Chapter 4 Feral Release #2
He started moving again—short, grinding thrusts that rubbed the knot against every sensitive spot inside me.
I was climbing, spiraling toward an orgasm that felt like it might actually kill me.
His mouth found my throat, teeth grazing my pulse, and I felt the sharp sting of a bite—not breaking skin, but close.
"Come for me," he growled against my neck. "Come on my knot. Let me feel you."
The command tipped me over the edge. My orgasm crashed through me like a tidal wave, my inner walls clenching around his knot, milking him as he buried his face in my shoulder and let out a sound that was more howl than moan.
I felt him come—hot and thick and endless, pumping into me in pulsing waves as his knot locked us together.
And then he bit me.
His teeth sank into the curve of my shoulder—hard, brutal, claiming.
I screamed, the pain blending with the pleasure into something transcendent.
I felt the skin break, felt the warm trickle of blood, felt his tongue lapping at the wound as he continued to rut into me, his knot keeping every drop of his release sealed inside.
"Breeding this pussy," he rasped, his voice wrecked. "Filling you up. Making you mine."
I was sobbing now—overwhelmed, overstimulated, utterly destroyed.
Every tiny movement of his hips sent aftershocks rippling through me, and the knot kept me pinned, helpless, impaled on his cock with no escape.
He stayed there, buried inside me, his mouth working against my bleeding shoulder, his body trembling with the effort of holding back the wolf.
Time lost meaning. Minutes or hours later—I couldn't tell—the knot finally began to deflate.
Lucien pulled out slowly, carefully, and I felt the rush of his release spilling out of me, soaking the ruined couch beneath us.
He collapsed beside me, his chest heaving, his eyes slowly fading from amber back to their usual dark brown.
We lay there in silence, our bodies tangled, the air thick with the scent of sex and blood and something wilder. I should have been terrified. I should have been furious. Instead, I felt... claimed. Possessed. Alive.
"I hurt you." His voice was rough, barely audible. "Your shoulder—"
"I'm fine." I reached up, touching the wound. It was already closing, the bleeding slowing. "It doesn't hurt."
He turned his head to look at me, and I saw something in his eyes I hadn't expected: fear. Not of me, but of himself. Of what he'd done. Of what he might do.
"I lost control," he said. "I could have—"
"You didn't." I shifted onto my side, wincing at the soreness between my legs. "You gave me exactly what I asked for. What I wanted."
"You don't understand." His jaw clenched. "The wolf... it wants things. Dark things. It wants to claim, to possess, to breed. And when I'm around you, I can't control it. I can't control myself."
I reached out and touched his face, my fingers tracing the sharp line of his jaw. He flinched, but didn't pull away. "Maybe I don't want you to control it. Maybe I like the wolf."
His eyes searched mine, looking for the lie. Finding none. "You're insane."
"Probably." I smiled, tired and sore and strangely content. "But I'm also yours. You said so yourself."
He was silent for a long moment. Then, slowly, hesitantly, he reached out and pulled me against his chest. His arms wrapped around me, careful to avoid my wounded shoulder, and I felt the tension slowly drain from his body.
"I don't know how to do this," he admitted, his voice muffled against my hair. "I don't know how to be... gentle."
"Then don't be gentle." I pressed a kiss to his chest, right over his heart. "Just be you. The wolf and the man. I can take it."
He made a sound that might have been a laugh—rough and surprised and utterly disarming. "You're going to destroy me, Lizzie."
"Good." I closed my eyes, letting the warmth of his body seep into mine. "Someone needs to."
We stayed like that until the cold seeped into our bones and the reality of our situation—naked, bruised, covered in blood and other fluids—became impossible to ignore.
Lucien helped me up, his hands gentle now, and found a clean cloth to wipe the blood from my shoulder.
The wound had closed completely, leaving behind a faint pink mark that would probably scar.
"A reminder," he said quietly, his thumb brushing over the mark. "That you're mine."
I shivered—not from cold. "And you're mine."
He met my eyes, and something passed between us. An acknowledgment. A promise. The beginning of something neither of us fully understood but both of us were helpless to resist.
He walked me to my room, his hand a steady pressure on the small of my back. At my door, he paused, looking like he wanted to say something but couldn't find the words.
"Tomorrow," I said, saving him from himself. "We'll figure it out tomorrow."
He nodded, and then—so quickly I almost missed it—he pressed a kiss to my forehead. Soft. Chaste. Utterly at odds with the feral creature who'd just knotted me on an armory couch.
"Sleep," he said, and then he was gone, disappearing into the shadows of the corridor.
I closed my door and leaned against it, my body aching, my heart pounding, my mind spinning with everything that had just happened. I'd been claimed by a werewolf. Bitten. Knotted. Bred. And instead of being horrified, I felt more alive than I had in years.
I limped to my bathroom and stood in front of the mirror, examining the damage.
My shoulder bore a perfect impression of Lucien's teeth—a ring of pink marks that would fade to silver scars.
My thighs were bruised where his hips had slammed against them.
Between my legs, I was swollen and sore and still leaking his release.
I looked thoroughly debauched. Thoroughly claimed.
And I couldn't stop smiling.
I cleaned up as best I could, then crawled into my silk-covered bed and pulled the blankets up to my chin.
The manor was quiet around me, but I could feel them—Lucien, somewhere nearby, probably pacing his room and wrestling with his demons.
Azrael, in his library, sensing the shift in the household's emotional landscape.
Selene, in her workshop, brewing something that smelled of jasmine and ozone.
Darius, in his study, brooding over ledgers and plots and the human woman who kept disrupting his carefully ordered world.
I was surrounded by monsters. And somehow, impossibly, I was starting to belong to them.
Or they belong to me, I thought, drifting toward sleep. Same thing, really.
My last conscious thought was of amber eyes and a voice like gravel, growling mine against my skin.
And I smiled.