9. Kate
What the hell is wrong with me?
On top of being insatiable, the temperature inside me continues to climb at an accelerated speed. I know Kane doesn’t have central air and heat here, but even if he did, I don’t think it would help lessen the fire burning within. I know I’m not going into heat. I’m not of age.
Females weren’t taught much in our pack except that we’re only there to breed and obey, but the one thing I learned from the omega wolf that cleaned my father’s house was I was safe until my first heat cycle. She told me it could happen just shy of my twenty-second birthday but not before and that if I were as smart as she’d hoped, I would run before that day came.
I still have a year before that happens, so it’s not a heat cycle. And wolves don’t get sick unless we’ve come in contact with wolfsbane or silver, which I’ve neither touched nor ingested. And believe me, I know exactly what wolfsbane feels like coursing through my system. Dick often used it as punishment on younger wolves to incite fear among the pack. For his kids, he uses it to weaken our strength.
Kane’s lips rip apart from mine, leaving the taste of him mixed with me in my mouth. Sucking in a lungful of air, I tip my chin up and look him in the eyes.
It’s dark in his cabin, but with no curtains covering the windows, the light from the moon shines bright, giving me the best view. Kane towers over me as if he owns me, and for whatever reason, that doesn’t bother me. Maybe it’s because I know he isn’t like any of the men in my pack, certainly not like my father. Kane may be the alpha, but I’ve never seen him speak of any member of his pack like they’re property, like they’re a lesser being than him.
“My bed. Now!”
If I could reach inside myself and smack my wolf’s snout, I would. I swear to the stars she fucking purrs before she rolls onto her back, showing her belly at Kane’s demand.
We aren’t feline, bitch.
When I don’t jump at his order, he smacks my hip with his palm, the sting making me jump.
“There is no doubt in my mind you can take anything I dish out, Kate, but I’d rather not dent my refrigerator.”
Gripping the back of my legs, he hoists me up and over his shoulder.
“Why not?” I say in a goading manner. “As much dirt is caked onto the top of it, you might as well buy a new one. When was the last time you cleaned it?”
“Way to tell me I didn’t fuck you hard enough without telling me I didn’t thoroughly fuck you, Kate.” A low rumble moves through his chest, sending tingles racing up my back. “That’s okay.” He smacks my ass playfully as he strides down the hallway. “We can all improve, even me. By tomorrow morning, your bones will be jelly, and I guarantee you won’t be able to walk without your thighs aching with the amount of time I plan on spending between them.”
My body propels backward, and in less than a breath, my back lands in the middle of his plush bed. Before I can blink my eyes open, Kane rams his long, thick cock so far inside me that my heart skips a beat, and all the air in my lungs is forced out like a violent tornado took hold, ripping it from me.
My fingers find his shoulders, and without the thought forming, my wolf pushes her claws through skin and muscle, joining the fun.
The burning intensifies. It’s everywhere, even inside my head, making it feel like my brain is cooking. It’s too much. I can’t take this. It needs to stop. It has to stop before…
“Kane,” I cry out. “Please.”
I’ve never begged a day in my life. Why am I doing so now? Furthermore, how is he supposed to stop whatever has seeped its way into me?
Did I piss off a witch?
It’s been known to happen. Dark witches aren’t bound to the same laws as light witches. If you cross their path wrongly, they’re liable to curse you with whatever they feel like. With my shifter blood, we’re supposed to be able to burn through hexes, but it’s rumored that one witch is more powerful than any other to walk among the rest.
Maybe it was even the leader of the coven that lives on my father’s pack land. I know he uses them in whatever cunning way works best for his gain. He probably knows I’m gone by now. He likely manipulated his witch to do this to me.
Kane pounds in and out. I can’t even enjoy it for the pressure mounting behind my eyes, at the base of my skull, the heaviness sitting on my chest, the ache in my bones, or the sound of my own blood rushing to only Fate knows where.
“Kane.” My fingers flex, digging my claws deeper.
My vision blurs, but the feel of fur spouting between my digits is unmistakable. My back arches as my head tips back. My eyes slam shut, but the heat continues to climb, getting ten times hotter with my next breath. Squeezing them tight does nothing. I can’t breathe.
Jesus Christ, what the fuck is happening?
Stars dance behind my eyes, and just when I’ve accepted it’s all about to end, it does.
Teeth sink into my shoulder between my collarbone and deep into the muscles on the backside, claiming me. My eyes fly open while I pull with all my strength to keep Kane fused to me. I’ve always heard the claiming bite is the worst pain imaginable, but this is anything but. The heat left me the second his canines broke skin, my lungs filling with air again.
An orgasm so pleasurable rips through me, going on and on so long my mouth opens and unintellectual words spew out in a moan I’m not even ashamed of.
When everything ebbs away, Kane stills inside me. After a beat, he pulls away, then his face comes into view above me. No fur covers his flesh other than the hairs along his lower abdomen, his forearms, and the thick, trimmed beard on his beautiful face.
His eyes skate to his mark, but with the blink of an eye, his amber stare is back on mine. “Let’s talk about that tomorrow. I need more, Kate.”
There’s more volubility in his irises than I’ve seen before. He’s always been a master at shielding his thoughts from me, but right now, everything is on full display. His guilt, for one, but so much more than just that. He does want me, and he’s letting me see just how much. There’s a settledness inside him but also need and desire. He does want more, and so do I.
Lifting my back off the bed, I stop a hair’s breadth from his face. He’s being real with me, so I decide right then and there to give him all of me as well. “I don’t think I’ll ever stop wanting more, Kane.”
And with that truth, I grab his arms and flip us so that I’m on top, straddling his hips. Kane’s dick hardens back inside me as if my words sent all his blood straight to his monster cock. Then I move. Slow at first, finding a rhythm that feels so good I don’t ever want to stop fucking the man or the wolf under me.
So, we fuck.
We fuck so much that time stands still, or I lose track of the hours we’re connected as one. I give him everything I have and still continue to push my limits, needing more. Wanting to claim him the way he marked me as his. But he said we’d talk about that tomorrow, so even though my wolf kept urging me to bite him back, I didn’t. Even though my gums ached and my canines kept elongating, I kept my mouth closed except for when he was kissing me or had his dick plunging down my throat.
Fucking continued. Me on top of him, then him on top of me. At one point, Kane’s dick was buried inside me, pumping in and out while one thumb was in my mouth and another finger was deep in my ass, fucking all of my holes so thoroughly that I never wanted it to stop.
We kept going at it for so long that fucking felt like it was much more than fucking…
Hours later,when we’re spent, and the sun has been up for who knows how long, and I’m lying wrapped in Kane’s arms, I feel settled for the first time in my life. Maybe it’s the claiming mark on my neck or the solace I feel being here among his pack, in his cabin. Or maybe it’s the woods surrounding us and the seclusion they bring.
Then again, we have woods and an even bigger forest back home, so it’s not that. Still, there is something right about this place, this land, Kane’s people. The only thing missing is my brother.
You only have a few hours to show, Trez. I will come find you if I have to. Please be okay.
“Why don’t you like your pack?” Back at the house last night, you mentioned that. I’m curious as to why?”
Kane’s question flips my thoughts away from the doubt and dread running amok through my head.
“There’s no one in my pack I like except Trez. The men are all chauvinistic assholes. The women are weak and afraid. The pups grow up learning how to be one of the two. Dick is the worst of them all, or maybe his beta is. They’re a coin toss, but I do know we should have ditched our pack years ago. We don’t fit. It’s like we were born into the wrong pack, I guess you could say.”
It’s the truth. A sad truth, but a reality, nonetheless.
I may not easily bend to my father’s will, but I still stayed. I still obeyed to a degree. I put up with his bullshit rules for too long.
No more.
Never again.
“You hate your dad that much?”
A growl rumbles from deep inside me. “He’s my alpha, not my father. Besides, Dick isn’t for women’s empowerment. How am I supposed to trust or follow an alpha who doesn’t see my worth to the pack? If Trez and I had left, I wouldn’t be wondering if my brother is alive or dead.”
Or which lies my father fed our pack and me. Or why.
There’s no way he wouldn’t have known the ashes in that urn weren’t his son’s. I don’t even want to think about the person that was inside. The witch. She likely had a family too. Do they know she is no longer part of this world?
Is Dick responsible for her life ending, or was Henrik?
“Trez can hold his own. He isn’t weak, Kate.”
No, he’s not. And that’s the only truth I know at this time.
“Doesn’t change the fact that I need to find him and figure out what he wouldn’t tell me a week ago.”
“What do you mean? And what did you mean by Trez being in your head? I didn’t forget that slip of the tongue.” There is an edge to his voice. A hardness unmistakable of an alpha that’s suspicious.
“Before my brother took off for a run, he told me there was something he needed to tell me. After he left, he never returned, so I have no idea what he knew, but I do know it was something big. There was sadness in his eyes, but fear and hatred too.” I sigh and roll onto my back, Kane’s arm trapped beneath me. “I should have made him tell me.”
“And the other?” he questions, not letting the smallest detail go unanswered.
Rolling to his side, he pins me to the bed with his stare.
Blowing out a breath, I finally glance up and say, “Not something I have enough control to speak of without bolting to go find my brother. If he isn’t here by nightfall, I’ll tell you, and then I’m going in search of him, but right now, give me a few more hours of reprieve.”
For several long seconds, we’re locked in a battle of wills. Kane’s instincts are telling him to demand an answer. Mine are begging him to let it go a little while longer.
In the end, I win out, or I suppose he lets me keep my secret because his head dips in acknowledgment a breath before his lips connect with mine. A heartbeat later, he rolls on top of me while his hand goes between us, positioning himself at my opening. Kane enters my body in a fast jolt forward, and once again, my head clears of everything and everyone except him.
And damn, is it more than I’d ever imagined in my dreams. It’s a feeling I never want to lose. He was wrong when he claimed the way he fucks is both heaven and hell. This is pure bliss. It’s heaven on earth.
The only thing I can imagine being better than the way he feels inside me is experiencing my teeth sinking into Kane’s neck.