5. Susan #2
He bites my shoulder. His teeth scrape over my collarbone, holding me down. He’s marking his territory. Erasing the solitude. He’s stamping his claim into my flesh.
My internal voice, usually so sharp and defensive, is silenced. I thought I could handle him. I thought I could manage the heat. Please. This man is a walking natural disaster, and he’s using every inch of his body to destroy me.
But the destruction is what I crave.
He pulls back and drives into me so hard my hip slams painfully against the cast-iron uncapping tank. Pain and pleasure explode in a blinding cascade behind my eyes. I arch my back, throwing my head back, exposing the line of my neck.
"Alas," I gasp. His name fractures on my tongue.
"Mine," he says.
It isn't a question. It isn't a sweet reassurance. It’s a territorial mandate.
He grabs my hips tighter, his thumbs bruising the delicate skin of my hip bones. He speeds up his thrusts. The friction is a blazing inferno between my legs. My slick coats his shaft, the wet, slapping sounds of our bodies colliding filling the small room.
He demands total surrender. "Don't move."
I freeze, my breath panting from my lips.
Every muscle in my body locks tight against the command.
The effort of holding still while he hammers into me drags a fresh shudder from deep inside me.
The slick between my thighs floods the wood beneath me.
I can feel it pooling under my ass, soaking the wax-scarred bench.
"Good," he says against the curve of my neck. "That's it. You hold for me. You take it the way I give it to you."
He keeps thrusting, maintaining the hilt-deep rhythm, but he reaches one hand down between our bodies. His rough thumb finds my swollen, oversensitive clit. He presses down hard.
A violent shockwave rockets through my nervous system.
He grinds his thumb in a tight, punishing circle, perfectly timed with his relentless thrusting. The combination of his cock stretching my internal walls and his rough thumb destroying my clit pushes me to the edge.
I thrash against the wood. The cast-iron tank rattles loudly against the floorboards. "Alas. Please."
"Scream for it." His teeth drag over the bruise he just left. "Let it out. All of it. Give it to me."
The dam breaks. The pressure crests in a violent wave.
I shatter.
My inner walls convulse violently, clamping down hard around his shaft. A loud, ragged scream rips from my throat, echoing off the wooden walls and the glass of the single window. I climax so hard my vision goes white. Pounding waves of pleasure rack my body, milking his cock with ruthless force.
The aftershocks roll through me in long, ragged jerks.
He doesn't slow. He keeps fucking me through every spasm, dragging more pleasure out of me than I knew my body could hold.
His thumb stays pressed against my swollen clit, riding the climax with me, milking every last shudder.
The slick floods around the base of his cock and runs down the insides of my thighs.
The wet, slapping sound of his hips against mine doubles in volume—my own arousal soaking everywhere our bodies meet.
Alas stiffens. The muscles in his arms bulge under his skin. A roar breaks from his chest.
He drives his hips forward one final time, burying himself so deep I feel the blunt head of his cock scrape against my cervix. He locks his hips against mine. He unloads his seed deep inside my womb.
Hot pulses of his cum flood my core. He fills me. The heat of it spreads through my lower belly, a permanent brand.
He collapses forward. His chest crushes my bare breasts, holding me securely against the wood. His breathing is ragged, gasping, like a dying man who just dragged himself out of the ocean. He buries his face in my neck, his mouth still open against my skin, tasting my sweat.
I wrap my arms tightly around his wide back. The harsh ridges of muscle and scar press against my palms.
The wind howls violently outside the single window, battering the glass. But inside the cramped, wax-scented honey shed, the air is hot and silent save for our ragged breathing.
I feel my grandfather's hands in the wax under my heels.
I feel two years of fighting alone—the weight of every hive I lifted, every Syndicate marker I tore down in the dark—finally crack open and run out of me onto the floorboards.
Alas's heart hammers against my ribs. He stays where he is.
He doesn't say a word. He doesn't have to.
The cold cast iron against my hip. The dominant weight of him fully sinking into me.
I close my eyes. I’m no longer alone on the ridge. He’s the lock, and I’m the iron door locking shut.
His cock is still buried deep inside my body. He makes no move to pull out. He makes no move to soften the crushing weight of his chest against mine. He stays where he is, keeping me pressed to the wood beneath us, claiming the space, claiming my body, claiming the air in my lungs.
My fingers trace the jagged lines of the scars across his shoulder blades.
The rigid tension in his muscles hasn't faded. The unanchored rage that defines his existence is still there, humming under his skin, but it’s no longer wild.
It’s pointed outward. Aimed at the southern trail.
Aimed at the Crimson Hollow Syndicate. Aimed at anyone who dares to cross the boundary line of this farm.
"You're not leaving this shed," he mutters darkly against my collarbone. His voice is a low, terrifying sound that vibrates straight through my bones.
I huff out a weak, breathless laugh. My sassy internal defense mechanism tries to kick in. He thinks he can just grunt at me and I'll obey? I run a twelve-acre farm. I don't take orders.
But the argument dies on my tongue before it even forms. Because I don't want to leave the shed. I don't want to move. I want him where he is, buried inside me, lethal and mine.
I drag my nails lightly down his spine. He shivers, an involuntary reaction from a man who’s never allowed himself a moment of vulnerability in his life.
The bees recognized it first. They saw the stillness in him. The lack of fear. The immovable calm that lies underneath the violence. They landed on his bare knuckles and accepted him as part of the hive.
I’m just catching up to what the bees already knew.
He shifts his hips slightly, the still-hard length of his cock sliding just a fraction of an inch against my swollen internal walls. Another spike of heat flares low in my belly. The friction drags a soft, involuntary moan from my lips.
Alas lifts his head. His stare locks onto mine. The empty void is gone, replaced by a burning fire that sears straight through to my soul.
He reaches up, his hand catching the side of my face. His thumb strokes the darkening bruise he just sucked into the soft skin of my neck.
"The markers are gone," he says. His voice is flat. Final. "The trail is closed. They come near this property again, I’ll bury them in the dirt."
He doesn't ask if I’m okay with that. He doesn't look for my approval. He’s stating a fact. He’s taken the war off my shoulders. The exhaustion of fighting the Syndicate alone evaporates into the warm, honey-scented air.
I nod slowly. My hands slide up to cup his jaw, my thumbs brushing the rough stubble on his cheeks. "Hold the line," I whisper.
A dark, dangerous smirk ghosts across his lips. It’s the first time I’ve seen anything close to a smile on his face. It changes him. The lethal Prospect transforms into something even more terrifying: a man who’s finally found his reason to burn the world down.
He leans in, his mouth crashing down on mine. The kiss is deep, punishing, and possessive. He tastes like my own arousal and sharp, violent intent. He grinds his hips aggressively against my pelvis, driving his cock deeper into the pool of his own seed inside my womb.
The uncapping tank rattles against the floorboards again. The single lightbulb swings on its string, throwing our intertwined shadows against the stacks of empty wooden supers.
The mountain downdraft screams against the windowpane, bringing the cold reality of the impending war to the glass. But inside my sanctuary, surrounded by the smell of smoke and honey, the war is already won.
He doesn't stop. He sets a new rhythm, slower this time, but infinitely deeper. Each thrust stretches me perfectly, grinding against my swollen clit, keeping me suspended in a state of agonizing pleasure.
I surrender to the weight of his body and the beautiful finality of his claim. I wrap my legs tighter around his waist, locking him inside me. The solitary, exhausted beekeeper died the second he breached my walls.
I belong to him now. And heaven help the Crimson Hollow Syndicate when they realize what he’s willing to do to protect his hive.