Ellery couldn’t even be sure if Kefir was still there. In the darkness behind the blindfold, he silently recited a string of curses that might even have had a few of the mechanics in his bike shop blushing.
Finally, Kefir’s touch came to rest against him again, not on his cheek this time, but on his collarbone. The lion stroked his fingertips across Ellery’s shoulder and down his arm, tracing out the lines of muscle as if quite fascinated by them.
Kefir’s hand didn’t feel overly large. That wasn’t exactly conclusive evidence of anything, but Ellery had no choice but to piece together whatever he could from the scant clues at his disposal.
A small hand belonging to a relatively small man?
He’d sounded quite young. Early twenties maybe?
Kefir came a little closer as he started to explore Ellery’s body a bit more confidently. His knees brushed against Ellery’s leg.
Ellery did his best to picture the boy kneeling in front of him, but it was all just guesswork.
“You’re very beautiful.”
Ellery didn’t laugh, but it was a close-run thing.
Bloody hell, he’d been a newbie on the scene the last time someone had tried to speak, to flirt with him the same way they would with pretty little sub.
In the decades that had passed since then, he’d built that kind of reputation that ensured no one would have dared to approach him that way.
But Kefir sounded so earnest, laughing would have just been cruel. “If you take the blindfold off, I might be able to say the same about you,” he suggested.
A strange desperation to see the boy flooded through him as he said the words. It was more luck than judgment that kept most of it out of his voice.
Kefir’s hand faltered partway through another gentle caress. “We’re not supposed to do that.”
The only man my sub needs permission from to do anything at all is me. Ellery kept the words back. Kefir wasn’t his sub. The words wouldn’t have made sense, but they still hovered on the tip of Ellery’s tongue, begging to be said.
Ellery kept his mouth shut, but he couldn’t stop his wrists pulling irritably at the cuffs behind his back as the moment made them more uncomfortable than ever.
Kefir’s attention moved from Ellery’s arm to his chest. Ellery couldn’t be sure if the boy was trying to tease or not, but as he stroked his way over Ellery’s skin, each caress rushed straight to Ellery’s cock. In spite of the awkwardness of the situation, he started to stiffen.
As best as he could tell from the boy’s continued explorations, Kefir didn’t notice that for some time. It was only when the lion’s touch hesitated halfway down his abs that Ellery guessed that the penny had finally dropped. Ellery waited, blind and impatient, for Kefir’s reaction.
A fingertip brushed delicately against the tip of his hardening cock.
Instinct tried to kick in and make Ellery thrust forward and try to get more contact with Kefir’s hand, but he locked his joints and forced himself to remain completely motionless.
“Do humans like the same kind of touch as a lion would enjoy?”
“That depends on how lions like to be touched,” Ellery replied, keeping his voice sounding casual through sheer force of will.