The Mating (Black on Black, #1)

by BJ Cunningham

  Closing his eyes, he growled when she hit the right speed. Jared removed his hand from her hair when his release came, resting his hands on her shoulders as his seed rocketed into her mouth. Everything in him exploded with it. He screamed her name as she milked him. “Gods!”

  Swallowing and licking him slowly, not wanting to waste a drop, she slowly released him. Lathing his cock with her tongue in long and short strokes, she looked up at him, purred and smirked before coming back to her feet. Still holding him cupped in her hand, her thumb slowly circling the head, she dropped her head against his chest. “I love you, Jared. No matter what. You know that?”

  Staring at her, he nodded and took hold of her tightly. Almost crushing her against him, Jared braced himself for what he was about to do. “I made a deal with Zev. If I die, then he’ll break our bond. Edge’s as well.” He could sense her rage instantly, as she growled and a blast of cold air surrounded her, making his teeth chatter and skin bump.

  Serra tried to push against him when he told her what he’d done, but he held her too tightly. Frustrated tears flowed as she listened. Edge being released made sense, but damn. Did he not understand that she didn’t give two shits about herself?

  “Please don’t be angry. I did what I needed to. To keep you all safe. I promised Damion I would. I finally got things right with him.” Everything came spilling out of him at once, everything with her father and Zev.

  She stopped pushing and clung to him tightly, because if he’d done this, he actually thought he might die and even thinking about that cut the heart out of her chest and made her feel sick. “I’m not mad at you Jared. I get it. I’m pissed that this is happening at all. I just found you. I don’t want anything to happen to you.” Leaning her head back to look into his eyes she bit her lower lip and cleared her throat. “What if I don’t want to live without you? What if I can’t? Did you even think about that?”

  He kissed her, ghosted them to bed and held her. “It will be okay. I love you so much.” He nuzzled her and kissed her neck.

  “It had better be.” She gave him a halfhearted smile and forced herself to purr. “Because if it isn’t, I’m killing a guardian.”

  Jared pulled the covers over them and slid down her body, finding her core, his tongue caressing it.

  She purred and tangled her hands in his hair as she arched into him and growled his name.

  He ravaged her with his mouth. As she arched, he rubbed her swollen nub with his thumb softly teasing it.

  “Fuck, Jared!” She raised her head to watch what he was doing to her and seeing him at her core, and the gleam in his hazel eyes meeting hers, mixed with the waves of oh fuck, shattered her as she came hard.

  Growling at her taste, he kept his mouth on her sucking with the hunger of a starving man, knowing that it might be the last time. His fingers teased and played with her nub. He purred loudly at her, covering his face with her sweetness and pushed his face deeper.

  Sinking her claws into the bed, she bucked under him growling as she lost track of if she was coming again or still coming. It didn’t matter. She was breaking, the idea of losing him leaving her raw and greedy. “Fuck, I love you!”

  As she wiggled and ground into him, Jared held her in place wanting her to be fully sated. ‘I love you too,’ he linked her.

  She was losing her fucking mind, turning feral and shattering. Every muscle in her body clenched tight and forced the air from her lungs in a rush. “Gods Jared!” The growl became a whimper as her body went limp and the air sawed in and out of her throat.

  Once she was limp, he licked a bit more before he laid beside her, purring.

  Curling around him she held on as tightly as her shaking muscles would allow and purred while listening to his heart beat. Breathing in deeply, she savored her scent on him and did everything she could to make sure she’d never forget any of it. The feel of his arms around her, his scent, the softness of his skin over his hard body. She didn’t want to forget a thing. She didn't want a memory to be all that she had of him. This was killing her.

  “I love you.” He rubbed her back.

  Smiling against his chest, Serra stretched up to nuzzle his neck with a purr. “And I love you.” Blinking her eyes to stop the tears that were welling there, she nipped him and tucked her head under his chin. This wasn’t fair, and she hated it.

  “Hey now, please don’t cry.” He kissed her head. “Rest baby. Please?”

  Nodding, she closed her eyes and stroked his hip with the tips of her fingers. Sleep wouldn’t be coming for a long time. Her world had been turned upside down, and she was hanging on by a thread.

  Jared drifted off, shifting, his panther still holding her.

  Her fingers gripped his fur and when she felt his body relax she let the tears fall. How could he let her go? She didn't understand, because no matter how hard she tried, she couldn't do the same.

  Jared shifted into his human form and rubbed his burning eyes. It had been a long fucking night. He’d passed out for a little while, but the same old nightmares had tackled him, and he was wide awake now. He stared at the ceiling trying to sort shit out, sick and tired of Zev’s fuckery. Serra tossed and turned beside him, drawing his eyes to the wet pillow that she rolled away from. His chest tightened. She’d been crying. He could smell the salt of the tears that soaked her pillow. It was his fault. She didn’t deserve this shit. She was a young panther and should be traveling the world, having fun and creating the reckless memories that she could laugh about when she got to be his age. Instead, she was mated to him, raising two cubs that weren’t hers and crying herself to sleep. That said it all, didn’t it?

  Her body thrashed, caught up in its own nightmares. Jared rolled onto his side and stroked her fur hoping to soothe her before what usually happened, began. Some people talked in their sleep, Serra mindlinked and leaked the images that she was seeing. He didn’t think that she knew that she did it or that she had the power to shove images into another’s head. If she ever learned to harness that power... Jared shook his head. She would be more feared than her father. His fingers stroked the fur of her neck, wondering how much of this was his doing.

  Then it started. The images of his mate being hurt and humiliated by three males. Jared ground his molars to dust as it played through the same story that he saw most nights. It haunted her, the same way his time in prison stalked him in his dreams, leaving him with one conclusion. It wasn’t a dream. It was a memory. His soul screamed to kill the mother fuckers that had done this to her, but he never saw their faces clearly enough to begin the search. It wasn’t just what he saw, it was the emotions that went with it, that finished the job of shredding his heart. She blamed herself for all of it.

  Closing his eyes, he wrapped his arms around her and held her until she calmed but the images didn’t stop. They changed. Instead of the dark alley and dumpster, it was a cemetery, and she was tearing something apart. Ice flooded his veins. She couldn’t have done this. It had to be a fantasy of revenge, because if it wasn’t? Holy fuck. It would be Heather all over again, only worse. The panther in his arms whimpered and a new batch of emotions tackled Jared. Failure. Rejection. Despair. Heartbreak. He blinked his stinging eyes and shoved his face into her fur as him telling her that Zev would break their bond replayed on a constant loop.

  There was no one else that he could blame for his mate feeling those things. That was all him. He only wanted to protect her, not hurt her. He couldn’t bear the thought that she would die, but he hadn’t thought about how she would feel if she outlived him. He hadn’t believed that she cared that much. The knowledge warmed him and shattered his heart at the same time. Fuck. Even when he tried to do the right thing, he still fucked things up. When she finally calmed, he pressed his lips to her head and slowly pulled away, trying not to wake her.

  Jared thought about the choices he’d had to make and wondered if he’d done the right thing. Trying to help others always ended up leaving him under the bus of life’s tires. It wa
s too much. When was he going to catch a fucking break? Snarling his rage, he left the house before he trashed it.

  Shifting, he took off running into the forest. He didn’t care anymore. He tried and tried to do the right thing. Fate always fucked him. Can a man feel? How would he know? He was just an animal. No one respected him. As his claws dug into the ground, Jared felt his logic disappear. Earth flew out behind him as he ran, hoping to outrun the pain.

  Pushing his body as hard as he could, he thought about what he had. A family, and yet, he’d had all that before, and it had been a lie. Wasn’t that always how it went for him? He’d thought that he had everything and it was just smoke and mirrors. People looked at him like he was an asshole and that was all right with him. Why bother trying to be anything else? In reality, he was a loner. A family didn’t mean shit if everyone wasn’t on the same page.

  Jared growled and slowed, finding himself in a clearing. The sound of gunshots made him cringe and stop short. Panting heavily, he climbed into a tree, letting the leaves and hanging moss conceal his presence. A hunter eased into the clearing and raised a rifle and squeezed the trigger. The boom echoed and was joined by others. Deer that he hadn't noticed before fell one by one as the rest fled.

  The Panther tensed as his instinct to take the mother fucker outgrew. Then it hit him. That was his problem. If he kept trying to help everyone else, he was going to end up dead, like those deer. He should be like everyone else, cold and let shit play out. If it didn’t affect him, then screw it, let the fucks die. Wasn’t that the circle of life, or some bullshit?

  The hunter started to skin and clean the deer as his buddies showed up on four wheelers to carry out the meat. Watching all this, Jared could feel someone watching him.

  ‘You know that you should have stopped them.’ Zev’s voice sounded in Jared’s head.

  ‘Why? So they could shoot me too? Fuck that noise. They are just animals. Meat. Nothing more.’

  Zev laughed. ‘Cold, Panther. What happened to you? Mr. No Fear, Guns Blazing. Where did he go?’

  He didn’t answer the Ghuardian. Instead, he watched the carnage below. When the humans left, all that was left were blood stains and tire tracks ion the grass. Jared laughed to himself.

  ‘What is so funny?’ Zev asked.

  ‘The fact that the scene down there is my life. Nothing's left but bloodshed and scarring.’ Jared jumped from the tree and started walking, knowing the Ghuardian was some place close by.

  Growing bored with fucking with the Panther, Zev ghosted back to his home. He had to know what had been taken. A growl rumbled in his chest as his body turned in a slow circle, looking for anything out of place. The Panther had something of his. He needed to know what. Then he could get it back and skin the cocky fucker. All of the things that he’d collected over the centuries that would bring questions ricocheted around his head as he called up the mental map of where each was hidden. If any of those became public knowledge, Zev was fucked. Raking his hands through his hair, he considered fucking with the Panther’s family or maybe just the threat would be enough to make the son of a bitch fall in fucking line.

  Everything looked untouched. The snow white covers on the furniture were spotless and undisturbed. There were no smudges on the shelves or tables that had been polished within an inch of their lives. The many ornamental and charmed boxes remained in their places, all hinges perfectly aligned to the with the north point on the compass. He scoured the floor, looking for footprints. Nothing. He growled his frustration. That left only one place...

  “Fuck.” Taking his shitkickers off on the rug beside the door, he carefully put them on the rubber boot tray and began to walk across the hardwoods in his socks. He froze, and his eyes were pulled back to the dried chunks of mud on the rug. Sighing, Zev trudged back to the throw rug, opened the front door and gave it a quick shake, held it up to inspect it and shook it again before putting it back where it belonged. He stepped back and then bent to straighten it. The fidgeting was repeated twice more before his OCD would allow him to leave it be.

  Shaking his head, disgusted with himself, he finally made it to the bedroom. Again everything was as he’d left it. The comforter on the bed was pulled tight as were the cases on the pillows. The priceless Van Gough that hung over the hidden safe was perfectly level, but that didn’t stop him from taking it off the wall and opening the safe to comb through and catalog its contents. Nothing was missing. Replacing the painting was another thirty-minute ordeal that he couldn’t leave until the frame was exactly parallel with the floor. That only left...

  His heart kicked in his chest, and an arctic blast chilled his blood. No. Not that. Anything but that! He found himself before the massive armoire, his eyes crawling over the glossy maple surface looking for a smudge. His eyes closed and the air rushed out of his lungs when he found it. Barely detectable, the underside of the door’s pull showed the greasy mark of a finger. The soft buffing rag appeared in his hand without Zev thinking about it. Intently, he rubbed at the print until it was gone and pulled the door open, with the cloth protecting the finish from the oils of his skin.

  Dread strangled him. He already knew what he was going to find. Reaching into the back, his hand carefully moved between precisely folded and color segregated piles of clothes, his fingers closing around the velvet bag hidden behind them. The soft fabric crumpled in his hand. Empty. Zev’s legs almost dropped him on his ass. “I’m going to fucking kill him!”

  Gods it was slow this afternoon. Serra groaned and rolled her eyes. So much for the idea of taking on a few shifts at The Pit to take her mind off the shit that was coming. Jared could tell her it was going to be okay as much as he wanted to. She knew that he wanted to believe it. But until they all made it out on the other side in one piece, she couldn’t. And now she was on break from doing a whole lot of nothing. Sliding her glass of iced tea onto the stage, she sat beside it, humming the song that was stuck in her head as she pulled her legs up to sit cross-legged and look out over the mostly empty room.

  Shrugging she reached for Brian’s acoustic six string and checked the tuning. Yeah, she was still no Slash, but she could play well enough for the untrained ear. She played and sang softly to herself, hoping to exorcise the tune stuck on repeat in her melon. Serra didn’t glance up until she’d finished and felt eyes boring into her, making the hairs on the back of her neck rise.

  Looking around, she noticed Kara’s eyes, predatory and cold, locked on her. The female seemed off. Like, way the fuck off. Setting the guitar on its stand, she unfolded her legs and hopped down from her perch, grabbed her iced tea and slid into the booth across from the female she’d known since she was a cub.

  Raising a brow at the full glass of tequila and the uncapped beer on the table, Serra let her eyes move over the Valkyrie. Kara’s back leaned against the wall, elbows on her bent knees and arms hanging over her shins. She looked like hell with wet, snarled blonde hair and paler than usual skin. The towel wrapped around one of her hands had a growing maroon stain. The scent in the air was wrong, and Serra couldn’t explain exactly why, other than the faint odor of old death and fresh blood that surrounded her.

  “You okay Karbear?”

  “Just fine.” Kara lied, lifting the tall glass and downing it, grimacing as the fireball that burned its way to her gut, exploded there. Unwrapping the towel from her hand, she watched as the skin slowly knit itself back together, closing the wound. If only everything healed that cleanly. “Pretty song.” She flipped her blue eyes up to the young panther across the table. “Sad, but pretty.”

  “Thanks.” Serra tilted her head to the side, her eyes narrowing. “You would make a shitty used car salesman. You know that, right?” Her brow furrowed at the ghost of a smile that flowed over Kara’s face and was gone almost before it appeared. “What happened?”

  She shrugged. “Died. Did time in Helheim. Now I’m back.” Kara refilled the glass and downed it again, waiting for the booze to work its way through her bloodstre
am and numb her out because being back here was rubbing her raw and pissing her off. Not to mention that being back inside her skin was itchy as hell.

  Okay. None of that was in the realm of what Serra had expected. “For real dead? I thought you were immortal and shit.”

  “Yeah.” Kara snorted without humor. “So did I.” She stared across the table, smiling softly at the scar that marked Serra as a bonded mate. Kara’s chest ached painfully as she rubbed her neck where a similar mark used to be. She hoped to hell someone got that damned happy ending that all of the fairy tales promised. “How are things with Jared? I like him. He’s a good male.”

  Serra swallowed the lump in her throat caused by the strange way Kara was acting. The lack of emotion tinged the air around her, colored only by sadness and slightly stronger pissed offedness. “He is. Things are good. What’s wrong? What happened?”

  Kara shook her head. It was too much to explain, and she didn’t want to try. “Doesn’t matter. It is what it is.” Emptying the last of the Patron into her glass, she drained it and then closed her fingers around the sweating glass of the bottle of beer. “Tell your mate and Dad that I send my love. I’ll catch you later.” Kara ghosted to the bank of the swamp, almost hoping that an alligator would attack. She needed to kill something to take the edge off.

  That was fucking weird. Serra blinked at the empty space where Kara had been sitting, before turning her head to be sure no one had noticed. Sighing, she collected the empty bottle, glass, and blood-stained towel and got her ass back to work.

  CHAPTER 19

  Jared knew the Ghuardian was nearby when he left the forest behind. Sadly, it hadn’t helped him clear his mind the way he’d hoped that it would. Zev wanted him to find Zander, and frankly, Jared was sick of this game. He wanted it over. Jared ghosted into the city.