by Lynn Red
The ceiling started to run next. Chunks of mortar followed by lumps of stone and concrete tumbled down, barely missing both Craze and Wild. “Uh,” Wild said as he stepped aside. “We should probably take advantage of being alive and get out of here.”
On cue, a chunk of wall crumbled and collapsed, opening the first hole into the outside world that we’d seen. It wasn’t much, but just that streak of warm blue in the sky was enough to give me some hope. “We’re about to kill ourselves, aren’t we?” I asked, grabbing Wild’s hand again. “But whatever happens, we’re together, right?”
I’d never run so fast, never jumped so hard, and never been so damn happy to feel the ground under my feet. I’m not much of a jogger, but I’ll be damned if beating my bare feet over the cool, slightly wet grass as we charged back into the forest wasn’t the best feeling in the entire world.
Well… Maybe second best. Maybe about eighth, thinking of all the things my mates had made me feel, but still. We were alive, we were free and… we were together.
3
The smell of old leaves, pine sap and the open sky above gave me the broadest, most delicious sense of wellbeing that I remember ever having. The fact that my three mates and I were safe, happy, and alone. All alone. Wonderfully, peacefully, magically alone.
There were no wolves – they’d all gone nuts with the building collapsing and flew into wild, barbarous melees. Most of them survived… somehow, but none of them chased. Grave had collapsed into a heap as soon as we got back to the caves. Craze and Wild were by my side the entire time, never once letting my hands fall and chill without them holding on. The two of them hadn’t left me since our daring escape and they weren’t leaving me then.
“So,” I began, not quite sure how to ask what I’d wanted to ask for most of the month we’d been together. “Now that everything’s over and Grave’s convinced that I’m not some kind of pitiful baby, there’s a ritual that—“
“I never said you were pitiful,” Grave said from where he was slumped against the wall of our cave.
God, just thinking that about the cave – that it was ours and this was my new life – got my heart rushing all over again. The desperation and the terror from Todd still shuddered through me, sending tendrils of electricity crawling up and down my spine.
“The ritual,” Grave said. “It’s… yes, it’s near.”
“What is it?” I asked. “For a month, you’ve kept me, err, kept us, from doing what comes naturally,” I said with a grin. “Can’t we, you know, get on with it all? I’ve been waiting for so, so long.”
I was a little more eager sounding than I meant to be. Well, at least, than I meant outwardly to be. Inside I was nothing more than a roiling, bubbling river of anticipation, and I couldn’t help but notice that Grave’s injury seemed to be healing a little faster now that I’d mentioned the mating business.
“It’s something sacred,” he said as he pushed himself off the wall into a standing position.
“And beautiful,” Wild added. “Or so I understand. Not that I’ve ever actually taken part in one.”
“It is,” Craze said. “So I understand.”
Grave took the hand that Wild had been holding and led me outside. We went in slow, patient steps, but my heart was beating so wildly in my chest that patient is about the last word I can think of to describe the way I was feeling. I wanted it all right then, so badly that explaining it hardly works. My nerves were a charge of frizz, electricity, and that thick feeling of confusion and muddled head that only comes after a huge relief.
We neared the entrance to the cave and looking out from it, I could see that the moon was hanging low and fat and yellow just above the tops of the trees. There was also something missing.
“No smoke,” I whispered as lips brushed my neck just below my ear. “There’s nothing but—“
“This,” Grave said softly His fingertips painted a soft, patient trail down my backbone. He lifted my soft, cotton tee-shirt and kissed the small of my back right above the tattered waistband of my jeans. A flush of goosebumps and anticipation flooded my senses. I felt my skin getting all prickly and hot. My nipples puckered sweetly inside my bra and for a moment I thought of the fact that the bra, the shirt, and my worn, old jeans were the only things that remained of my previous life.
And slowly, or quickly, depending on how excited the bears got at any given time, were fading away.
“It’s really over isn’t it?” I asked, arching my neck and closing my eyes against the slight chill of the breeze wafting through the woods. I took a deep breath and held it in. “Nothing but leaves and… is that rain?”
“It always rains the night after the ritual can happen,” Craze said. “Some kind of mystical business about washing away the past, about ushering in a new era.”
“Either that, or it’s a full moon during spring. Rain and those things tend to go together,” Wild added with a grin. “Either way, it all works out the same way. Although Grave,” he said, pulling the largest and strongest of the bears away from where his lips had made their way halfway up my back, “I think you need to hold off a few there, chief. You know how this is supposed to go.”
The hate I felt toward the chief alpha had faded. Seeing him half-destroyed, and watching as he tried to do whatever he could to save me from Todd… and hearing him talk about my bravery and how he was wrong for not believing me. It all came back to me in a flood of warmth, and a feeling of security and gentleness that I’d first felt on the very first night I was in these woods.
“And now I’m here, and I’m part of it, and no matter what happens, we’ll always have this.”
The next set of lips that brushed my skin were Wild’s, who drew close to me, inhaled the scent of my skin and warmed me with kisses along my jaw. He pulled me close and enveloped my lips with his, pulling and sucking hungrily until he had to pull away to take a breath.
Craze replaced him. He ran his hands through my hair, forcing my head to tilt backward. Gently, he dragged his teeth down the curve of my throat, and then flicked his tongue along my collarbones. He’d circle the tip on my skin and then suck a kiss a second later. He left me arching my neck to try and chase him to keep his lips on my skin. I arched against him, relishing the feel of his solid, muscled chest against my breasts.
“I’m guessing this is gonna take a while to get to the part I keep begging for?” I couldn’t help but smile, and then open my lips to gasp out my pleasure when his lips pressed against my chest, warming me through the last of my shirt.
“Rituals aren’t supposed to be quick,” Craze said with a smile that seemed to glow in the moonlight. The way he touched me, his fingers curling against the small of my back where Grave had kissed a moment before, sent warm sparks up my backbone. Seconds later, lips were back, and his fingers retreated, but I’d lost track of who was where.
It didn’t matter, not one tiny bit. The waves of pleasure coursing through my veins and the glow of adrenaline had wet heat filling me from the inside and running out. “God, don’t make me wait,” I whispered in hot, gasping bursts. “I can’t, I just can’t. Not after everything we’ve—“
I looked down at Wild, who was crouched in front of me, in the instant before he swirled his tongue just above the button on my jeans. He sucked a desperate kiss, and then grabbed the button with his teeth, yanking it free. I reached down to undo my zipper, but found he’d done that too, in one smooth motion. No words came when I opened my mouth, instead all I could do was moan and whisper their names into the pale, yellow light surrounding us. Another kiss, another sweet swirl of his tongue, and then I was being led to the ground.
Instead of crunching on leaves and pine needles, I felt soft furs surround me. “Where’d those come from?” I asked, with my eyes still closed. I felt my shirt lift up and over my head, and the next second, a gentle breeze caressed my bare breasts, making my nipples prick up hard all over again. I groped out with my fingers. First they brushed the tuft of hair above Wild’s c
ock, and then I wrapped them around him. He was already rock hard, standing straight out and ready. As soon as I squeezed him, running my hand from his base to his tip and sliding my thumb around his lines, he shuddered gently.
A pine needle poking through the blankets of soft fur scratched gently at the base of my spine, sending an electric chill up to the back of my scalp. I took a breath, but before I exhaled, the rough rasp of Craze’s stubble slid along my cheek. He hovered above my face, his breath warming the skin on my neck. “I might’ve got them when you weren’t looking,” he whispered. The intensity in his voice had me reeling, but when he slid a rough, comforting hand behind my head and swirled his tongue between my lips, tasting me as deeply as he could, I forgot all about the blankets.
“Oh God,” I whispered as he pulled away and sucked my bottom lip between his teeth with a soft snap as they closed. “Oh my God I’ve never wanted anything more than I do this, right now.”
“And you’ve only known us for a month,” Wild whispered before taking his tongue and running it up my neck. “We’ve known you our whole lives.”
I squeezed Wild a little harder, stroking him again. When my trembling fingers reached the underside of his head, I turned my hand and massaged him with the tip of my thumb.
Craze’s palm flattened against my sex. I arched my hips against his hand, wanting—needing—to feel his pressure against me. He gave me what I wanted, but only for a second. He pressed the heel of his hand against my clit, massaging me until my panties were soaked through.
“I need to taste you,” he whispered. “I can’t keep from it. I can’t stop myself. Your scent’s making me crazy and I have to—“
Interrupting him, I laughed as I pushed his head down between my legs. His tongue found me a split second later, and before I could do or say anything, he ran the tip up and down my line and then cupped his mouth around me.
Gentle nibbles, hungry licks, and sweet sucks sent me careening toward the edge, but as the muscles between my legs started constricting, he stopped just short. As I tugged Wild toward me, and tasted his first drops with the tip of my tongue, my inner beast had just started roaring. For the moment, I forgot about my own pleasure and guided Wild inside my mouth. That first taste wasn’t enough, not anywhere near.
The feeling of his cock pressing my tongue down and my jaws open made me gasp around him. I closed my lips, dragging them toward his tip, and then flicked the tip of my tongue along his sensitive underside. His desperate need for me was deliciously obvious as more of his heat ran over my tongue, warming me all the way down. This was intoxication in the most spiritual, loving sense.
Our three bodies intertwined, moving as one. I felt the dull throb of Wild’s heartbeat through his cock, and closed my lips around him again, tighter than before, and sucked. At the same moment, I curled my fist in Craze’s hair, and gripped Wild’s cock, pumping it harder and harder. I felt myself quailing when fingers pushed my panties aside and slipped within. I was so wet, so ready and so desperately in love that both of his huge fingers slid home with no resistance.
I heard him moaning, and then felt the tip of his tongue move in a circle around my button as he pulled his fingers out, and then back in. Rotating them slowly, he found the place right by my entrance that drove me completely insane, and settled there for a moment. I cupped Wild’s heavy balls, massaging them against his body, and felt his cock tense up in my mouth. I sucked harder, pulled quicker, desperately trying to get him to fill my mouth.
He had other ideas. “Not yet,” he whispered. “Not… not yet.”
I chased him with my mouth, but he pulled away, his cock slipping through my fingers. “This is for you,” Craze whispered, taking his mouth away from my sex for just a second. “Watching your face, hearing the sounds you make.” He drove his fingers deep. I threw my head back, letting it fall into the heap of furs as I bit down on my lip to keep from screaming.
Every inch of my body stretched around his huge fingers. Every nerve in my body flared at once. He pressed his palm against my clit and tore at my panties with his teeth. The hot breath sliding around my sex had me momentarily hypnotized, but the ripping cotton and the sudden burst of cool air between my legs cleared the haze from my head.
In that moment of complete clarity, I just opened my eyes and drank it all in. It was just me, and my three mates, alone in the early nighttime darkness. They had me, they really had me. Never in my life had I felt that safe, that secure.
“Home,” I whispered. “I’m home, aren’t I?”
“Somehow,” I heard Grave’s voice from behind me. He knelt down beside where I lay, and brushed the hair out of my eyes. “This is where you’ve always belonged. This is where we’ve all belonged, for all this time.” He let out a little laugh. “After all we’ve been through, after all I’ve… I’ve done, I—“
I grabbed his hair and pulled his head down to mine. I kissed him so deep and then he answered back. Our teeth clashed, and our tongues swirled together in a desperate dance. The hand that wasn’t behind my head slid up my naked belly and cupped one of my breasts. Grave’s thumb circled my aching nipple, and then Wild took the other one in his mouth.
The three of them held me just like that for long enough that in my mind, our bodies and our souls melded into one. Nothing could pull us apart. If Todd and his wolves couldn’t, if having to escape an exploding building couldn’t, not a damn thing on this planet or any other, was going to break what we had.
The fingers moving inside me, the mouth on my breast, and Grave filling my world with kisses so deep and hard that they ground my head back into the heap of blankets had my soul swimming all over again.
Just as I felt the nerves in my body start to fly high, and knew that if this went on for another moment, there wasn’t gonna be any stopping the avalanche of an orgasm, Grave pulled away and whispered, “Wait. It’s time.”
The three of them all stopped what they were doing, but didn’t leave me. The warmth pulsing through their bodies was enough that it could have been thirty below, and we could’ve been buried in a snowbank, and I’d be just fine.
“The moon is smiling,” Grave said as he lifted me to my feet. “If it weren’t right, if this weren’t fate, we never would’ve got this far. This is it.”
He pulled me close against his chest, his hands stroking up and down my back. Craze and Wild were on either side of us. Craze had his hand alongside my head, absently caressing my ear, my jaw. Wild nuzzled the other side of my neck, his gentle kisses sending electric thrills down my chest. I reached down and grabbed Grave’s cock, holding it like the handle of an axe. I pulled it up so that it lay between us. It was like a length of hot iron against my belly. My knees were trembling and my hands were shaking as I lifted them to his face. I moved my hips back and forth so gently as to be barely visible. He closed his eyes and let his head relax on his shoulders for just a moment, and I knew that even if he couldn’t see what I was doing, he could feel it.
“It’s time,” he whispered again.
I stared into Grave’s eyes as they began to flicker. I’d seen Wild and Craze’s inner beasts start to show themselves before, but never like this. His eyes burned with a desperate, quicksilver fire. The shaggy hair around his face grew a little longer, a little thicker, and suddenly I was lifted off my feet.
Wild and Craze smothered me with kisses, their hands running up and down the front of my body as I wrapped my legs around Grave’s huge waist. His tip tested me, sliding up and down my sex for a tantalizing second before he moved into me. With their hands on my breasts, my other two mates held me tight and safe. They squeezed and pinched in ways that made my entire body shiver and quail with anticipation and then ecstasy.
“Now,” I whispered. “Don’t make me wait. I’ve given you all of what I am.”
There were tears running down the sides of my face. The kind of tears that only come when you have something you’ve wanted your whole life; when you finally do what you’ve always dreamed.<
br />
Fireworks exploded inside me as he did just what I said. In one long, slow thrust, Grave buried his entire cock inside me. The walls of my sex clenched at him, stretching with brilliant flashes of pain that instantly melted into wet, hot pleasure. He moved in and out of me, faster and faster until once again I felt all four of our hearts beating as one. I gripped my ankles together, holding him so tight and never wanting to let go, not then, not ever.
Every muscle in Grave’s body seemed to go tight in the same instant that the cords in my neck went taut and my sex clamped onto him. I felt myself squeeze him like I had been transported outside my own body and I was watching from above. There was nothing in my mind, there was nothing in the world, except the four of us moving together.
“This,” Grave whispered in a hot, rushed gasp, “this is fate. This is forever.”
He drove deep one last time, and my walls quivered around him, holding him right where he was.
“Open your eyes,” he whispered. “I want to watch your face. To see your eyes when we…” he stopped short, clenching his jaws tight to keep from exploding. The tightness in his face, the tension I felt in the muscles underneath my legs told me that no matter what, he wasn’t going to last much longer.
And neither was I.
He was staring at me when I finally managed to work my eyes halfway open. “Don’t hold back,” I whispered. “We’ve got forever.”
He thrust his hips against me, hard and deep. Faster, faster, harder and somehow deeper he went until I could hardly breathe. The tension in my chest, the tight pleasure in my sex, gripped me to the core.
And then I felt him shudder inside me. His cock thickened, and he threw his head back to let out a roar that came like a nuclear bomb. I felt him stir, and then all at once, reality became a white-hot supernova.
All three bears clutched me, held me, and caressed me with kisses as my body let go. All the anger and hate and confusion I’d felt in the last month, all the resentment and sadness, all melted together.