Chapter 10
TEN
I stop running deep in the forest, my feet carrying me along familiar paths until I emerge in one of the many tucked away clearings the clan has cleared out over the decades.
Bending over a moment, I catch my breath. It’s been some time since I had to sustain a long sprint at full speed. I need to train.
Rath emerges from the shadows, gait liquid, a barely tamed predator who circles me but doesn’t come closer. “You make me hunt you.”
I wait until my breathing is calm before replying. “The hunt was for you. A wedding gift, I suppose.”
Rath halts, staring at me, his eyes disappearing in the darkness. “Thank you. What happens now?”
“I don’t know.” The resistance holding me back so far is thin, ready to snap as easy as a dangling thread. But I’m. Not. Quite. There. I need. . .something more.
“Let me tell you what I know,” he says.
I cross my arms over my chest, lifting a brow .
“We grew, we fought, we loved. We hurt. We let each other go.”
He speaks so quietly I almost strain to hear him; it’s deliberate. He wants to force me to listen to each word carefully.
“Well, that’s a lie,” he adds with a soft laugh. “I never let you go. But I let you run. I didn’t find you and drag you back.”
I hear the vicious restraint in his voice. The restraint it took not to look for me, to conquer me. The restraint it takes now not to walk past the boundary we both feel I still have erected.
It’s the only thing that separates males from monsters; their ability to heed that boundary. To wait. To claim and devour only when the female offers complete, unambiguous submission.
“I returned,” I say.
“Come to me.” A soft, seductive whisper, a predator’s cajoling charm. “A step only. Just a little closer.”
The tether he’s sunk into my soul goes taut and I obey. One step.
“Good girl,” he breathes. “Now, let me tell you what will happen next.”
I tense.
“You are my wife, by blood and your willing oath in front of witnesses. Twice. ”
He pauses, but it’s not like I’m going to refute the obvious.
“That gives me the right to wrap my hand around your throat, force you to your hands and knees, mount and stuff you full of the cock that will make you scream so loud the clan will hear it over their revelry. I’ll bleed you and seed you and I won’t let you up until every last inch of your skin is saturated in my scent. We won’t rise from our marriage bed until you’re pregnant.”
The heat always simmering in my core explodes, the flutters in my belly now a drumbeat. “That might take a few weeks.”
His smile is a wide, glittering baring of teeth. He shifts slightly, leaning forward, muscled chest and shoulders tensing. The moon breaks through the cloud cover and highlights his face and body.
“Even if it took a few years, I would endure. My sister will bring us food. She was the one who suggested I breed you to keep you still.”
“That. . .bitch.” Also, I’m a midwife. We won’t have children until I decide.
Rath chuckles. He hasn’t blinked—the conversational tone he wields is a lie. “She's selfish. She wants littles of her blood to cuddle and spoil into monsters but doesn't want the trouble of taking a male to breed them herself.”
That is so Iloni.
“ Kyona. ”
I close my eyes, shuddering, and hold out my hand while taking two quick steps forward. He seizes my wrist, yanking me against him. I expect him to fulfill that threat of a good time, but he holds me, hand pressing against the small of my back, unsheathed talons lightly pricking my bare skin.
And then he lowers his head, pressing his forehead against mine. “Kyona, if you don't want this, I'll take you home, feed you, bathe you, tuck you into our bed. I'll hold you and do nothing more than stroke your hair and breathe in your scent. I love you. If you don't want me, I'll be content just to have you in my life. It's more than I've had the last twenty years.”
My eyes drift closed as he speaks, but I force them open again as my body relaxes against him, our chests pressing together, nothing separating our skin except for the thin cloth of my breastband.
I take a deep breath, exhale it in one long ragged sigh, and slide my hands up into his textured hair, gripping.
“I couldn't deny you then, and I can't deny you now.” I swallow. “I love you when I shouldn't. Even against common sense, and dignity, and every survival instinct. I came home because another minute breathing air that wasn't saturated with your scent would've killed me. Rath’a.”
His hands sweep up my sides, gripping my rib cage as I tug his head down, capture his lips—feel the usual spark of resentful envy at his beautiful tusks and my lack.
Though I don't feel like I lack anything when he touches me.
The growl starts deep in his chest, and he locks his arms around me tight, pulling me flush against him. Our gentle kiss turns into a savage, primal, devouring thing.
Blood fills my mouth, and I can't tell if it's his or mine, maybe both.
He breathes fast and ragged, turns me in his arms so my back is against his chest. He bends me and slides a hand down, yanking up my skirt as his feet kick my ankles apart .
Strong fingers shove inside me, fast, brutal, offering no opportunity for me to object.
I jerk in shock, crying out. “Rath!”
He wraps his other hand around my neck, squeezing. “By your own word you’re mine,” he growls in my ear. “Your mind may believe it, even your heart, but your body doesn't know it yet. I'm going to fuck you every which way, wife, train your body to come as soon as I step in a room and look at you. This pussy is belongs to me. ”
As he croons those seductive threats in my ear his fingers punch in and out of me, the whimpers in my throat spilling out until they're full-blown whines. My legs tremble, and with each stroke my pussy clenches down, the heat in my core bubbling over.
He drags his fingers out of me, up my slit, and rubs furious circles around my stiff clit, then dips back inside, three fingers this time, the wet sucking noise obscene.
“Can you take more?”
“I can’t. I can’t.”
“You will anyway. You’ll be my good halfling girl and beg to take my fist if I command it. Tell me to give you more, Ky’a.”
I can’t talk, I can only whine. He chuckles, working his little finger and thumb inside me, and his hand is not small.
He pulls out, rubs his soaking fingers up and down my slit and slaps my clit, then sinks back inside, stretching me as he goes deeper, past his knuckles, to his wrist. Keening, I look down at his fist tenting my stomach.
“Don’t whine, Ky’a,” he murmurs. “If I don’t do this to you, you won’t be able to take my cock. I don’t want to make you bleed, not there. Fuck my fist, baby. Show me how this greedy little pussy will fuck my cock.”
The pleasure builds, and builds, and I can't breathe, opening my mouth wide to suck in gobs of air. When I shatter, my knees buckle.
He laughs, taking me to the ground rather than holding me up, and the next moment, as I'm panting on my hands and knees, then with my chest pressed against the ground, he's ripping the wrap from my waist.
“I'll give you slow and gentle next time,” he grinds out. “I can't?—”
I bump my bottom against his groin, feeling the head of his cock push against my entrance, and then he's slamming inside. I scream, his hands on my hips, talons pricking, breaking skin as he begins to fuck me.
It's rough—no, not rough. Brutal. Our first time together the pain had nearly blacked me out. Our flesh slaps together as he wraps a hand in my hair and yanks my head back.
By the Mother, am I glad for the restraint he learned. If he’d done this before I was ready, before I was willing, it would've shattered me.
Even now, I'm struggling to keep my mind my own under his onslaught, under the pleasure edged with pain, under the sheer dominance of his touch, his growls, the whispered obscenities as he finally lets go.
“Your pussy is so tight, hot and wet, too tight,” he groans, pulling out and then slamming back in. “No one else has touched what's mine. Scream for me again. Come on my cock, baby, milk me.” He jerks my head back again. “ Scream for me. ”
My body tips over the edge and I give him what he wants. His hand releases my hip and moves around my front to rub furiously on my clit as he fucks me through the orgasm and into a third.
My elbows and knees are raw, my pussy is raw and throbbing, but he keeps going.
Every time I feel he's about to come he pauses, pulls out, plays with my clit or my breasts, bends over me to sink his teeth into my neck, and only when he's controlled himself again does push back inside me.
“No more,” I beg him, after I don’t know how long, my voice hoarse. “Rath, mercy. No more.”
His laughter is wild, harsh. “Did you think I would make this easy on you? On me? I love you, baby, but you're going to take everything tonight.”
I suffer, endure the punishment, the overwhelming and unceasing pleasure. When strength is gone from my body I collapse onto my stomach, and he comes down with me, pressing me into the ground with his greater weight, reminding me how fragile I truly am next to him.
At one point he rolls me onto my back, hooks my legs over his shoulder, dragging my hips up on his thighs and continues, his hands squeezing my breasts. I cry out as he twists a nipple, his eyes bright as the sun starts to rise.
I'm covered in his bruises, his marks, covered in his cum.
I think I've lost time. I've been floating, somewhere dark and warm and when I open my eyes it's to Rath still fucking me, though he moves slower, the pace indolent rather than frenetic.
As if my body is ready to give up everything, including my soul, I come again. But it's weak, like the last breath before death.
Rath closes his eyes and shudders, filling me, grinding deep inside my abused pussy and I don’t know how many times tonight he’s done this; filled me, paused to feed me the slick dripping down my thighs then licked up the remains only to start again.
He collapses over me, braced on one arm so he doesn't crush me with his full weight. He kisses my cheek, my neck, turns his lips to take my mouth again, this kiss leisurely, almost sweet.
Rath pulls away, whispering, “I won't waste my seed yet, but once you have our baby in you, I’ll fuck this pretty mouth that belongs to me too. Would you like that, baby?”
I bare my teeth halfheartedly. He nuzzles my nose with his. “My baby is so adorable when she growls at me. Do it again. It makes my cock hard.”
“Mother’s tits , you don’t need any help getting your cock hard.”
I can barely whisper the words, I’m so tired. I. . .think I slept a little? That must have been the floating darkness.
“Rath, can you take me home now? Please?”
He sighs, lowering his head for a moment as if he’s gathering strength, then rises, hauling me along with him and up into his arms.
“We’re naked,” I point out.
“All the young still sleep,” he says. “And the males know better than to look at what’s mine. ”
“The contract says?—”
He laughs. That’s what he really thinks about our so-called contract.
This is why you don’t marry a Uthilsen male. They’re all sweetness and subservience until they have your blade against their neck, and then they own you, and it’s their teeth buried in yours.
It’s the greatest con of generations.
“Go to sleep, baby. I’ll take you home and have breakfast ready when you wake up.”
Oh, good. He learned how to cook. I let my eyelids drift back closed. “I love you, Rath’a. I still hate you though.”
His lips brush my forehead. “I love you more, Ky’a. I promise I’ll never make you need to run from me again.”