44. Aleks
Aleks
With him.
It was such a change of viewpoint that my brain almost couldn’t handle it.
There was no ownership, only love, and I had no idea what to do with that.
In some ways, it felt too tentative, but I knew that was because every member of my extended—not immediate—family was broken, unable to form healthy bonds with other people.
My father, my uncle, my grandfather—they had all wanted to own others, so that there was no doubt about abandonment.
The problem with that was that people who found themselves “owned” were rarely going to sit back and accept that, especially when the people trying to own them were awful, controlling, abusive monsters.
It wasn’t certainty, not really. It was only trying to be.
With, though? Belonging together without ownership was something else entirely. Something mutual, with no ownership other than over one’s own behavior.
Even in trying to turn it inside out, to make Cash my new owner, it hadn’t been this version of healthy, rational attachment. There was no mutuality in ownership. It was one-sided and always turned toxic.
With, though.
I could work with that.
I splayed my fingers across his cheeks, pulling his face toward me and instead of kissing him, just pressed our foreheads together and stayed there a moment. I let it settle into my bones, this perfect, secure feeling of being together without ownership. Without power imbalance.
Just calm, steady Cash sitting in my lap, holding onto me as tightly as I held him.
Yes, I was alpha, but I wasn’t the boss of him in any way. We were equals. We made choices together, and each had the same amount of say in everything.
Finally, I drew in a ragged breath and let my head fall back, meeting his eye.
“I . . . I like this spot,” I whispered.
For a moment, he seemed confused, but I motioned around.
“Not far from the pack. Close. But not in the middle. Not surrounded by everyone. Not big or flashy or a declaration of power. Of . . . ownership. Only a little privacy and quiet.”
Cash looked around as though seeing the spot for the first time, then looked back at me, his eyes shining. “I could . . . we were talking about houses. I could build a small one here. Just for us. It wouldn’t even take long.”
My breath caught in my throat, and suddenly, I couldn’t keep myself still. I had to have him in every way he would allow. I hiked his legs up around my middle, and lay him across the blanket, lowering myself over him.
I went slowly, watching for any hesitation, any stiffening that would say he was uncomfortable, but there was nothing. There were only soft green eyes, looking up at me, filled with hope.
“I love this,” I told him. “Just for us.”
He swallowed hard and glanced away, then quickly back. “We, um, haven’t had a chance to have much just for us before. I mean, you or me either, but . . . us. Together.”
I knew exactly what he meant. The entirety of “us,” so far, had been stolen moments, quiet looks, and nights where Grant and his cruelty hung over us like some sword of Damocles, waiting to end not only our time together, but our entire lives.
“We have now,” I whispered against his lips. “Tonight. Tomorrow. Forever. Here.”
His perfect eyes fluttered shut at that, and at my hot breath ghosting over his lips. “Forever,” he whispered back, his voice shaky.
I kissed him, soft and slow, then lifted up, moving down to the side of his chin and kissed again. The bottom of his jaw. The top of his neck. His breath caught for a second, then slowly, shakily, released.
“Yes,” he said, an answer to the question we’d both already asked and answered. “Yes. Forever. That’s what I want.”
He finished as I reached the spot where his neck met his shoulder, that sensitive spot that my teeth were almost aching with the need to bite. I pulled back for a moment, our eyes meeting, and I saw the utter certainty in his gaze.
So I leaned down and bit. He gasped and then cried out as the taste of copper filled my mouth, but when he arched into me, it wasn’t in pain or any attempt to escape pain. His cock was rock hard, pressed into my belly, desperately seeking pressure and finding it in the shove of our bodies together.
His movements were wild, almost feral, and after a moment, I released him and sat up, licking my lips to keep from looking like a beast who was trying to consume him.
I doubted it succeeded, but his eyes were lit with a fire that said he didn’t care the slightest bit.
I reached between us, and he shoved up again, trying to push his cock into my grip despite the fact that he was still dressed.
My claws extended, and I almost shredded his jeans with them, trying to unbutton them and get them off his legs. I was sure I’d have scratched his perfect skin if he’d been a soft, squishy human, and I was grateful he wasn’t quite so fragile as that.
Not that I’d have avoided him even for that.
Nothing could have kept me away from Cash.
I did tear his shirt tugging it over his head, but a second later, he broke the zipper on my own jeans, yanking it so hard that the pull came right off. I chuckled and tried not to think of Mama laughing at me as she repaired them tomorrow. Now wasn’t the time for me to be thinking about my mother.
Now was just for Cash, and for me.
Moments later, we were naked, clothes strewn about us randomly where we’d tossed them as soon as we’d gotten them off each other’s bodies.
Instead of laying back down and waiting on me, as so many partners I preferred not to think about had always done, Cash planted a hand on my chest and pushed me onto my back.
With authority I usually only saw him exert when he was working with wood—ha—he took a random nearby shirt and tucked it under my head, then climbed atop me, settling onto my groin before reaching behind himself to grab my cock and position it between his cheeks.
With no fanfare, no preparation but a smear of oil he took from the food I’d laid out, and no apparent struggle at all, he sank down onto my cock, inch by inch, until he was seated fully on me, resting his hands behind him on my thighs and letting his head fall back.
A moment later, when he lifted it, he met my eye steadily, and the confidence I saw there was staggering. This was the man my Cash was meant to be. A man who took what he wanted and made no apology for it. A man who knew what he could have, what he deserved, and never tried to make himself smaller.
This was perfection.
For us.
He rode me then, slowly lifting off my cock and then lowering himself once more, increasing speed as he went, breathing in time with his movements.
Me? I couldn’t breathe. He was too perfect. The moment was too perfect. If I breathed, I thought I might shatter into a million pieces.
When he grinned down at me without so much as slowing his movements, I thought maybe I did.
“Come up here,” he ordered, and I just . . . I couldn’t have not followed the order if I’d wanted to, but there was nothing in the world I wanted more. I would follow him anywhere.
So I pressed my hands into the blanket next to me, and pushed up, while he continued to ride me, slamming his whole body down onto my cock, the movements almost defiant.
Not defying me. Defying the whole fucking world. We’d been told for so long we couldn’t have this, but we could. We did. This was ours. Maybe we didn’t own each other, but we owned this moment. Owned this feeling.
His smile told me he felt it too.
And then he leaned forward, and with no buildup, no hesitation, sank his teeth into the same spot on my neck that I’d bitten on his.
The jolt of pain went through me, and the world shattered around me in an instant, breaking apart into a thousand shards of perfect, prismatic light.
I reached up with one hand, grabbing his hips and shoving him down onto me as my body shook with the force of my orgasm, and I emptied into him, moaning his name aloud.
When he took his teeth out of my neck, I collapsed down onto the blanket beneath me, almost jarring myself with the force of it, but all the strength had left my body.
His teeth were bloody as he bared them at me, more snarl than smile, but I didn’t feel the least bit threatened. It was a touch of that feral wolf inside, and all I could feel about it was joy, that Cash would show me this part of himself.
He reached down to stroke his own cock as he went back to riding my slowly softening one.
It was the first time I’d ever been in the situation, having come first, but also, I didn’t feel the slightest bit used or dirty at him using my body to get himself off.
There was nothing in the world I wanted more than to watch him come all over me.
A moment later, I was gifted with precisely that.
His jaw went slack and eyes fell closed, and his hand stilled on his cock for just a second, then resumed pumping as hot drops started to spill across my chest and belly.
He curled forward, stroking more wildly and less in rhythm, as he came and came, and when he finally finished, his eyes came back to a low half-mast, surveying my skin, covered with his spend.
There was a spark of something there, and a moment later, he was smearing it into me. Ownership, in a way, if not the way I’d been raised to think of it.
We might go bathe in the river later, but the claim would never leave me. Every wolf in the pack would smell him on me the next time I went out among them.
And nothing in the world could have made me happier.