Chapter 31
As soon as their own capsule door slid shut behind them, Hugh lunged for Gwen and hauled her onto the bed and into his arms. All polite deference and formality gone in an instant, he buried his face in her neck and plastered her against his overheated body with desperate force.
“Shit, Gwen, I was so fucking terrified.” His muffled voice was as frantic as his hold. “I didn’t know where you were. Didn’t know if you were in pain or already”—his voice broke—“already gone, and…please, I just need to hold you for a while. I’m so sorry. Give me just a—”
“Shhh.” Gladly, she wrapped her arms and legs around him, her grip just as tight. Just as desperate. “It’s okay, Hugh. I’m here, I’m safe, and I’m with you.”
“Honey…” His gentle tug on her greasy, rumpled hair eased her head back, and his mouth captured hers. He drank from her in frantic, fervent kisses, murmuring his gratitude, his need, between each one. “Let me…”
His hands slid beneath her pajamas, roaming feverishly along her back, her ass, her flanks, and he shuddered with relief at the skin-to-skin contact. At the undeniable proof that she was well and whole and there, in his arms and under his fingertips.
Well, if that was where this reunion was headed, she had zero objections. Fumbling for the hem of her pajama top, she ripped it over her head and flung it…somewhere. The coat hook on the wall snagged her pajama pants, which hung crookedly for a moment before dropping to the floor.
He pushed her gently onto her back and reclaimed her lips with a hard, open-mouthed kiss, his split tongue swirling around hers until she had to press her thighs together to ease her growing ache.
Dizzy with need, she fumbled for the button of his tented jeans, eager to feel his superheated length against her palm.
To bring him pleasure after all the fear and pain of their week apart.
Before she could finish unzipping him, though, his fingers slid between her legs.
Jeans entirely forgotten, she moaned into his mouth and eagerly spread her knees wide on the narrow bed, resting a foot on the cool floor.
He straightened to kneel between her thighs, and she was already slick for him, already ready, when his thumb smoothed between her folds, separating her.
He touched her with the knowing confidence of a male who hadn’t forgotten her preferences. One long finger glided inside her, and heat lapped around her clit, teasing from all sides. She clutched the sheets by her hips, her body bowed in pleasure.
His hot palm over her mouth stifled her needy whimpers while he worked her gently but ruthlessly toward orgasm. So quickly—too quickly—pressure built between her legs, and she was trying so hard to hold on, but—
Then he was rolling her onto her side, facing the room, while his free hand unzipped his jeans and shoved them and his boxer briefs down far enough.
He slipped between the wall and her body and angled her top leg slightly forward.
As another wave of heat washed back and forth over her clit, the faintly pointed head of his cock nudged her slick entrance and stretched her open.
His palm covered her mouth again, just in time to silence her gasp as he penetrated her in one firm, deliberate push. The slow thrust emphasized the rub of those subtle corkscrew ridges and just how deeply he could plant himself, and she pushed her ass backward, demanding more.
Even so, he halted for a moment once he’d rooted himself fully inside her, gauging her response.
In wordless answer, she raised her arms over her head, blindly reached for his horns, and gripped them at the base.
He bit back a rough growl and ground into her until she saw sparks behind her closed eyelids.
And when he began making love to her again, all signs of hesitancy had utterly vanished.
Those ridges on his dick stroked over every sensitive spot within her as he pulled almost all the way out, and his next thrust jolted her forward on the bed with a slap of skin against skin.
She groaned into his hand at the impact.
Bit the fleshy rise of his palm, knowing her teeth couldn’t wound him.
A fresh rush of heat spilled back and forth over her clit as he withdrew once more. Then he shoved impossibly deep inside her again with another firm smack of his half-clad hips against her ass, and the pleasure was more than she could take.
Her orgasm crashed over her, dragged her under like an angry ocean’s wave, and her mouth dropped open on a breathless cry.
Through every pulse of her body, every muffled moan, he continued taking her.
When the rapid bucking of his hips jostled her toward the edge of the bed, he simply wrapped his free arm around her to hold her in place for his fucking.
And when she came again only a minute later, he bit back another rough growl, lifted himself over her slightly, and kept going.
When she was done climaxing the second time, she kept herself squeezed tight around him, even though the exhausted buzz of lingering pleasure had her sagging against the mattress.
With a rough snarl, he dragged her against him and ground into her again as the throb of his erection made itself unmistakable.
It strengthened, then strengthened again, intensifying until her body twitched around his cock in helpless response to each pulsation.
One hand still over her mouth, he slid the other over her belly and down to where they were joined, teasing her stretched opening and thumbing her sensitive, slick clit in that same demanding rhythm.
She squirmed against him. Panted against his palm and bit and made small choked sounds as the pressure built within her yet again.
Her nails scored the surface of his horns as she clutched them for purchase and rocked helplessly against his hand, around his dick, in mindless, growing bliss.
The tiny room had turned sweltering and smoky, her every breath labored.
At long last, he froze and flexed. Bit off an agonized sound and arched, trembling, still buried to the hilt.
The body-racking vibration of his cock kicked into a merciless, pounding beat, and with the first spurt of heat deep within her, another orgasm clamped her in its teeth and shook her like a doll.
His thumb pressed against her clit with each spasm of release, each hot rush inside her, demanding her response. Dragging ecstasy from her even as he claimed his own. She gave him everything he wanted, sobbing as her body pulsed around his.
Her orgasm didn’t fade until his did the same, a long while later. And when he finally collapsed onto the mattress at her back, his head hit the wall with an audible thud.
“You…” She barely had the energy to speak. “You okay?”
“Never better,” he rasped out, then actually laughed out loud.
—
After separate trips to the bathroom under Matilda’s amused gaze, they climbed back into bed.
This time, his lips sipped rather than devoured.
His hands stroked instead of clutched. And after several more minutes of mutual comfort and reassurance, he rolled onto his back and gently tugged her atop him.
“Tell me what happened. Please.” He buried his fingers in her half-unraveled braid and cupped her skull protectively. “Don’t spare me any ugliness involving my mother or Josiah.”
So she told him everything, hiding her face against his shoulder for the difficult parts. His skin flared with near-painful heat when Gwen told him about her terrifying prophetic sessions with Josiah, and every time she mentioned Marlee, he went very still.
When she finished her tale, he lay silent for a minute.
“I’m so sorry, Hugh.” Gwen didn’t need to be an empath to sense his pain. Carding her fingers through his thick, soft hair, she kept her voice gentle. “About your mother, and about Josiah too.”
“No.” It was a sharp, immediate denial. “Don’t apologize for the actions of my supposed loved ones and allies. Especially when their selfishness and cruelty have not only endangered the entire damn planet but also caused you, personally, a great deal of fear and harm.”
He raised his head. Met her gaze in the capsule’s soft white light.
“Gwen, honey, I’m sorrier than I can possibly express for what Josiah and my mother have done to you.” His sharp jaw worked. “I have no idea how I’ll ever make it right or earn your forgiveness. I just hope to the gods and goddesses that you’ll let me try.”
“Hey.” Determined to puncture his solemnity and remorse, she booped him on the nose. “I don’t want your apology either. You didn’t hurt me, Hugh.”
He lifted a hand from her rump. Rubbed at his nose. “Did you just—”
“Yes, I booped you,” she confirmed. “Now stop apologizing and tell me everything that’s happened on your end in the past week.”
He shook his head at her but smiled a little as he complied.
His voice freighted with emotion, he described the frantic, terrified search he and Max had conducted for Gwen upon discovering her absence and their subsequent, entirely futile investigations.
Even Thora hadn’t been able to unearth the exact location of the captives, and no one else seemed to know anything at all.
Hugh had just about run out of ideas and hope when an elderly werewolf named Dottie appeared at his SERC office and claimed to have information he needed.
With no other good leads to follow, he’d agreed to a meeting.
“I immediately believed her.” He gave a humorless laugh.
“In large part because I was growing desperate, but also because what she said made sense to me. As a SERC councilor, Josiah could potentially gain access to powerful oracles’ confidential addresses.
Also, I’d never entirely understood what prompted our firm’s clients to return five years ago.
My mother’s involvement in a fae bargain explained that shift in fortunes very neatly. ”