Revenge of the Wronged

by Hettie Ivers

“What—what does that mean?”

  “It means …”—he swallowed, as if forcing down an invisible, bitter pill—“I will offer him a full pardon for his previous betrayal as well as his transgressions at Salvador.”

  Transgressions? As in Raul’s killing and maiming spree? “Alex—”

  “I will … apologize,” he pushed the word out with a strained smile of reassurance that failed to mask the bitterness I sensed gutting him. “And I will invite him to rejoin the pack as a higher-ranking beta.” A mechanical nod accompanied this evenly spoken pronouncement.

  I bit my lip and nodded back. I didn’t know what to say. “Thank you” seemed inadequate. Inappropriate. I let my forehead fall forward into his chest. “You hate this,” I said instead.

  “No. This is the logical course. I’ll do anything it takes to win Raul over and get him back.” For you, he left unsaid. “Al and I agree, if making peace with Raul means keeping both you and Jussara with us, safe and happy, we’ll do whatever is necessary to work through our issues with him.”

  Issues was minimizing it just a tad. And it was nice of him to lump Jussara’s happiness and safety into the mix for the sake of my Catholic girl guilt.

  “Even if it means making peace with Gabriel as well,” he added.

  “What about Bethany?” I barely breathed the question, my eyes lowering to observe my own shaky fingers idling over the white linen fabric covering Alex’s chest. “What if … what if he—they do something … to hurt her—”

  “They won’t.” His fingers fisted the roots of my hair, tugging my head back until my eyes had no choice but to meet his.

  “How can you know—”

  “I’ll handle it, Milena.” Sharpness edged his tone, the Alpha in him responding. But it was followed by a more gentle, “Let me worry about tomorrow, please?”

  His mouth came down onto mine, his tongue parting my willing lips and obliterating any chance for further argument. Hypnotized by the stroke of his tongue and the pull of fire it ignited in my belly, I somehow ended up beneath him on the bed across the room, writhing and mewling like a cat in heat, nearly forgetting everything else I’d wanted to discuss.

  “How—” I managed to puff when at last he allowed me sufficient oxygen. “How can you be so calm about this? About taking Raul back? About the dead seers?” The toothy grin that split his swollen lips as his hungry eyes drew back to assess me was almost enough to permanently scramble my senses. “How can you look so happy?”

  “Princess,” he said with a dark chuckle, “I am anything but calm right now.” His erection ground against my inner thigh, proving this point. “I’m happy because I can smell how wet you are for me, and because I’m about to be inside you. Clothes off, baby.” His fingers were already undoing the button and zipper of my jeans, and I wasn’t about to argue.

  Arching my back, I pulled my shirt up and maneuvered it over my head while Alex yanked my jeans and underwear down my legs. With my newfound strength, I wound up breaking the clasp of my bra in my haste to undo it. When I swore in frustration, Alex laughed and ripped the scrap of material in half at the center, promising to replace it as his mouth descended to my chest.

  My empty pussy wept and contracted as he proceeded to make a meal out of my nipples, which were now straining toward the heavens and hard enough to cut glass. As I panted and babbled, my hands scrabbled to get his shirt off—a task that proved to be even more challenging than my bra clasp had been in my lust-impaired state.

  When Alex sucked my left nipple so hard my throbbing clit fluttered and zinged to life with what felt shockingly close to the beginnings of an orgasm, I settled for ripping the fine linen fabric straight down his back.

  “A-lex,” I whined. My naked pelvis undulated in supplication—meeting nothing but the cruel, empty space between our bodies.

  He bit down on my nipple and my hips shot straight off the mattress, making far too fleeting contact with his wrist and forearm as he quickly freed his straining cock from the confinement of his shorts.

  Just the briefest glimpse of his swollen head leaking with pre-cum had my eyes shifting, my mouth watering, and my gums aching. I was officially an animal. I moaned and raked my fingernails across his back, realizing too late when he hissed through his teeth that the tips of my nails had partially morphed into claws.

  I didn’t have time to process petty emotions like guilt or regret, though, much less voice an apology for drawing blood, because with a snarl Alex slapped me squarely between my spread, drenched thighs—the thoroughly unexpected retaliation so scandalously hot, my swollen little bud detonated in orgasm upon contact with his palm.

  My scream was cut short and died in my throat when he gripped me by the hips and forced his full length to the hilt inside of my convulsing channel in one brutal thrust, his weight descending to trap my body in place and steal whatever breath was left from my lungs.

  With a choked whimper, I offered him my throat, my sex gushing and clenching out of control around him as his teeth laid claim to my neck. My body went limp in surrender—save for the grasping internal muscle spasms milking the thick appendage now plowing me with a strength that was jarring.

  God, but did we fit! Alex was the best kind of too big. And I would never get enough of him filling me—the sensation of him owning every tight inch of me with his forceful thrusts and masculine groans of satisfaction.

  Muscled forearms hooked beneath my thighs, spreading me as wide as the laws of anatomy would permit in order to access all that was his for the taking. And take he did. Pinning my open knees flat against the mattress on either side of my head, he fucked me. Hard. Deep. Shunting into me with feral grunts and dirty taunts I might’ve found obscene if not for the fact I was otherwise preoccupied crying his name and coming apart again.

  When he unloaded inside of me, it felt different somehow—like the primal act of an animal marking his territory. He licked and kissed the bite already healing on my neck before reclaiming my mouth with gentle lips and soft, coaxing sweeps of his tongue.

  “I love you. Waited my whole life … won’t lose you … so perfect … so good …” he whispered disjointedly as his lips cherished mine with sweet, reverent kisses. “Precious, beautiful girl … never let anything happen to you … do anything … promise to make you so happy …”

  I moaned in post-coital bliss as his hands seemed to stroke me everywhere at once, tender sentiments flowing like honey from those full, gorgeous lips of his as he proceeded to kiss every inch of my flushed, sweaty face, until finally, amid words of love, I heard him murmur, “Mm-mmm, pretty baby … going to come so hard in your mouth now …”

  He’d announced it so sweetly that the sluggish synapses in my brain were still struggling to connect dots as I felt his girth pulling out of me. A moment later he was over me on his knees, a pillow propped beneath my head, his powerful thighs straddling my shoulders. One hand firmly fisted his hard, wet dick while the knuckles of his other hand stroked my cheekbone in a loving gesture that seemed at odds with the wicked look of lustful domination darkening his features.

  Yep, definitely marking his territory. I didn’t hesitate to open my mouth and accept him inside when the hand stroking my cheek tangled in the roots of my hair and he guided his fat cockhead to my lips.

  “Yesss,” he sighed, hooded eyes rolling back in his head. “Fuck, baby … suck me good …”

  My body trembled with renewed excitement as I slurped our combined fluids off the head of his big shaft, acute arousal scorching through me like wildfire. This was not a sexual position I’d ever contemplated, much less one I would’ve imagined liking so much. But I soon found myself gripping his muscled ass cheeks, greedy for more as he rocked his hips forward, taking my mouth with calm, measured strokes, using his hold on my hair to angle my head to better receive his length.

  “That’s it … so good … deeper … suck hard, baby … work for my cum …” His other hand reached behind him to play between my swollen folds, his adept thu
mb circling my hard, slippery nub, his long fingers feeding the cum steadily leaking from me back inside my eager hole. I arched my pelvis off the mattress as high as possible to ease his access, rocking up onto my toes to take more of his fingers. “Mmm … princess, your pretty mouth was made for my fucking …”

  At any other time I would’ve rolled my eyes, maybe laughed in his face at such absurd, sexist words of praise. But as it was I was too damned turned on and close to orgasm myself to let the pragmatist or the feminist in me interfere with the confusing, unexpected high that I felt lying beneath his strong body, my face trapped between his huge thighs, ensnared by his intense, possessive eyes as he thrust harder and deeper into the depths of my mouth to the back of my throat. It was insanity, but in that moment I wanted nothing more than to be made for Alex’s fucking. Every last part of me.

  It must’ve been reflected in my eyes how much I wanted that because he growled and sped up, his thrusting organ less careful and controlled, his invading fingers less patient. And without warning or requesting permission, he forced the big head of his cock all the way into my throat. Undeterred by my instantaneous, reflexive gagging or my frantic hands that clutched at his thighs, he pressed on, meeting my wide eyes with a dark, commanding look that somehow made my throat obey, relax and open for his deeper possession.

  “Ahh, fuuck, yesss … ah, baby … yes,” he groaned and thrust until his balls were kissing my lips and his shaft expanded and flexed against the confines of my throat, pulsing and spurting rivers of hot cum straight into the depths of my belly before I could even taste it.

  I couldn’t breathe and spots were beginning to form in my vision. But I didn’t care. Because it felt incongruously reassuring having him lodged so deeply in my mouth. And his look of pure adoration, his grunted expletives and words of dirty praise had my body twisting in on itself, jerking and coming apart beneath him even before his thumb pressed down on my clit and held.

  “There you go, baby,” he purred as I whimpered and squealed soundlessly around the still-hard organ blocking my airway, eyes watering and hips bucking spastically against his marauding fingertips. “My sweet, dirty princess gets so hot swallowing my cock,” he lauded, sounding nothing short of awed as he curled three fingers inside of my fluttering channel, drawing out my orgasm. “That’s it … give it all to me …”

  My only response was to keep coming, my pelvis thrusting into his penetrating fingers with every last ounce of energy I had in me. The last thing I heard as my vision narrowed and I sagged in bliss atop the bed was Alex’s concerned voice telling me too late to breathe through my nose.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  I came to with Alex between my thighs, blowing lightly on my sensitive little bundle of nerves. “That’s not how mouth-to-mouth resuscitation works,” I croaked drily.

  “I beg to differ.” He raised his head, grinning like the devil. “You’re going to be the death of me, you know that?”

  “You?” I balked, coming up onto my elbows. “I’m the one who narrowly escaped being suffocated to death by a giant dong just now.”

  “And you loved every minute of it,” he teased. Then he shook his head. “Did you just say dong?”

  I shrugged, feeling my cheeks flush pink. “Maybe.” I flushed harder, knowing what a lame thing it was to be blushing about after what we’d just done. But my body’s blushing trigger had always been faulty.

  With a shout of laughter, Alex climbed over me and proceeded to smother me in kisses, followed by raspberries, until I was giggling hysterically and pleading for him to stop.

  “We need a shower,” he announced.

  Before I could utter a word of protest, he’d hoisted me over his shoulder—a sweaty, giggling, sexed-up, messy wreck—and was marching us through the bathroom door with my naked ass pointed high in the air. But as realization dawned that he intended to take me into the same fancy shower room where Jacinda and I had done battle, I began to flail my legs and beat my fists against his back.

  “No! Stop, Alex. I can’t go in there again!”

  “Yes, you can,” he insisted, his long, sure strides taking us into a bathroom that I had never seen before.

  Pushing the mop of hair from my confused eyes, I lifted my head upright over his shoulder to survey the room as he trod through a second door within the bathroom and turned in place, snatching up towels and other items I barely registered, affording me a 360-degree view. Everything was different. Not one thing was as I remembered it.

  “I had it redone.”

  My brow furrowed as I took it all in. Even the layout was different, the space reconfigured. “You—what?”

  “I remodeled,” he elucidated unnecessarily.

  “You remodeled your bathroom for me?”

  “No, I remodeled it for Kai.”

  I smacked his shoulder. “After I tore it apart,” he added, almost inaudibly, as he lowered me to my feet and angled his body away from me.

  He’d torn it apart? When? Avoiding my questioning gaze, he raked his fingers through his hair.

  “I was … upset,” he muttered. “With myself … when you got hurt.” Tortured black eyes met mine as he looked down his shoulder at me, all trace of cocky Alpha gone as he confessed, “I was so angry at myself for pushing you away … for being so mean … for leaving you all alone when I knew how vulnerable and depressed you were feeling.”

  He turned to face me, his naked body magnificent, his semi-erect cock hardening despite his contrite posture as remorse-filled eyes settled on my pebbled nipples, then drifted lower. I marveled at how he managed to still look so formidable while shuffling on his feet with two big fluffy white towels and a loofah tucked absently under his arm.

  “I was in a meeting in Tokyo when it happened. I should’ve teleported back the moment I felt the blow dealt your cheekbone.” He swallowed, eyes traveling back up to gauge the shocked expression I knew he’d find on my face.

  He’d actually felt Jacinda’s slap after all?

  “But I ignored it.” He winced. “Told myself I was imagining things. I didn’t want to feel you. Didn’t want to want you when I thought I’d never have you. I’m sorry,” he rasped. “I should’ve come back when I felt your wrist snap. I shouldn’t have tried so hard to ignore you, to dismiss the fear, pain, and adrenaline I felt flooding your system—my system. You aren’t responsible for what happened to Jacinda. I can’t even blame Kai. What happened between you two was my fault.”

  “But I started it, Alex—”

  “No. I started it. Before Jacinda. You were scared and desperate. You were trying to send me a message any way you could.” He exhaled, pausing to study the newly retiled ceiling above us. “And if Jacinda hadn’t been dead already by the time I got back, I would’ve ended her far less humanely than Kai did.”

  “I don’t want you killing anyone because of me, Alex. Ever.”

  “I know.” He nodded calmly, looking me dead in the eyes. “But I will anyway. And I would’ve killed Jacinda.”

  “Alex—”

  “For me.”

  “But Alex—”

  “It’s who I am!” His words vibrated through me as they echoed off the bathroom walls. “I can’t change overnight, Milena. And I won’t shut off or ignore my protective instincts where you’re concerned ever again.” He closed the distance between us and cupped the side of my face in his palm. “Can you forgive me? For what happened? For being who I am and not what you deserve?”

  I nodded. “I just want to forget about it, Alex, to move forward. I just want … I want …”

  I wanted him to hold me. I wanted to run away with him somewhere the rest of the world would never find us. I wanted to know the bond we’d been forging wouldn’t be torn apart tomorrow. That he wouldn’t be taken from me like everyone else I cared about always was.

  “What do you want, baby?” His fingers caressed my jawline. “I promise you can have it. Whatever it is. Just tell me. I’ll make it happen.”

  No. He could
n’t. “How can you be so sure everything will work out tomorrow?”

  “Because I have you,” came his confident reply, his eyes smiling even before the corners of his mouth joined in. “The important thing is we’re going to be together. No matter what.”

  I didn’t comprehend how he could be so positive he would still have me after tomorrow when I wasn’t even sure of that myself. Because I couldn’t choose. And I didn’t know what I was going to do if it came to it.

  “Raul.” The name that had always inspired such awe and excitement in me now fell from my lips like a burden, reverberating through the giant bathroom like dread. “He’s still my brother, Alex. I can’t—what if … I can’t choo—”

  The pad of his thumb settled over my lips. “I won’t ask you to.” He bent forward and pressed a kiss to my forehead. “I’ll never ask it.” He drew back and tipped my face up to his. “You’re my pack now. My home. I’ll go wherever you decide you want to go. Whether it’s Bariloche or Santa Cruz or Berkley. I’ll work the goddamn sandwich counter at Whole Foods if that’s where you want to be. I’ll enroll at the University of Wisconsin if you choose to attend school there. Anywhere, baby. Whatever you want.”

  “Wisconsin?” I cracked a smile, even as I wrinkled my nose in distaste. “I’m a California girl.” I shivered. Goosebumps broke out over my naked flesh at the mere contemplation of a Wisconsin winter. “And you wouldn’t make it through your first shift at Whole Foods. Let’s be serious. You can’t just give up your life leading the Reinoso pack to follow me around—”

  “I can do whatever I want. And I’ll have you know that I can out-sandwich-assemble the likes of Tony and Carlos any day of the fucking week!” He tossed the towels and loofah to the tile floor in a show of childish temper that had me biting my lip to stifle an abrupt attack of church giggles, even as he proceeded to pace the space in front of me, continuing his rant.

  “I’ve spent over a century beholden to my family’s pack. I don’t regret it. But I will regret it from this moment forward if I have to watch you give up all of the things you’ve always wanted in life to shoulder that burden with me.”