Chapter 14 - Aurela
Maybe I’m dead.
Or maybe this is just another installment in my dreams of Soren, the endless streams of imagining, his hands and mouth on me. Maybe I didn’t lead so bad a life as I thought, and I’ve somehow redeemed myself to arrive in a generous, pleasurable afterlife.
At least, that’s what I’m thinking until the moment Soren rises up from the bed, his hands anchoring themselves in my waistband before he slides his old sweatpants off my hips and down my legs.
He throws them to the other side of the cabin like they’re an affront to him.
Like he doesn’t even want to entertain the thought of returning them to my body.
When he returns to me, lowering his head between my legs and pressing the flat of his tongue to my clit without a second thought, I know that I’m alive.
There is not a single dream I’ve ever had that’s come close to the feeling of this.
The pure ecstasy that travels through my veins, like the rush that drug users must chase.
As if every neuron in my brain is lighting up at once, making stars shine in my vision.
“Oh,” I manage, hand diving into his curls, fingers tightening around them.
When he growls against me, I feel the rumble of it, and it’s more than any toy or vibrator I’ve ever used.
It’s impossibly good, like all this time, my own fingers have betrayed me with a subpar version of pleasure. “That’s—”
When he delves his tongue inside me, shamelessly lapping at my heat, every word in my brain dies.
Conscious thought ceases, and it’s like I’m on a roller coaster with a faulty seatbelt, just holding on for dear life, gasping for a breath, my climax on the horizon as a promise rather than a potential ending.
I realize I’m clamping my legs down on him when Soren reaches up with both hands, planting them on the insides of my thighs and forcing them open. It makes me sob from the overwhelming sensation.
In the past, I’ve done everything in my power to keep from going into heat.
It only promises frustration, like an itch deep inside my body that no dildo or toy could ever scratch.
Like creating the perfect meal, but knowing it’s missing one crucial element, making it impossible to enjoy all the other good components.
And now, the missing piece. It’s there in the way his breath fans against my skin, the way he murmurs low, under his breath, saying things like good girl, and tastes so good, and say my name, baby.
When I come apart on his mouth, I do, screaming his name to the room again and again. I would fall to my knees and pray to him, chant his name like one of the ancient rituals of the pack, if it meant that I could ever feel something like this again.
“Are you ready for me?” Soren asks in a breathy, low voice that is so unlike him, it makes a shiver run over my skin.
He rises up on his knees, and I can see the slick of me on his chin and lips. He holds my gaze as he licks his lips, reaching down to unbuckle his pants and slide them down his legs, letting his cock spring free.
I nearly black out at the sight of it.
“Aurela,” he growls, leaning down and settling his hand over my jaw, turning my head and forcing me to look at him.
I like the way he touches me, firm and commanding yet gentle.
I like the way he meets my gaze, holding it, and I like the little smirk that curves over his lips when the head of his cock presses against my still-sensitive clit, and I gasp, arching up into his touch. “I asked if you were ready for me.”
“Yes,” I whine, arching even further until the crown of my head is planted in the pillow.
Soren must take it as an invitation to my chest, because he lowers his mouth to my breasts, running his tongue along the curves of them, teasing me with his gentle breath and the swipe of a tongue before he finally pulls one fully into his mouth, pressing it gently between his teeth.
My entire life, I’ve been apathetic to my breasts. In high school, I was malnourished and barely had them. Once I started gaining weight, I saw them as just another burden, an additional body part people could use to judge my figure.
But now, with Soren on his knees between my legs, worshipping them, something clicks into place, and I see the value in them, the pleasure they can bring me.
The pleasure they can bring him.
He’s like a man possessed, all hands and teeth and wanting, gasping breaths.
I spread my legs as far as they’ll go, then hook one around him, trying to pull him in, force him to connect with me. My mind is on a single track, heat pulsing inside me and wanting only one thing.
His mouth on my chest might just make me come. But I don’t want another orgasm if it comes without his cock inside me. It’s what I’ve been waiting for my entire life, from the moment I thought of him as my fated mate all those years ago.
As though sensing my thoughts, he pulls back, and I get a hand on him, pumping it around his cock before he lines himself up at my entrance. He pauses, leaving us tipping over the top of an impossible precipice, teetering on the edge of finally, finally being together in the way I always wanted to.
“Tell me you want this,” he grunts out, voice low and serious.
“Soren.” I raise up on my elbows, which are shaking from the anticipation—in fact, my entire body trembles at the knowledge of what’s to come. “I want this. Please.”
With a low, possessive sound, he plants his hands on either side of my face, bringing his lips to mine in a tender, gentle kiss. Then, he slides inside me, and my entire world shatters around the feeling of it.
I’m grasping, reaching, hands sticky and tight against his back as he rocks inside me, his body strong and soft at once, unrelenting compared to every soft edge of me.
His knot starts to form, and I realize, not for the first time, that there are parts of myself I’ve never really known. Avenues to pleasure that weren’t named in my head, as though they didn’t exist except as a taunting, teasing absence.
And then, when he tips my head to the side, grazing his teeth gently over the pulse point there, I know what he’s asking.
I know what he wants. And maybe I should show some restraint, think about the fact that I’m in heat and he’s an alpha, and this could all just be hormones and biology, pushing us together.
But I’ve been in love with him from the first time I saw him at Foods Club, and I’ve wanted this exact moment since then.
So instead of pulling back, I offer my neck up to him, pressing my skin against his teeth.
And when I come, his teeth and length buried inside me at the same time, it’s the best orgasm of my entire life.
***
Soren and I are stuck in the cabin for five more days.
There’s no need for us to hunt again—we’re still living on the elk we caught before—but Soren breaks into the pantry, which contains enough canned fruits and vegetables to last someone through a nuclear winter.
Every other time I’ve had my heat, I’ve been in the comfort of my own bedroom, locked inside with my attached bathroom. The staff catered to me, leaving meals outside the door, being more generous with them when they knew my mother wasn’t home.
“A girl should eat more during her heat,” the cook would whisper to me, passing through herbal tea and ice packs. “That’s just common sense.”
But even with all the amenities at home, I’ve never had a heat like this one—Soren swapping out cool washcloths on my forehead, taking care of the deep, aching want in me.
He doesn’t mark me again, and I don’t mark him back. But his scent lingers on me, the mark of his teeth right there in the side of my neck, pulsing between us. An elephant in the tiny cabin room.
Two days into our delay at the cabin, when my heat is starting to wane for the first time, we go out together to check the mudslide. My heart sinks when I see the state of it—mostly dried up, probably crossable. Especially if we shifted to jump through most of it.
But Soren turns to me, a conspiratorial look in his eye. “Looks too dangerous to me, what do you think?”
And I agree. It’s better to be safe than sorry, even if that means staying in the cabin with him, away from everything back home.
Slowly, my muscles begin to relax. I stop thinking about food so much—Soren is always there to give me something if I’m hungry. I don’t have to squirrel snacks away or wonder if he’s thinking about how much I’m eating.
On the fourth day, we broach the topic of Tara again.
“She drew me out to the forest,” I admit, chewing on my bottom lip.
We’re sitting on the cabin’s front porch, in a pair of wooden rocking chairs Soren tells me his grandfather carved by hand.
“I’ve realized that now. I had a dream that first night.
When you found me. I think…I don’t realize it when I’m dreaming, but my body moves. ”
“Sleepwalking,” Soren murmurs, staring into his mug of tea. “She’s too powerful. When I hit her with the fire extinguisher last time, it seemed to work. I wonder if we had more of it, we might be able to take her down.”
Taking her down is a gentle way for him to communicate the truth—they’re going to kill her. Even though my chest twinges at the thought, all those teenage memories still weighing heavy on my emotions, I know Tara has caused far too much damage to roam free.
I barely hear her anymore. Hardly feel the tug of her, calling to me.
Except the fifth night in the cabin, when I cuddle into bed with Soren, one of his long arms wrapped around me, I hear the faintest, lightest whisper of laughter, so quiet I manage to convince myself I’m only imagining it.
I can’t wait to take from the little one, too.