“I love you.”
“I love you too.”
And then I was standing, without him touching me, and he was on one knee before me, holding a ring in a ring box up, towards me. The room was suddenly silent again, and Frost said, “I need you to be more than just my property, kitty cat. I need you to be my wife, too.”
My first instinct was to negotiate with him. Where would we live? How were we going to figure out who paid for what? He’d been way too heavy-handed about buying groceries and paying my electric bill before I had a chance to.
But we had an audience, and I knew in my heart that we’d figure all that out. I didn’t have to hold my answer back as leverage to get what I wanted. Gil had taught me not to let a lover gain an advantage over me, but Frost had shown me through patience and love that I could trust him to put our relationship first, and not to use power and leverage to make things go his way.
I put my left hand down and told him, “Yes. Yes! Now put the ring on me, so the first time I see it close up is when it’s on my finger.”
He slid it onto my finger, and I lifted it towards my face to get my first good look at it. The lighting was horrible, but that was okay. The ring looked silver, but it didn’t burn. I was fairly certain it wasn’t stainless. My silver earrings and necklace were actually stainless steel, and the belt was made of cheaper metals, probably. As with most shapeshifters, silver burned me, so this wasn’t made of silver.
And then I saw and recognized the stone. Jadeite, in the exact same shade as my human eyes. He’d given me the third most expensive gemstone in the world, and that meant the metal was probably platinum.
I lifted my gaze to his. The blue was both deeper and brighter than I’d ever seen them before. Electric blue.
“I can’t believe you did this,” I told him.
He stood and moved in close, looking down, his forehead to mine, so we were both looking at the ring on my finger. “What? Showed you how important you are? How much you mean to me?”
I looked back down to my ring, and the stage lights over me went white, so I could see it better, and I realized the small diamonds around it were blue diamonds the color of Frost’s eyes. He’d put both our eyes into one ring. That took the value from ten grand to probably in the neighborhood of a hundred thousand dollars. The blue diamonds were set down into the platinum though, so I wouldn’t have to worry too much about knocking them loose. Based on the color, there wasn’t a doubt in my mind that he’d chose the raw stones and had someone mount them.
And then I noticed the prongs holding the jadeite stone in. They were in the shape of a cat’s claw. Most people wouldn’t see it, but I had right off the bat.
And then, where the gems met the band, the platinum had little indentions that gave the idea of a feather.
The muscles around my heart constricted and I suddenly had more emotions than I could handle. I’m certain it wasn’t this detail alone that made me start crying. It was a combination of all of it — the prop vest proclaiming me as PROPERTY OF FROST, and then the ring that he hadn’t merely walked into a store and bought, but had worked with a jeweler to design something that represented who we are. Green and blue, cat and owl. He’d included something from our human sides and animal sides.
I looked up and met his gaze. “Green and blue. Feather and claw. You and me. Forever. Yes, Frost. Yes. I say yes to us, in whatever form that means.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Frost
The whole thing took less than five minutes, so we still had time to find our way off the stage, let everyone see her ring and vest, and then be standing beside the brothers I’m closest to when we counted down to the new year.
And we entered the new year engaged. I was making Cheyenne mine in every way I knew — by biker tradition, by human tradition as well as law, and within our kinky sex life.
But that meant I belonged to her, too. And so, after I gave her a kiss to remember as we rang in the new year, I told her, “This is more than you belonging to me. It’s me agreeing to be yours. I’ll be your old man, your husband, your Dom, your lover, your owl, and the man you’ll wake up beside for the rest of your life.”
“And I’ll be your kitty cat, your submissive, your wife, your ol’lady, and the pussy you’ll wake up beside for the rest of your life.”
I kissed her again, held her, and wondered just how I’d managed to get so fucking lucky.
She pulled me down, put her mouth to my ear, and whispered, “It’s next year. I get orgasms again.”
I’d intended to make her wait a few hours, but I wanted to make her happy, so I threw her over my shoulder and made my way to the back of the room. I’d give her a few orgasms and then bring her back to the party. She more than deserved them.
My brothers made room for me to walk through, and everyone in the room was clapping and cheering for us when we went through the doors. She beat on my ass with her hands and tried to get me to put her down, but I kept her where she was down the flight of steps, through the hallway, and into my room. I bounced her onto the bed so she landed on her back, and went to work on her boots.
Sex scenes in the movies go from dressed to undressed — you never see them having to deal with boots that take two minutes to get off.
“Unzip your jeans and get your fingers around your clit, kitty cat. Watch my fingers unlace your boots, and know they’ll be inside you in a few minutes.”
Her eyes went a deeper green, her pulse sped, and her lips plumped up a tiny bit.
I removed her boots, jeans, and tiny little thong, but I left her vest and shirt on. I wanted to fuck her from behind while she wore the vest. My cock throbbed in my pants just thinking about it.
She’d gone a week without an orgasm. Eventually, she was going to go a month, then three months. Beyond that depended on her sanity. I’d jacked off so many times to the idea of making her go a full year without an orgasm, but I wasn’t certain we should do it. If she thrived on orgasm denial, it would work, but she’d been so stressed the past two days, I wasn’t certain we’d ever get a full month, let alone three months, and that was okay. This was about finding happiness in our kink, and not about bragging rights.
My tongue licked to the right of her clit, and she sucked air in. I licked to the left of her clit, and she blew it out with a deep moan.
“Please, Frost.”
“You know it’s coming. Let me build it up and make it good.”
I used teeth, tongue, and fingers to drive her higher and closer to orgasm than ever before, and then I flipped her over, ordered her to knees and shoulders, dropped my jeans enough to get my dick out, and drove into her cunt, hard and fast. No time to get used to me. I pounded her hard for two minutes, my focus on the vest.
PROPERTY OF FROST
Mine. My Cheyenne. My pussy cat. My pussy. Mine.
I put one hand between her shoulder blades and the other on her hip, so I could hold her in place and force her to keep her ass in the air.
“Come for me, kitty cat.”
A week of frustration came out, all at once. It was a release of pent-up sexual energy, but there was so much more. It felt as if she released fear and anxiety as well, and I’m not sure I can put a label on the rest of it, but this was so much more than the physical release I felt while she jerked and spasmed on the inside and outside, full of bliss and ecstasy long denied. She embraced the good and released the bad, and when it was over, she was close to passing out.
I pulled out, rolled her over, and pressed back inside her while watching those oh-so-green eyes. The color of life. Of living things.
I moved slow now. In and out. Long, easy strokes, and I bent my legs so I was at the right angle to brush up against the spot inside her I knew would bring her again.
“Fuck, Frost.”
“Yes, that’s what we’re doing.”
She shook her head. “No, this isn’t fucking. It’s not even having sex. I’m not even sure the term making love can do this justice.”
I touched over her heart, and then over mine. It was as if they were connected. I’d felt it before when our chests touched, as if our hearts were one, those energy pathways joined.
“I feel it too,” she said. “Our hearts are connected, even this far apart.”
I went a little faster, and she closed her eyes, her face the very picture of bliss. The sadist in me wanted to get her close and deny her, but I pushed him to the side. Tonight, she’d get more orgasms than she thought she could possibly have.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Cheyenne
He gave me countless orgasms before he finally let himself come, and then made me get dressed again so we could go back to the party.
I’d have been happy to fall asleep in his bed, but he put me back into the same outfit, but high heels this time instead of the boots, threw me over his shoulder again, and took me back to the main room of the clubhouse.
The heels didn’t really matter, because he sat on one of the sofas with me in his lap for the next couple of hours while he talked and cut up with his brothers. I’m pretty sure I fell asleep around three in the morning, and I remember him carrying me to bed — in his arms this time, and not over his shoulder.
I awoke naked the next morning, looking at the floggers and paddles on the wall. He had more than this, and most of that was at my house now, but what he had here was impressive.
The only light in the room was the digital clock. Eleven twelve. Kinda cool, as far as times go.
I felt Frost awaken beside me, and I wasn’t surprised. He sleeps light, and he always knows when I wake up, even if I don’t move a muscle.
“It’s eleven twelve.”
He rubbed my arm. “Is that supposed to mean something? We don’t have to be anywhere by a special time today.”
“No, just seemed cool.”
“We’re going to do a walkthrough of my house today. Last chance to decide what we want and don’t want. Instead of selling it, I’m going to lease bedrooms to new members, kind of like dorm living for them until they can buy one of the houses the club now owns.” Right. The houses that had belonged to members who were killed in the fighting.
“We’ve already moved your home office, and brought your armoire over, and the locking chest.” We’d also incorporated some of his cookware in with mine, and we’d swapped my kitchen table out for his, since his was much nicer and actually fit my kitchen better than the one I’d bought.
He rubbed my arm and kissed my shoulder. “I’d like us to spend the night at my house tonight. One last night in the master suite. I’ll keep one of the basement rooms as ours, so we have a place to stay if we want to after a party on the grounds, or if we need to for safety, or...” He kissed my shoulder again. “Or for other reasons.”
It felt as if he had something in mind when he said other reasons, but I knew him well enough to know that if he meant to tell me those reasons, he’d have done so.
He kissed a line from my shoulder to my neck, and I felt it all over my body. Not quite goosebumps, but not far from it.
“I claimed you in public last night. Tonight, I claim you in private.”
“What does that mean?”
“Pleasure and pain. Sex. Control. I need to mark you in ways I haven’t before. Do you understand?” His lips were millimeters from my neck, so the warm air brushed it, heated by his body.
I closed my eyes and snuggled backwards, into him even more, which wasn’t really possible since I couldn’t physically get inside him. “I’m yours, Frost. Yours. I will proudly wear your marks as long as you want me to.”
“Even if I want a permanent one?”
There aren’t many ways to permanently mark a shapeshifter. A brand made with heated silver would do it. Cutting a body part off with a silver knife would usually do it, but not always, but that meant the loss of a body part, and I didn’t think he’d want to go there.
I’d heard it was possible to repeatedly make the same cut with a silver knife, every day for months, in order to make a scar stick. Years of changes would fade it, but if you kept at it with the knife, you could keep it fresh. Would he want a one-time mark, or something he had to keep up? I could see him enjoying the upkeep, but he talked as if he wanted it to be permanent.
“You want to brand me?” I asked.
“I don’t know. Maybe. Not this year. Maybe not ever. I think I wanted your reaction, more than the actual brand, and I got it.”
“What did you get?”
“It wasn’t an automatic no. You were open to talking about it. I think that’s enough.”
“If it isn’t, we’ll talk about it.”
“Just so we’re clear, I want to hurt you tonight. Mark you and hurt you. You’ve seen a little of my inner sadist, but he’s just played with you. Tonight, he wants you to meet him.”
I knew he’d smell the fear and arousal his words generated, and that was okay. No secrets.
“I’ve never asked for a safeword, and I won’t now, either. If there’s a part of you I still need to meet, then that should happen. I’m glad you trust me enough to show me all of you.”
He kissed my forehead. “And I’m glad you trust me enough to walk into the future with me.”
Frost
We found more items to take to her house on our last walkthrough than I expected. A floor lamp, various knick-knacks, a few more kitchen items. She also decided to change out the décor in one of my bathrooms for the décor in the downstairs ‘company bathroom’ in her house.
It seemed important to Cheyenne that our house feel like both of us. I tried to explain that an interior decorator had designed all but three rooms of my house, but she said it didn’t matter because the decorator had done a good job of capturing my energy.
Of course, this also meant that we ended up carrying more of the pieces of my man cave to her house. It meant her den would have a whole lot of my man cave, but that was fine. My home office was already moved, and the parts of my kitchen I most wanted to take, so it was all good.
We put everything we were taking with us in the garage, and then I took her to my sub-basement, sat in a folding chair beside the hidden door, and ordered her to strip and kneel. The floor was cold concrete, the lights were harsh, and as far as she knew, this was just a hallway to my ammo safe, which was now empty because my weapons and ammo were now in a giant safe in her basement.
But she only gave a slight pause before she stripped and knelt on the cold concrete.
She focused on my feet, and I said, “Eye contact for this.”
My heart skipped a beat when those beautiful green eyes met mine. Would I ever get used to the feeling? I hoped to hell not.
“I’m going to show you a club secret. Several, actually. If you tell the secret, it will be the same as me telling it. My brothers will see me as the traitor. They deal with me, I deal with you. Those are the rules. The traditions. If you do something that hurts the club badly enough though, then they deal with both of us and I can’t stop that. Do you understand?”
“Yes. It’s a level beyond trust.”
“When Banshee was taken for her initiation weekend, what color were the walls?”
“Black.”
Right. “What color was the trim?”
“Oh. The line around the wall? It was purple. The only color in the room. Why are you asking?”
“Give me about five minutes, and you’ll see.”
We have three dungeon rooms that our pro-subs and pro-Doms use. The walls are all black, but they are trimmed in different colors — purple, red, and blue. We usually use the purple room for initiations since it’s the biggest, but sometimes it’s been promised to a client, and we have to use another. None of my brothers had remembered for sure, so I’d needed to ask.
I walked to the hidden door, pressed near the top of the ceiling, pushed, and the entire portion of the wall moved. My door is mechanical but not motorized. It’s balanced, but it still takes superhuman strength to move it, which. I consider
a security feature. I slid it to the side, turned, and helped her stand.
“The lights are motion activated. They’ll turn on as we walk, and then turn off behind us.”
We were about two hundred yards from the dungeon rooms, and we walked the underground hallway with only the sounds of my boots on concrete, her bare feet, and our heartbeats. Mine was calm, and hers sped a few times, but mostly stayed in sync with mine. I was calm, so she decided to be calm.
When we finally stood in front of three doors — red, purple, and blue — she spoke.
“I take it this is the dungeon I was brought to for my initiation weekend?”
“Banshee was taken to the purple room. Cheyenne is going into the blue room.”
“Why not the red room?”
“It’s occupied.”
“Oh.”
I turned her around. “See the golf cart? That’s how customers are brought down from the spa. We have pro-subs and pro-Doms who use these rooms for paying customers. One of these rooms is reserved for later, we worked it so they use whichever one we don’t. I needed to be certain I took you to a different room than Banshee was taken.”
“You know I’m Banshee.”
“Not anymore. Not entirely. That woman was in transition, separating from an unhealthy relationship. Not horrible, but not healthy. It didn’t help you thrive.”
She turned and looked up at me. “You’re right. I do feel as if I’m thriving now. My art, my work, my relationship with the kids, and most of all, the give and take of our relationship.”
Cheyenne walked to the blue door and turned to me. “I’m ready, Frost. Whatever you need to do to claim me, I embrace it. Whatever parts of you I haven’t met yet, it’s time I did. The blue isn’t the same color as your eyes, but that’s okay. It’s still fitting that this happens in the blue room.”
I hadn’t been certain how I’d start, but the blue room has a breast torture device that the other rooms lack, and it seemed as if fate had decided it for me.
Frost (Rolling Thunder MC Birmingham Book 3) Page 18