by N. J. Lysk
It was his hand on my jaw, lifting my face to his for a soft barely-there brush of lips that made me open them again. “We don’t have to do that,” he told me. “You know we don’t have to do anything, right?” he added a little anxiously.
“Yeah,” I said quickly. “Yeah,” I repeated and put my hand over his own. “I...” My request became an action then as I tugged his arm around me and got my hand on his cheek to direct his mouth to mine. I licked at the seal of his lips and he gave way, easily, sucking on my tongue until I knew I was welcome, then giving me the same until we were drinking from each other’s mouths, needing to know and claim each and every crevice.
I couldn’t say if he pulled me closer or I did it myself, just that my nipples against his tunic made me squirm, pain and pleasure at once as I got the stimulation I needed but it was too rough. Zybyn moaned, arching into me, his knee slipping instinctively between my thighs, luxuriously bare against my cock and balls. My hips rolled into him, whimpers coming off me like air as I rubbed myself against him.
“Fuck, Michuá,” he said right into my ear. I’d lost track of the kiss, but I arched my neck for him to suck and scrape his teeth against and his hand between us, inevitably bumping into my stomach, shocked me enough to make me buckle.
Zybyn froze. “I was gonna—”
“Shhh...” I said harshly, I was shaking against him, overwhelmed, needy and hard as nails, so wet I knew I’d be making a mess of the furs. I breathed him in, his scent, his racing pulse, his careful stillness. It was nothing like the night of my first heat.
Much less like the second or any of the other times I had been used.
But there was one thing I hadn’t been able to forget, to stop wanting, and that was to have him inside me again, strong and hot, body melding into mine like a long-lost part of myself.
I tugged at his clothes, and he startled. “Oh, yeah...”
He sat up and pulled it over his head, leaving himself as bare as I was. Impossible to look away from. Strong and slim, skin like fertile soil, except for his cock, which jutted out darker with blood. It wasn’t big like an alpha’s, just a normal cock. I reached out slowly enough even a human would have had enough time to stop me, but Zybyn didn’t move from where he knelt in front of me, just let me take hold of the silky heat of him and grunted when I thumbed the head and spread his precome over the rest of him.
He let me lie him down on his back, going easily and unselfconsciously. For a moment, I remembered what had happened here in this cave, but I was on top of him and he was just arching into my strokes, eyes fluttering closed as he became overwhelmed and then opening again to seek out mine. His hands were by his sides, at least until I pushed myself and straddled his right knee, hissing as my arse cheeks parted, pressing his hot skin against my sack and opening up my wet hole to the chilly air in the cave.
“Fuck,” my brother said again under me, his hands were on my hips and he was arching into me. “Michuá, what... what do you want?”
“You,” I told him, almost angrily. It was the stupidest question in existence, so obvious that voicing it was almost an insult; but Zybyn’s face was openly awed as he watched me. I gulped, forcing myself to stop rubbing myself against him. “I want to have you inside me.” I’d lost the bravery to look him in the eye halfway through.
His strong body trembled under mine as if overcome and I tightened my grip on his shoulders, stealing a glance. His eyes were squeezed shut and his cock head was white with precome once again. I didn’t need to ask if he wanted it too.
“When you... when you helped me, I couldn’t understand how it could be better with an alpha,” I admitted, keeping my eyes on his body because I couldn’t bear to meet his eyes. “I mean, I just— You were so... you took care of me, and you gave me what I needed, and you... you held me.”
“Shh...” Zybyn said, his fingers tangling with mine over his chest. “Of course I held you, I’m never letting you go.”
“Me too, not if we have a choice.... Do we have a choice?”
“I don’t know,” my twin admitted. “But I want to. I want to try with you. I want to try to give you what you need.” His eyes flickered up my body. He lifted his other hand and reached for my dick, holding it tenderly before squeezing and rubbing up and down, making me yelp as sensation zinged through me.
“Zybyn!” I half moaned; half complained. And his grip tightened until I sighed, grinding down onto his thigh, getting my slick all over his skin.
His knee jerked up, giving me the pressure I needed for just a moment before it went down again. He pulled on my erection as if to make up for it. “Fucking hell, Michuá! You’re—”
“Give it to me,” I cut in. “I’m—”
“Okay, okay, can you... lift yourself?”
I blinked my eyes opened, dazed. “What?”
“I... I have seen people do it, you can be on top of me.”
The idea seemed wildly strange, even though I had also seen people fuck that way. It was also absolutely perfect because while I wanted it, I wasn’t stupid enough not to realise... Well, the past never left us, not completely.
When I got on my knees, he let go of my cock and put both hands on my hips to help me keep my balance. I hesitated, then shook myself out of it, as amused as I was scared, then reached behind myself and took my brother’s cock to guide it right where I needed it to the wetness of my body.
He bit back a whimper. He was hard and soft at once, his skin slick with my desire and his, the heat of him craved and too much. But it was the way his thighs trembled under me, the way his nails dug into my waist as I lowered myself that truly made it impossible to hold back for long even as I opened myself up for him too fast. My body, grown complacent in the days since, protested the roughness of the sudden stretch.
Under me, Zybyn shook like he was coming apart, and didn’t move an inch.
I put my hand on his shoulder and pushed back his sweaty hair with the other, panting a little. “Hey.”
His eyes were moon dark, but he gave me a nod of reassurance anyway, fighting his body for my sake like it was nothing, as if the instincts that had led us down these terrifying path now ending into this glorious togetherness were nothing but an inconvenience in the face of his love. Of our love. I squeezed around him as I pulled back up, and he threw his head back hard enough that I heard the thump through the thick furs.
I swore, curling forward and hurriedly putting my left hand behind his neck to keep him from doing it again. It made his cock inside me change angles, turning the slowly rising pleasure into a sharp spike that had me digging my knees into his sides and shoving back. And then I was kissing him again, drinking from his mouth the joy I was giving, and receiving it back. The heat of him lighting me up from the inside each time I pushed myself down.
I slapped his side and demanded, “Help me.”
He surged under me like a boat torn away from the shore by the tide, the movement of his hips taking over my centre of gravity and forcing me to grab at his arms, tightening my legs around him as he let his own need surface to respond to my own. I pushed right back, knowing he could take it. All I wanted was more of him. All I needed was more of him. And, impossibly, he seemed to know it, he seemed to share it, and he gave it to me, taking as he provided, holding as he was held, our bodies striking a perfect balance, reforging a bond of pleasure that couldn’t be denied. But this was not an equilibrium that could last, bodies were not strong enough to sustain such ecstasy for long; he sheathed himself inside me, true and mine, and I lost it, my cock throbbing in his fist, my arse clenching as I screamed and painted him with my seed.
When my arms gave out on me, trembling too hard to hold me, Zybyn took the burden of my heaving body, drawing me close and guiding me down by his side, legs still locked so he didn’t slip out of me. My hole twitched, sensitive, but I didn’t want him gone yet. I tugged at his arm, shifting my hips to indicate he should complete the roll. He went where I asked, pressing close and whimpering as he
moved inside me again. My cock complained at the indirect stimulation, but my arse was intent on sucking him in, on... “Come inside me.” The words were past my lips already, gone and in the open between us.
Zybyn’s lips were parted in shock above me and I felt my face burn, but the moment I tensed, he was on me, taking hold of my face and kissing me deeply, hips thrusting again already, entering me faster now that he had more leverage. It was... too much, but it was also not enough. Maybe words weren’t quite enough, but those words were nothing but the truth. I wanted him to mark me this way, to leave something in me, to... to give me what I should have had from a mate.
And he could deny me nothing.
Chapter 8
Being a puma was as natural to me as being a man, but I’d never been a female puma before and it was not comfortable. It was also the way things were, quite simply, omega males started shifting into female animals the moment they were pregnant.
No one had bothered to tell me if I would go back to the body I’d been born with once the pregnancy was over, and now I had no one to ask.
We’d left the cave where Xander had kept us captive, not wanting the babies to be born in a place soaked with blood and trauma and knowing it’d be hard to travel once we had them. It also meant we were closer to civilization. Human civilization. But as dangerous as they could be, they were our safest option right now. To them, we’d just be two guys, they’d know we were brothers, but they wouldn’t be able to tell we were together with one sniff, and of course they wouldn’t question why the cubs were half tigers.
Any pack of shifters would have asked several awkward questions, and possibly tried to force us to mate, or... But that wasn’t going to happen, not if we stuck to our cave and soon to the cabin we were building deep in the forest but in walking distance of the small town by the riverside.
“Michuá?” My twin’s hand was gentle on my fur and I rubbed my head against him, asking to be petted. He snorted. “You’re such a house cat,” he teased me, but he was pressing close to my side, the hand that wasn’t on my head massaging my distended belly. They’d come soon, I knew because I couldn’t seem to shift back, but other than that, it was a waiting game.
I’LL SPARE YOU THE details of the birth, but let’s say it made me consider speaking to my mother again. The first cub was the hardest to push out, but even though the second came easier, I had to stop after the fourth, body shaking with exhaustion. There was just one more after that.
Zybyn cleaned them for me, shifting so he could lick them clean while I clung to consciousness by the tip of my claws. My eyes didn’t seem able to focus on the tiny bodies squirming against me, instinctively trying to latch onto my tits.
“Just rest, I’ve got them,” my brother told me, so I did, letting nature take its course, trusting him to steer mine.
THE CUBS WERE SMALL enough to fit in the palm of Zybyn’s hand, though mostly they crowded against me to feed, their little mouths insistent and demanding, jostling each other and competing even though I actually had an extra tit. Zybyn arranged them in place so they’d all fit but they often squirmed themselves into a tangled mess of limbs while my brother and I slept and woke up mewling.
“Thank the goddess they’re kittens,” my twin commented one day, and I growled at him. From what we knew, they’d transform into babies the moment I shifted into my human form myself, which left me stuck. “Sorry!” he said at once, and that night he came back from hunting with a fat rabbit, a lot more meat than the birds and monkeys we usually hunted normally provided.
They all had tiger stripes, though very faint against their yellow fur and disappearing in their tails and feet. Other than that, there wasn’t any sign of who had fathered them, not in the shape of their paws or faces... Maybe I just couldn’t see it, and my twin wasn’t going to bring it up.
It didn’t matter. They would be loved and honoured and their blood was nothing but an unfortunate accident from the past. Something they’d never know of because it was not their pain to bear—I could do that. With Zybyn.
With Zybyn, I thought I could do anything.
BEING BACK TO MY HUMAN form was almost as shocking to me as discovering their new shape was to our children. Oñi had started crying the moment he’d had lungs for it, loud and high-pitched and absolutely inconsolable until he set off Tia and Gio. I’d picked him up with trembling hands, knowing just enough about newborns to be acutely aware of how badly I could hurt him without meaning to. But he was able to hold his head up and once I brought him close to my body, he nuzzled at my chest until I gave in and let him suckle. I gasped at the intensity of it, but my baby calmed down at once like his human mouth made absolutely no difference to him as long as the milk came out.
I suppose he had his priorities straight.
Zybyn kept his calm, rocking the other four to sleep and placing them against my bare skin where they squirmed, probably curious about their new senses, but seemed to sense they were safe.
It wasn’t always that easy, but we didn’t do too badly, for a pair of teenagers with a whole litter and no support at all.
Epilogue
“They’re finally asleep,” my twin told me, collapsing next to me in our brand-new bed. I turned his way, curling around his warmth and nuzzling into his neck. He let out a little whimper as I sucked on his earlobe. “Michuá...”
“Too tired?”
“Mmm...” He tugged me closer but didn’t speak for a long time. “Would you like... I know I haven’t had a heat, but...”
My brain seemed to grind to a halt and then restart at double speed. “You want— Fuck, you want me to fuck you?” I had to make myself uncurl my fingers when I realised I was digging them into his back. I rubbed at the abused skin in apology, biting my tongue to keep all my other questions inside. We’d agreed I would help him when he went into heat, but all these months we’d done it the other way around.
Like he really was my alpha.
But he wasn’t, and he didn’t want to be. He’d told me himself. He nodded against my cheek, shaking a little.
“Shh...” I told him, rubbing his back. I wasn’t sure why he was so overwhelmed to ask me for what I’d gladly accepted from him. Maybe he was just nervous about the act itself—I could hardly blame him, sometimes I still couldn’t get my mind in the zone if I wasn’t on top of him. “I would love that. I... I would love to be that close to you.”
I heard him swallow and then exhale and slowly he moved back enough to meet my eyes. “You mean it,” he said, he had heard it in my voice. “You really...”
“What? You think I didn’t think about it before...” I shrugged, suddenly feeling like it was me on the spot, but he’d been brave and I could be too. “I really want to fuck you. I couldn’t... I always wondered, what if I hadn’t been a beta when you presented...”
“Oh,” Zybyn’s eyes were perfectly rounded. “That... I mean, that makes sense, it’s instincts and—”
“Zybyn!” I cut in, shaking his hip a little where I still held it. “Don’t be a total idiot, I wanted you. Do you still... do you still not believe me?” My voice grew thin. “That I love you?”
“No,” he said quickly. “I mean, I do, and I love you too, but... Michuá, I wanted you before. Before presenting, before... Remember when we practiced kissing?”
I paused, thrown. “When we were... thirteen,” I guessed. It’d been my first kiss, and my second and it’d got heated quickly enough that... “Yes, I—”
“I wanted you then,” Zybyn bit out, eyes flickering away like he wanted to hide from me, body tensing where he still let me hold on.
“Oh, goddess...” I said as slow realisation dawned on me. I was an idiot. “You did?”
Zybyn could only seem to manage a nod and my brain finally caught on to the fact that his rabbiting heart wasn’t a good sign. “Hey,” I said, squeezing his arm, then putting my hand on his chin and guiding his face up and close to mine. I pecked him on the lips, making him gasp in surprise—whateve
r it took to get him breathing. His lashes fluttered against my cheek and I pulled back, still close enough he couldn’t look anywhere but at me—his eyes shone in the low light of the candle we kept in our bedroom. “I wanted you too, I just—”
“You don’t need to say that,” he interrupted, shaking his head and dislodging my hand. He took my fingers in his, as if catching a kite about to fly off. “I know it was too much, I—”
“It was!” I quickly agreed and he lost steam, watching me. Maybe he could listen for more than a second now. “It was too much; I was a kid and it was... You were everything I loved, and the kissing was one thing, a little rebellion or whatever, but when I started getting hard from it...” I shook my head and met his eyes. “I was afraid.”
“Because the pack would have known?”
“Yeah.” I gulped hard, even just imagining the price we would have paid for a little love. “And then I would have lost you.”
“We could have found a way, gone to the lake or—”
I glared, crushing his fingers in mine. “Zybyn, there is no sex in the world that compares to having you by my side, not even sex with you.”
His words seemed to die in his throat, and he shook his head, swallowing, and then leaned forward to press his cheek to my shoulder, clumsily burrowing into me. “Sorry,” he mumbled. “I was an idiot, and you hurt me.”
“You are an idiot,” I told him fondly, cradling him in my arms. “But you’re mine, and whatever lies we have to tell out there to the humans, in this house, you’re my mate, the father of my children.”
Zybyn shuddered hard at those words. “Fuck, Michuá... I— I love you; I love them. I—”
“We are yours,” I promised. “You love us so we’re yours, and we love you, so you are ours.”
I tugged harder until he was fully on top of me and I could tangle my legs with his—it was impossible, of course, but it felt like we might have been tangled like that for months in our mother’s belly, the first position we’d known, the one our bones recognized as safety and love.