by T. J. Klune
But his neck was back like he’d never been threatened before, like he’d never been hurt before, and I knew what it meant. I latched my teeth onto the skin and I bit, not enough to draw blood, but enough to make him feel it. His wolf was close to the surface, if the noises he was making meant anything, and I felt more animal than man, words like mine and mate and claim running on a loop through my head.
It wasn’t enough.
I pushed him back. He went without protest, bouncing on the bed, his dick displayed obscenely, jeans low on his hips. I jerked them down, fingers grazing against his strong thighs. He was jerky in his movements as he helped, trembling in his excitement. He tried to kick his jeans off, grunting in frustration when they caught on his feet. I pressed a hand against his leg, trying to get him to calm. He raised his head from the bed, looking at me. His eyes were blue again, back to normal, but he was flushed, a shine of sweat on his forehead.
I reached down to where his jeans had bunched around his feet, and pulled them off. Joe Bennett was nude, spread out in my old bed, waiting for me to move. His cock was curved and jutting up toward his stomach. His balls lay against his thigh, shifting when he moved his leg. His thighs were hairy, and I wanted to run my hands and tongue on them. To touch. To taste.
He was the most precious thing I had.
And, at least for the moment, I did have him. Whatever happened later, this could not be taken from me.
“What is it?” he asked, sounding nervous.
“Nothing,” I said, voice rough. “I’m just…. You’re here.”
“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, Ox. I’m here.”
He lifted his foot and poked a toe against my chest. I caught his ankle, holding it in place. I leaned down and pressed a kiss against the bone, and he sighed, squirming slightly as I exhaled against him. I kissed his calf as I reached down and unbuttoned my own jeans. The pressure eased some, and it was enough for what I wanted to do. There could be a good pain, and I wanted to push against those boundaries.
I continued up his leg, reaching his knee. He huffed a laugh when I kissed the inside of his knee, and I grinned. I arched an eyebrow at him, but he just rolled his eyes and made an impatient noise.
“You need something?” I asked, not moving, but still holding his leg up.
“You bastard,” he said. “You know what you’re doing.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Fuck you, Ox,” he said.
“We can do that.”
He gaped at me.
I shrugged.
He tried to pull his leg back.
I couldn’t have that.
So I grabbed his other one too, pushing my weight against the back of his thighs. His knees came to his chest as his eyes widened.
He was exposed to me. His dick pressed against his stomach, his balls drawn up between his folded legs. His asshole was surrounded by soft hair and I wanted to bury my face in him, to take in his scent, the smell of him.
“Ox,” he said, panting again, like he knew what I was thinking, like he knew what I was going to do.
“It’s fine,” I said. “You’ll like this.”
He cried out when I licked him from his ass to his balls, trying to pull away and push toward me all at the same time. I’d never done this before, not really, but I knew the idea behind it, the mechanics of it. I didn’t know if he wanted me to fuck him or if he was going to fuck me, but I wanted him loose and wet with my spit.
“Hold your legs,” I said, putting more Alpha in my voice than I should have. He didn’t hesitate, reaching up under his knees and holding himself in place. His claws were still out, and I placed his fingers to make sure he wouldn’t hurt himself.
It was a heady thing when I pulled back, to see him as he was. There was a sense of power rushing through me, to have someone like him on his back and waiting for me. I didn’t know if it was because he was an Alpha or if it was because he was Joe, or a combination of the two. It made me light-headed, the edges of my vision going fuzzy.
He was starting to twitch under my gaze, the flush spreading down his neck to the top of his chest.
“You’re good,” I told him, and he inhaled sharply. “You’re doing so good.”
“Ox,” he pleaded.
“I will.” I leaned down to just above his asshole. I let a thin string of spit fall onto it. He groaned as he watched me from between his legs. I reached up and rubbed the spit into his asshole, not breaching, but enough pressure that it was close. I held his asscheeks apart when I leaned forward, tongue in a flat stroke against him. He started making little noises in the back of his throat as I pressed my tongue against him and in. I wanted to eat him out for hours.
He said my name again and again, and I dragged my tongue up his perineum to his balls, mouthing at them, taking one in and then the other. I knocked his hands away from his knees, pushing his feet flat against the bed.
I didn’t give him a chance to question it, just licked from the base of his dick to the tip. He gave a hoarse shout, trying to arch up against me, but my weight against his hips held him down. I tongued his slit, tasting the bitter precome. I sucked down the head of his cock, giving in to experience. It bumped against the back of my throat before I stopped moving, breathing through my nose. Joe was crying out above me, hips stuttering like he was holding back. I rose up slowly, looking up at him through my eyelashes. His eyes were red and his teeth had lengthened, like he couldn’t stop the shift from happening.
I pulled off with a wet pop. He looked down at me, mouth open. I said, “You don’t have to hold back,” and he shuddered at the words.
I went back down on him, working him over, tugging at his balls, giving them the slightest of twists. My own dick was out over the top of my underwear and I ground my hips against the bed.
He took the permission I gave him and thrust tentatively up into my mouth. I reached up and grabbed his hand, putting it to the back of my head. He grunted and the claws shrank until there was nothing but blunt, human fingers gripping my hair.
He fucked my mouth harder then, pushing up awkwardly until he found a steady rhythm. His fingers tightened in my hair, giving the right amount of pull to hurt, but not enough to distract me.
I hollowed my cheeks, spit dripping down the sides of his cock as he used my mouth. I choked briefly, but pushed it away even as my eyes watered.
“So good,” he babbled, punctuated with growls. “So fucking good, Ox. I knew you would be. I fucking knew you’d be so—” He tilted his head back, baring his neck yet again, and it only made me want this more.
I pulled off him. I didn’t want him to come yet. Not like this.
He looked back down at me, bleary-eyed and with a mouth filled with fangs.
Making sure he was still watching, I rose up on my knees, pushing my jeans and underwear down my hips. My cock sprang free, slapping against my stomach. He snarled at me and fisted the comforter. I pushed my jeans down as far as they could go before I leaned forward, hands on either side of his chest. He brought his arms down, biceps holding me in place. We were almost eye level, and neither of us blinked as I leaned forward enough to get off my knees and push my jeans down with my feet. One leg was free and then the other, and he leaned up to kiss me. I pulled away slightly, just out of reach. He snapped his teeth at me. I grinned down at him.
“Ox,” he said. “Just come here.”
I leaned down slowly. He strained forward. I licked his lips as they parted but remained just out of reach. We both knew he could easily hold me down, that he would always be the stronger of the two of us, but it didn’t matter right now. Right now, all that mattered was that I was in control, and he was allowing it.
I gave him the kiss he wanted. He laughed into my mouth, but it turned into a moan when I lay flush against him, chest to chest, cock to cock. His legs were bent up on either side of me as he chased my tongue with his own. I trailed my hand down his hairy thigh and gave a slight push with my hips, our cocks
rubbing together.
He said, “Come on, come on,” into my mouth and I pushed harder.
We rutted against each other and my name fell from his lips in a sigh, in a moan.
He said, “Ox, I want—” and I kissed it away, tongues sliding together as he anchored his feet to the bed, trying to find more friction between us. I gave it to him as best I could, feeling the drag of his dick against mine.
There was a zing at the base of my spine and I knew if we kept going like this, we’d come. The thought of him covered in my spunk was almost enough to continue as we were. He’d be marked by me. They’d be able to smell me on him.
Yes and yes and yes.
“Ox,” he gasped into my mouth. “I want more. Please, just let me have more.”
We were sweating, the room almost stifling.
He wanted more. I did too. But I didn’t know if I was ready for that. To be mated. Because if we fucked, we wouldn’t be able to stop it. I wanted it so bad, I could taste it, but not with everything else hanging over our heads.
But there was more we could do. I’d make it good for him.
I pulled back and he growled at the loss of my weight against him.
He tried to pull me back down, but I pushed his hands away.
I reached over to the table beside the bed and opened the drawer. There was an old bottle of lube in there, half-empty from all the times I’d used my fingers on myself while he was gone. I could do the same for him.
“Yeah,” he breathed when he saw what was in my hand. “Yeah, that’s real good. You should do that. You can fuck me, Ox. I promise I’ll make it so good for you.”
I shook my head. “We’re not doing that.”
He looked hurt, even as his eyes dilated. “But—”
“Not yet,” I said. “You know why.”
“Mate,” the wolf said.
“Do you trust me?”
He didn’t hesitate. Not like I thought he would. Even after all this time, after everything we’d been through, he said, “Yes.”
“I’m gonna make you feel good,” I promised him. “And one day soon, I’ll fuck you till you can’t walk anymore. Then you can do the same to me.”
His dick twitched on his stomach. He reached down to stroke it, eyes on me. “You promise?” he insisted.
I said, “Yeah, Joe. I promise.”
I opened the lube and poured some on my fingers, getting them slick. I dropped the bottle and reached between his legs. He saw what I was doing and spread them farther. My fingers touched his asshole, still wet from my tongue. He lifted his hips slightly off the bed as I pressed a finger against him.
“You ever done this to yourself?” I asked him in a low voice.
He snapped his head up and down. “Yeah.”
“You fucked your fingers?”
“Yeah,” he whined at me, trying to push his ass toward me.
“Feel good?”
“Never could get enough,” he said, breathing heavily. “Never could get the right—”
I pressed a finger in to the first knuckle. His hand stilled on his dick.
“You just breathe,” I told him. “Just breathe and it’ll feel all right.”
He nodded at me as I pushed in slowly, just the one finger for now.
The muscles in his stomach contracted as I pulled the finger almost all the way out.
He was tight around me, and like a furnace.
I pushed in again. His eyes rolled in his head.
“Touch yourself,” I told him. “I want to watch.”
He shook his head frantically. “No. I don’t want to get off. Not like this, Ox. I need you to—”
“I know what you need,” I said, and he moaned at that, trying to take more of my finger, pushing back and pulling away. “I’ll give it to you. Just not today.”
His eyes were glassy when he looked at me. His tongue darted out as he licked his lips. “But, I just. Ox.”
“We’ll get there,” I told him, pushing my finger all the way into his asshole again just to watch his chest hitch. “After all of this is done. I don’t want anything hanging over our heads. When you claim me. When I claim you.”
He grunted as I added a second finger. His balls were drawn up tight. He said, “You promise. You promise me, Ox. You promise me.”
“I promise,” I said, because I did. There wasn’t any chance it wouldn’t end that way. Joe and I were always heading that direction, even if there’d been a three-year detour. I’d just needed to get over myself and the anger I felt before I could realize that.
He grabbed his dick again and started jacking off, slow, even pulls, swiping his thumb over the head of his cock. It was a practiced move, something he knew he liked. Just the thought of him doing this by himself, sitting on his own fingers, rubbing his cock, it hit me hard. My own dick throbbed at the thought, at the sight of him spread out before me. I looked down and watched my fingers disappearing into his ass. I barely had to move my hand as he rocked his hips down and then away, down and away.
He started tensing as I fingered him, his hand moving faster on his dick. His nipples hardened, and I knew he was getting close. He kept chanting my name, little grunts that rolled out of his chest. His eyes started flashing red again, and I added a third finger almost brutally. He growled at me, teeth sharp. His ass clenched around my fingers, and just when I knew he couldn’t take much more, I knocked the hand on his cock out of the way and swallowed him down to the root, gagging slightly as he bumped the back of my throat. He cried out from somewhere above me, hands going to the back of my head, claws pricking my scalp. My nose was in his pubes when I pushed my fingers harder into his ass. He came down my throat, heavy spurts that tasted bitter on the back of my tongue. I choked on it, pulling off, his spunk dribbling down my chin, the last bit going onto my cheek.
He looked thoroughly fucked out below me, still chasing his orgasm as he tried to push himself farther onto my fingers. I pulled them out, and he gasped, eyes flashing open, looking up at me. I rose to my knees above him, and all I could think about as I licked my lips to taste him was that he needed to be marked. And kisses I could suck into his skin would fade. But the smell of me wouldn’t.
I used the hand that had been in his ass on my own cock. It wasn’t soft or gentle. I stripped it furiously, wanting him to be covered in my scent.
“Yeah,” he said, voice hoarse and wrecked. “I want it. Ox, I want it.” He reached over and grabbed my balls as I jacked myself off above him. He held them in his hands, squeezing tightly enough to make me grunt, twisting them into bright pleasurepain. I felt it building at the base of my spine, little bolts of lightning arcing along my skin. My toes curled underneath me.
I shot off on his chest as he pressed two fingers against my taint. I snapped his name out like a curse. My spunk landed on his chest, his nipples. It rolled down over his clavicles and pooled at his throat.
He looked ruined. Owned. I’d never felt so primal. I didn’t know if it was the Alpha, or if it was just me. It didn’t matter. Everyone would know. And that’s all I cared about.
He reached up and ran his fingers through the jizz on his chest. He looked delirious and rubbed his wet fingers over his right nipple.
I collapsed down next to him, the bed creaking under the weight of two overgrown men. We were both breathing heavily as we lay side by side, shoulders touching, faces turned toward each other, just inches apart. He kept touching the spunk on him, kept running his fingers through it like he was spreading it around. I leaned over and kissed him, and he whimpered into my mouth as I sucked on his tongue, letting him taste himself.
I pulled away, and his eyes were red again.
He said, “I want to bite you.”
I said, “I know.”
He said, “I want to claim you. I want to give you scars with my claws. I want my teeth embedded in your neck.”
I said, “I know.”
He said, “You’re mine. No one else can have you. No one else can be with
you. Not like this. Not ever. You hear me, Ox? Not ever. You’re mine, and I’ll kill anyone who thinks they can take you away from me.”
And I said, “I know.”
IT WASN’T until later, much later, long after night had fallen, the sky outside black and littered with stars that burned coldly, that we spoke again. It’d been a strange sort of contentment to just lie there and watch each other.
I might have drifted in a doze, but every time I opened my eyes, Joe was still next to me, face so close I could see individual eyelashes. He hadn’t moved much, still sprawled out, comfortable in his nudity. His cock was soft against his thigh. My spunk had dried on his chest, little flecks of white sticking against the hair. It was going to be a bitch to get out later, but he didn’t seem to care.
I was the one that broke the silence.
I didn’t mean to.
One moment I was opening my eyes, and the next, I said, “You shouldn’t have left.”
And it wasn’t what I meant to say.
He sighed. “I know.”
“We should have done this. Together.”
“I know, Ox. But it’s done. There’s nothing I can do to change that.”
I wanted to be angry with him at that. Still. I wanted to be so angry.
But I just couldn’t. Not when he was here next to me, still looking like he’d just gotten fucked.
I nodded slowly. “Okay.” I wondered if it was just as simple as that.
“Okay?” He arched an eyebrow.
“Okay.”
He grinned at me, wide and bright, for just a moment before it faded slowly. Then, “Do we even need to talk about Jessie?”
“What about her?”
“Just… why, I guess.”
“Why what?”
He scowled at me. “Why is she in your pack?”
I barely restrained the eye roll. “Why, Joe Bennett. You jealous?”
“No.”
“Okay.”
“I just don’t see why she needs to be near you. Or in your pack. Or alive.”
I rolled over on top of him, causing him to laugh under me, squirming, and there was just miles of naked skin. “She helped us heal,” I said.