Chapter 22
SADIE
Ipressed my face into Verne’s neck and let his scent choke out my hurt over Lainsz’s rejection.
“Sadie,” Leander said shakily, hands feathering over my hips. “Am I dead?”
A laugh dispelled the worst of my hurt and I sat up, pleased to see strands of blue-dipped brown hair stuck to his face, his cheeks flushed, eyes closed. When they blinked open to look at me, they were hazy. Completely pleasure-drunk.
I was powerless to stop my fingers brushing through his messy hair.
“So pretty,” I murmured, the words guileless and unintentional.
Leander’s expression softened, eyes clearing to focus on me.
They’d been dark green earlier, but now I could see scattered stars within them, shards of brighter colour.
“How come our alpha gets all the kisses?” he asked, petulant. It shouldn’t have been cute. It was fucking adorable.
I ran my fingers through his hair, from his scalp to the ends, soothing tangles as I went. “You want a kiss?”
“So badly, my star,” he groaned.
I leaned closer, hovering over him without my lips touching, unsure where the words came from. “Say please. And make it convincing.”
Both Leander and Verne groaned.
“Deadly star,” Leander moaned, sounding as carnal as when he reached orgasm. “Please take mercy on me. I’ll die without a kiss. I’ll wither into a pile of bones and ashes if you don’t kiss me.”
The word ashes nearly threw me out of this and sent me back to the arena with Suri dead in the ash at my feet. But Leander sounded so fucking hot when he pleaded like this, and the way he was looking at me—supplicant, needy—kept me grounded.
“That sounds awfully dramatic,” I said in a tone I wasn’t familiar with. Had becoming a wolf made me a domme?
“I’m serious,” Leander breathed, his hands skimming up my sides, grazing my arms in a way that made me shudder. “Please, Sadie.”
Who was I to deny him when he begged so prettily?
I meant to brush my lips to his, but the second we touched, Leander groaned and kissed me like a feral beast. Hot, messy, unapologetic; he kissed with all the desperation of Verne but none of the control.
By the time we parted, my inner muscles were fluttering around his softening cock, dragging whimpers from his throat.
“Come here, my mate,” Verne murmured, so soft I knew human ears wouldn’t hear him. It was easier to accept my new body—new species?—like this, when my mind was cushioned in the cotton wool of arousal.
I didn’t fight as I was passed into Verne’s arms, our alpha doing most of the work because Leander was still languorous and hazy-eyed.1 I should have been disgusted by the cum that dripped from me, but if anything it made my wolf purr, and I found it was a huge turn-on.
Verne pulled me into him, my legs around his waist, his cock jutting against my ass. “I’m dripping on you,” I pointed out.
“I know.” His lips feathered over my cheek as he carefully stood and headed for the stairs. “I love it.”
“It’s not just mine. It’s Leander’s cum, too,” I pointed out, wondering when the embarrassment would hit.
“I know.” Verne paused halfway up the stairs to push me against the wall, the stone cold against my heated skin and so good. Verne leaned so close his lips touched mine as he said, “I love it.”
My eyes widened, a stutter in my heartbeat. My slow-burning arousal ignited into a full blaze. I grabbed the back of his head and kissed him hard. “I want you here.”
“In the bed,” he argued, squeezing my thighs where he gripped them, keeping me aloft.
I wasn’t scared of being dropped, wasn’t scared to fall even though I fell to my death mere hours ago.
There was a level of trust here that I didn’t understand, couldn’t explain, and it wasn’t just my wolf.
Something in Verne’s countenance, in his eyes, made me trust him.
“In my bed. I want your scent to soak my bed so thoroughly, I smell you for the rest of my life.”
I blinked. “Scents are…important?” He wasn’t just talking about smelling me on him, or me dripping all over his sheets.
“Your scent is the most important in the world,” he confirmed, and the reverence in his voice did something to my insides.
Made my stomach squirm, my heart melt. He didn’t seem the sort of man to blurt out things freely like Leander; every word was considered with care.
“Followed only by my pack mates’ scents.
Scents to a wolf are… a fingerprint. We smell so much more vividly than a human nose, so we can recognise a person half a mile away.
I smelled you before we found you earlier tonight, and I knew from one second that you were female, human, young, and hurt. So badly hurt.”
His eyes turned so dark it shocked me.
“It’s not just the information a scent tells us,” he sighed, pulling himself out of that darkness with a blink, and carrying me the rest of the way upstairs.
Leander followed, lazy and slow. “As my mate…” His voice thickened; he cleared his throat.
“I would wear your scent mark at my throat, on my cheek, anywhere you want to mark me, honestly. It would be my honour.”
“And a scent mark would…” I lifted my head, peering at the hallway, the tartan wallpaper and muted soft furnishings.
Tasteful paintings were spaced along the walls, reflecting the forest, the moon.
Like downstairs, it smelled intensely of coffee, marshmallows, and logs burning on an open fire.
I sucked it in and held it in my lungs for a long second.
This place would make a killing on Air BnB.
“It would tell everyone that I’m yours. That I’m mated, and happily so.
It’s—” He grunted in frustration, bringing a smile to my face.
“It’s impossible to explain, but you’ll know it when you feel it.
I want your scent in my lungs constantly, as vital as air.
It’s both comforting and arousing, and it feels like I’ve been searching all my life for your marzipan. ”
“That’s how I smell?” I laughed, letting him carry me over the threshold into a room as green as the forest and as opulent as any country manor.
A golden chandelier hung above our heads, the bedframe and candelabra on the bedside table a matching gold.
Everything else was a rich emerald that was both colourful and calming. “Like a cherry bakewell tart?”
“Exactly,” he agreed, tossing me onto the bed. I bounced on the plaid duvet, groaning at the feel of brushed cotton on my skin. “You smell like a tart. Like the finest desert.”
“You know, tart means whore where I come from,” I said with a smirk.
Verne’s expression dropped, horror entering his eyes, and I felt instantly bad.
“Just teasing,” I assured him. “I know you don’t think that about me.”
“I would never,” he vowed vehemently.
“Verne.” I reached for him, pulled him down so all of him pressed against all of me, the comfort of it damn near ridiculous.
“I know. I only met you hours ago, and I know that. Besides, I presume you’re attached to this dick.
” I wrapped my hand around the bulging shaft. “You’d hate to lose it surely?”
“You’d have my cock for insulting you in this way?” Verne’s attention sharpened, as honed as a razor as his stare touched every part of me he could see before returning to my face. “As you should, my mate.”
I squeezed his cock as I brought the tip to my entrance, aware of how much thicker and longer he was than Leander. Aware, too, of how Leander strode into the room like a lazy cat and sprawled across the green chair in the corner, eyes fixed on us.
“You might have to go slowly,” I told Verne, biting my lip.
“I’ll go slow,” he promised, pressing the first inch of himself into me. My stomach hollowed. Fuck. “I’ll go so slow you lose your mind and beg me for relief.”
“Ah.” I stared up at him, all my focus torn between the stretch of him inside me and that wicked expression on his face. “Maybe not that slow.”
His kiss was fast and rough. “Careful what you wish for, alianazara.”
The words sent a shiver down my spine, and when he thrust, stretching me around his cock, searing hot bliss followed it down my spine as I came again.