17. Paul
Paul
Mutually Assured Orgasm
I was losing myself.
But after the day I’d had, it was all I could ask for.
Between seeing a facsimile of my sister being run through with a sword to finding out that my brother was either resurrected with some form of forbidden necromancy or was some sort of mind-slave, I was chock full of so many emotions—?most of them negative—that it felt impossible to navigate.
Except when I was with Cherry.
Despite her chaotic nature, something grounded me whenever I was with her. I didn’t understand it, and I couldn’t really point to the reason, but what did that matter? The important thing was that being around her, and inside her, was a respite I never could have asked for.
And yet there she was, lying below me, begging me to fill her.
It was too perfect.
It felt like I didn’t deserve it, like it wasn’t possible that I could deserve a respite from the storm consuming my family, and yet there Cherry was, offering it to me with open arms and open legs.
While my conscience was frayed all around the edges with everything that had been revealed at the funeral, there was no doubt in my mind as I aligned myself with her dripping entrance and slowly slid in.
Just like the last time, she was insanely soft, wet, and perfectly willing. Her walls fluttered around me, beckoning me deeper. Deeper. Deeper.
She clenched around me, and I had to breathe in deeply through my nose and out through my mouth not to lose it far too soon. Because, as unlikely as it was to happen twice in a row, I wanted her to come again. Actually, I wanted her to come with me.
Because if I was being completely honest with myself, I’d only really started to realize who Paul was in the couple of weeks that I’d known Cherry.
I’d thought that I was the guy with the impeccable control, the even-keel personality, and the head for business.
But those turned out to be things I did, not what made up Paul VanMarche the Third.
“God,” I groaned as I slowly rocked into her.
As much as my wolf wanted to fuck and fuck hard until her belly was filled with our seed, I wanted.
.. something else. Something completely inappropriate given our actual relationship.
Because ultimately, Cherry was a professional consultant and practically an element of nature.
She didn’t seem to be into romance, and she definitely didn’t seem the type for a relationship with a stuffy heir of an even stuffier shifter family. “You feel so good.”
Especially with two—now possibly only one—members of that family having been murdered by God only knew who.
But still, as I held her in my arms and slid in and out of that impossibly velvet pussy of hers, I let myself and my wolf daydream of a future where she’d want something more permanent with us and the both of us would be ready for an actual relationship.
“You make me feel so good,” she whimpered, and goddamn, I loved how utterly fucked out Cherry sounded after orgasming. It was somewhere between bewildered, needy, and lustful in a way that fried my brain just right.
“Then come for me, come right on my knot.”
“Yes. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes! ”
I’ve had my share of flings throughout my life, had casually dated, but I’d never once felt the trappings of romantic love.
But now, as her walls clamped down on me so perfectly, as those mismatched eyes of hers stared at me with such compassion, I longed to be ready for such a thing.
To be fully open with myself and vulnerable, to come home each day to a partner that I trusted.
An idiotic dream, of course. Likely one brought on by the traumatic circumstances.
Once the first rays of the day came down, I had no doubt I would be reminded of the reality that I had a lot of work to do on myself before I could possibly be a suitable partner to anybody.
But for the moment, in the soft obsidian cushion of the night, I let myself believe anything was possible.
“Oh, I can feel it!” Cherry breathed, pulling me out from where I’d fallen into my introspection. “Your knot!”
“That’s all for you. You made that come out.”
I didn’t need to look down to know that the bulge at the base of my cock was indeed increasing in size, pressing insistently against Cherry’s entrance.
Our first time, we’d been going at it so hot and heavy that I’d pushed it in rather than being patient and waiting for Cherry’s body to naturally accept it.
She’d loved it at the time, making her satisfaction well known with the scratches down my back, but now…
Now it was different. I didn’t want to take, pillage, or plunder. I wanted us to share in the moment and come apart. Together.
So, I waited, keeping to my long, deliberate thrusts while also kissing her, and having my hands rove over her beautiful, athletic body.
While she didn’t have all the curves and BBLs that were so popular in media, that didn’t matter.
Cherry was unapologetically Cherry, and insanely gorgeous in a way entirely unto herself.
It drove me mad, perfectly mad, but for once I rejected the control I had so meticulously fought for all my life and let myself get lost in her chaos.
I gripped her hips, my thumbs stroking the strong muscle there.
I caressed her breasts, teasing at her nipples until those perfect lips of hers fell open in a desperate gasp.
I slid my fingers between where we were joined, circling her clit so she could dance along the edge of ecstasy while I rushed to meet her.
“Oh my god, right there. Yeah, move your fingers just like that!”
I didn’t mind the instructions, not one bit, because as I teased at that little button of oh-so-sensitive nerves, I felt her react, opening to me until, finally, my knot popped past her entrance and began to expand fully inside of her.
“ Fuck! ” she cried, her legs falling completely open and her hands going to her abdomen like she could feel me in her stomach. And while my ego appreciated the stroking, I knew that wasn’t physically possible. “I’m so full! ”
Her words were like the sweetest kryptonite to me (a fictional mineral I’d only learned about after she’d info-dumped about several flagship comics), and I felt my own orgasm hurtling violently toward me.
I bit my tongue in my rush to grit my teeth, redoubling my efforts to get Cherry over the finish line with me.
Although I knew from a healthy perspective that it was never good to base the quality of sex solely on orgasms, I desperately wanted us to pop off together. In fact, it seemed imperative, even if I didn’t have enough brain power to explain to myself why.
Why didn’t matter, not really. What mattered was that the thought of losing Cherry had put both me and my wolf into revolt, and I wanted to make sure that never happened again.
“I’m close, I’m close! ” Cherry cried, and I knew she was from the way she was squeezing me, her walls fluttering almost desperately.
I put everything into holding on those last few minutes while I did all the things she liked. Flicking my tongue over her nipple, digging my fingers into her hip, whispering all the filthy praise that made her heart jump.
Then, just when I thought I was going to burst, Cherry let out a mewling cry and arched up off the bed, muscles so taut I could see them moving below her skin.
That was my cue to let go, and let go I did.
My climax hit me with the force of a sledgehammer, and the sound that ripped out of me was truly feral.
I let out a roar befitting of my alpha designation—no words, only primal expression.
I emptied into Cherry, and despite the fact that I knew she had birth control, my mind filled with images of her with a round belly or the VanMarche estate filled with the pitter-patter of little feet.
I’d always assumed Jackson would be the one to have an heir—?accidentally—but if my inner wolf had its way, I would take the honor.
Cherry was still lost in the throes of her climax when mine ebbed, and I held her, talking her through it. Nothing too distinct, just whispers of encouragement and telling her how fucking perfect she was.
“That’s it, there you go. Breathe for me, baby, just breathe.”
Holding her like that felt surprisingly intimate, even after everything we’d done. I didn’t stop, however, cherishing it until she looked up at me with all the wherewithal of someone thoroughly debauched.
“Hey,” she whispered. I didn’t think it was possible for me to like how she sounded any more than I already did, but that was where we were headed.
“Hey,” I murmured before slowly settling down on her mattress, pulling her onto her side. We were still connected and would be for quite a while longer. “Do you want to sleep a bit? I’ll wake you up once my knot goes down.”
She nodded, pressing the tiniest little kiss to my collarbone before her eyelids slid closed. As her breathing slowed down, she muttered something I couldn’t catch even with my enhanced hearing.
“What was that?”
She roused slightly and repeated herself. “If it’s an enemy that’s hijacked your brother, we should start with the two most obvious and work from there.”
It was surprisingly coherent for someone who’d just orgasmed their brains out twice, and if I didn’t know better, I might have begun to doubt my prowess.
“And who are the two most obvious?” I murmured, stroking her hair.
“Seventy to eighty percent of all homicides are perpetrated by someone the victim knows. So, who are the two families your father knew the best? I sensed a whole lot of betrayal in that room. First, I thought it was what most victims feel before someone breaks social rules for violence, but obviously I was wrong about that.”
My first reaction was one of doubt, because the Marchendi, Bouchard, and McElroy packs had been in a firm alliance even before they came to America and cleared out the charlatan and abusive alpha who was abusing and manipulating the few magical folks already living along the East Coast. The idea of one of them doing something so violent was a tough pill to swallow.
But my secondary reaction, the more rational one, reminded me that Cherry had never been fully wrong on any of her hypotheses. Sure, sometimes she was a little to the left, but there was always truth to whatever she said.
“How do you think we’re going to manage accusing the second and third most powerful shifter families who just so happen to be our allies without causing even more of an incident?”
“Simple,” she said after a heady yawn. “We’ll have them invite in our own little Trojan horse.”
And then her eyes slid shut and her breathing completely evened out, leaving me to wonder what the hell she meant until it was time to rouse her again.
Thank God I was a patient man.