Come Out Swinging (Reach for the Moon Book 2)

by Sam Hall

  “Female wolf shifters are the perfect compromise,” he said, taking my hand from Mason’s and spinning me around between the two of them, like this was some kind of naked dance. “You are your Mother’s daughter, with all of her soft flesh.” His hand ran down my side before I slapped it away. “Her sweetness that gives beneath our hard. We want to hunt you down and bring you to the ground like we did the first Moon Maiden, but you…” He stopped, staring at me with alien silver eyes I knew I’d seen before in that dark place. “You have our teeth and our claws and our strength and her terrible power. You are the result of the moon and the wolf coming together, and you have the power to bring us to our knees.”

  This was bad, whatever it was. I could still feel the bite of that dark place on my skin if I thought about it for long enough, but when you faced down an apex predator, you didn’t show fear. I pulled away from Mason, but I could feel the weight of him in my shadow as I approached Micah.

  “Well, then get down on them.”

  My voice was crisp and imperious, full of as much dominance as I could muster, and for a few heartbeats, there was a war fought in my eyes, in Micah’s. Or whoever else was riding him. Maybe this had been him all along, maybe we’d brought something back, something dark, when we’d returned from that other place. But I felt a surge of relief when he did so, dropping down to the floor, a strand of his hair falling over one silver eye. I brushed it away with one hand and replaced it with my thigh, resting it on his shoulder. I cupped his head in my hand and drew him closer.

  “She didn’t have a cunt, the Moon Maiden,” Micah told me as his hands went up to anchor me where I was, to keep me spread open for him. “She was as smooth and as seamless as an egg.” Those odd eyes slid along my thigh, taking in my wet folds before running a finger along them, collecting my slick and putting his finger in his mouth and sucking it clean. “We tore at her, chewed at her, forced our way in when she couldn’t give us one.”

  The kiss he laid on my inner thigh surprised me, and my fingers tangled within his hair.

  “The daughter that came from our union, from me and my brothers’ seed, she was like you.” He watched his finger sink inside me, and I panted, the intrusion somehow feeling insanely intimate. “The source of the world, where we come from, where we are always scrambling to get back to.” Another finger was pushed in for a few experimental strokes before a third joined it, my spine twitching at the stretch. His eyes met mine, full of deadly intensity now. “My daughter, my lover, my mate.” They darted to take in the guys, who’d clustered in closer. “We make her ours tonight, brothers. No need to chase this time. A nix holds the allure of a goddess, the fangs of a wolf, and the taste of pure honey.”

  I felt them, their touches and their kisses on my skin, as Micah or whatever rode him buried his face in me, but it was Mason’s lips on my neck teasing me to life. Somehow, I was caught between that—a gentleness and a savagery and that felt perfectly right. I heard Micah growl when I dug my fingers in his hair, grabbing a handful and pulling it tight. When I’d applied what must be painful pressure, he drew back, his face glistening in the gloom.

  “We just need a taste,” he said, almost in a whine. “We carry it with us, always needing more.”

  His lips became a snarl, his fangs gleaming as he pulled against my grip, harder and harder until I relented and he dove back in, licking, sucking, devouring me in a messy frenzy, turning the brutal tension up until I was fucking screaming. That seemed to be what he was waiting for. He scooped me up, not even a tremor in those arms, before throwing me down on the bed.

  “Hands and knees,” he said, the crack of his voice making my body move on automatic. “Just like we did the first time.”

  A thumb stroked the tight knot of my arse right as his cock nudged into my aching cunt. No one protested when he pushed the head in, teasing me with it until I begged for more.

  “We need to mark her, brothers, claim her as ours. With our teeth, with our seed, with our blood. She’s ours.” The last came out as little more than a snarl.

  I felt the bed dip as each one of them got close, but it was Mason who tipped my head up with one hand and guided his cock between my lips with the other. My throat felt curiously elastic, expanding to take more of his length than I would have thought possible, to the sound of the others stroking their cocks. Then Micah and Mason pushed in. My body fought it because Micah was insanely thick and Mason instinctively wanted to go deep, but as they fought their way in, something inside me settled. I could see her, that blind eyed goddess, watching me writhe between my mates, catching everything and nothing, and somehow, this felt like where I was supposed to be. My hips flexed, forcing Micah that slight bit deeper, a low growl forming in his throat as his thumb worked my lubed crease.

  “That’s it, that’s our girl.”

  And then, we moved.

  It probably would have looked like I was being dominated right now to anyone who stumbled in, but the odd thing was they were completely at my mercy. I could feel the throb of their cocks as I moved forward, swallowing Mason or pushing back and sinking down on Micah. Their fingers bit down on my hips and my scalp, but they didn’t try to hinder me in any way.

  “Take your pleasure, little goddess,” Micah said. “Take ours too.”

  And I was. I felt so fucking full, the persistent feeling of emptiness I’d suffered this evening completely eradicated, especially when Micah pushed his thumb in. It was a feeling I ran towards, pushing back, pushing forward, harder, faster. It was difficult work as my body fought both of them, struggling to cope with their lengths and girths, but the glorious fucking feeling was its own reward. My thighs spread farther and my head tipped to just the right angle to let them in deeper.

  “That’s it. We’re as much a part of you as you are us. We fuse, little goddess, that’s what we did, what we do. When we tore the Moon Maiden apart, we took what she was inside us and fused with her. She became us and we became her until she was restored by her mother, full as the moon herself with our daughter. The first wolf shifter was a woman, the mother of us all—an ulva. From her came all the other wolf shifters, more sons than daughters, and they ran their mates to the ground as well, fused with her, filled her with their seed, and the cycle continued. But that cycle was broken, made neat and acceptable to the Christian humans, aping their pair bonding in a way that we were never meant to. What our daughter was became demonised, an impure, unclean thing.”

  I couldn’t focus on his words, but I saw pictures in my mind as I was caught up by the song of my body. What he was saying was important, I could feel that, but this was more desperate, more immediate. Something inside me thrashed and writhed, reaching out, reaching for…

  The prickle on my skin let me know what was coming, but it wasn’t me, not yet. Instead, with every stroke, every gasp, every moan from the guys surrounding me, something inside me swelled. Beyond bodies responding to the delicious friction we were creating, there was this. Like a tide coming in that kept on coming, the wave rose, a great body, but not of water, of power. My eyes flicked open at that realisation, looking up at Mason as I swallowed his cock and seeing his eyes, everyone’s eyes, shining bright, bright silver. Like the moon. I’d always thought Mother Moon and all the stories I’d heard growing up were just quaint folk tales, but now? Whatever this was, whatever I was, there was a reason we’d been wise to be careful around sex, because we were like a tinderbox being struck again and again.

  Setting us on fire.

  Mason lit first, panting my name between bitten off breaths, his hips still, his cock swelling, and my tongue flickered like a snake along his length right as he exploded. I swallowed, him, his cum, working hard to get it down before it all came spilling out. When he yanked free, I gasped for air, cum spattering over the bedspread.

  But his wasn’t the only load to land there. Increasingly frenzied groans that matched my own filled the room, and my eyes slid sideways at the most desperate. Declan’s fangs were down, his face a s
avage mask as he wrapped his hand brutally around his knot, right before he erupted. Each shot of his cum burned like cold fire on my skin, punctuated by the sounds of his pants.

  “Paige…!” Lorcan ground out my name, his cum shooting through the air and landing across my back like a lash, then my head twisted sideways to see a almost mad-looking Zack do the same.

  “That’s it…” Micah crooned, stroking his hand up and down my back, rubbing the mess into my skin, but when he was done, his focus on bringing this to its natural conclusion redoubled. He slammed into me now, harder and harder, and my body just seemed to bloom under this terrible pace, my mouth unable to close from all the groans that escaped me. My cunt clutched around him, as if to hold him still or draw him deeper, so he went for the later. I met him stroke for stroke, head hanging now, just needing that little bit more.

  Well, I got a whole lot more than that, didn’t I?

  His strokes stopped as his body pressed against mine, only a small gap maintained by his knot, but my body wouldn’t accept that. I let out a long moan as I felt myself part, as I felt him wedge in deeper, as I stretched so fucking tight around him. Someone’s fingers worked my clit so it felt like the most intense, most perfect of pleasures. Tears ran down my cheeks as his knot finally popped inside, pressed up hard against the exact spot I needed it.

  “One more,” Micah said gently, stroking me like you would a frightened animal. “One more, and you take your first step towards your heritage.”

  I didn’t know what he wanted, but the thread of steel in his voice made it so I needed to try anyway. I moved slowly, gingerly, only able to manage the most shallow of thrusts, while my skin felt too tight, unable to contain the power for much longer. Perhaps because I wasn’t supposed to.

  “Beautiful girl.” I felt Micah’s body plastered against mine, his voice in my ear. “The most splendid daughter of the moon. And mine.” The edge came back to his voice, a hungry, needy thing, which was fine because I was too. Instinctively, I bared my neck, performing the most vulnerable gesture a wolf could. He could lash out and rip my throat out, but as his teeth set against my skin, he bit down.

  “Micah!” Zack said belatedly, shaking himself free from the spell, but it was too late.

  One, two, three, I felt the jerks of my body almost absently as what I was started to rise above it. My awareness spread out over the darkening landscape, detecting infinite human and inhuman consciousness as I sped over it, a shadowy presence. But it was one that drew me like an arrow from a bow, over hills and through forests, down long winding roads, past sheep and cattle before we came to his place. I slammed down through the roof of a large, well-made house, down corridors and through doors until I found him. He stared at the mirror in the bathroom, blank eyed and impassive until me. I seeped into him like water through cracks, past the heavy weight of my aunt’s power. I wasn’t going to blast it away because then she’d know and double down on her sins. Instead, I snuck through the defences she’d slapped upon Aidan, digging down, down to the core that I now knew belonged to me.

  Aidan was mine, and no one was going to take him from me.

  A seed was deposited, deep, deep inside him where Nance would never think to check, cocky in her success as she was. It was a small thing, but it would grow slowly.

  Until we returned.

  Chapter 24

  “What the…” I felt Micah roll off me, everyone falling down on the bed. “What the fuck did I do?”

  “You have a mate,” Zack said grimly. “I take from this you weren’t in the driver’s seat.”

  “I…”

  I rolled over and saw my newest mate was sitting up on the bed, looking at me wide-eyed. Those strong hands, that could be curled into devastating fists, shook now as they reached out for me. I jumped when his fingers touched my still bleeding mark, which made him jerk them back. I caught them midway and placed them back on my wet skin, feeling a long, deep shiver go through me.

  The sensation was intimate, hot, like his hands were delving somewhere much lower to where I still ached pleasantly. I looked at him with heavily lidded eyes, feeling pushed down by the afterglow and the heavy response to this.

  “Is this… Does it work when you bite her?” Declan asked.

  “Only Micah can tell us that,” Zack replied.

  I grabbed at Micah’s hand, dragged him down beside me so we lay facing each other, feeling it, that pull. I didn’t know if I had another orgasm in me, but this? I snuggled in close, sensing his hesitance, then felt the speed with which he wrapped his arms around me. He pulled me close so I was forced to breathe in his heady woody scent and match my breath to his. For some time, it was just this, just him and me going loose on the bed and sinking into each other.

  I could answer Declan’s question. With Lorcan and Zack, I couldn’t read their minds or delve into their memories, but I did carry this strong, true connection to them. Like the buzzing feeling I’d sensed before, which seemed more sexual in nature, these were solid. Bonds that tied us together, unbreakable. So what was this with Micah?

  In some ways, it was a bit like Lorcan. I only dimly remembered the stories of us together as kids, so for me, our relationship was the sudden joining of strangers. Everything that came from him, including the snark, I liked, wanted to be around, see more of, and get closer to. The pull was stronger in a way than with Zack. It didn’t mean our bond was weaker, but there was less to discover about Zack. We’d spent so much time together, between work, sex, and companionship, that I felt really solid in my relationship with him. With Micah, it was a bit like discovering a whole new country, one I was keen to explore.

  It came slowly at first, this feeling of warmth, of intensity, of need being held back, tamped down, not allowed its head. Emotionally, there was a shake to him just like his hand had. He reached for me, expecting to get knocked away. I opened my eyes, craned my neck back, and found his eyes, saw the wonder and awe there, then reached up to stroke the side of his face. His eyes fell closed, and he rolled into the caress, rubbing his face against it. He was mine, I was his, and we’d work out the rest of it.

  “It works,” Lorcan said. “I know that look, that feeling. She hit me like a freight train when she bit me. I couldn’t breathe but didn’t need to because I had her.”

  Micah frowned slightly, as if those words hurt him somehow. He pulled me in close, pushing his face in against my neck, and fitted his teeth to my bite, making me squirm. There was no pain, no clamp down, but it was as if he was re-experiencing the whole thing, for himself this time, not what rode him. We needed to work out what the hell that was, along with everything else, but when he pulled back, licking the skin once to scrape away the blood, the answers started to come.

  “I…I wanted this, you, us.” Micah’s deep voice rolled over me. “I didn’t hold out much hope. You know the others well, but me? I was just some interloper, tagging along for the ride. I know you said we were pack that night, but…” A long sigh seeped out. “I figured you’d deal with me last. Your connection with the others is so much stronger.”

  “Not now,” I said.

  “No.” His eyes faded back to grey, staring into mine. “I don’t know how it happened or why. I felt him, what he was doing, what he was saying. His words were mine, his actions what I wanted to do, but they seemed to come from somewhere deep down. So deep, I didn’t know they were there. You said a giant wolf took Mason when you were out of it at the hospital?”

  “He was so massive, it felt like he went on forever. There was something…eternal about him.”

  “And powerful. I felt that like a kick in the guts. It was like riding lightning.” He frowned slightly. “I…I didn’t hurt you?”

  “Not in any way I didn’t want. I’m sore.” His frown deepened, but when I stretched out lazily, his eyes took that in. “But a good sore. I’ll carry the feel of you around in me tomorrow.”

  “What?”

  “When you get a good hard fuck, girls feel it afterwards. It�
��s almost like a bruise, but a good kind. It’s like remembered pleasure, it makes everything really sensitive for a while.”

  Micah had gone really, really still, studying my face and processing my words before his hand slid to my thigh.

  “So when we get in the car and drive to the city, you’ll feel me deep inside you. Your clit won’t totally pull back into its little hood. It’ll still be kinda swollen and raw.”

  “Fuck…you gotta stop with that,” Declan said on a groan. “I feel like my balls have been wrung dry, but my cock’s getting hard again.”

  There were several groans of agreement at that.

  “Whatever that was, whoever he is, we need to pursue this in the morning,” Mason said with a yawn. “No more sex until we work out what the hell this is.” More groans at that.

  “No?” Micah replied, but his eyes stayed on me. “No sex then, but in that car, I’m gonna be in the backseat and you’re gonna need to be wearing a skirt.”

  “Why? I never wear…”

  His fingers slid up, just toying with the crease where my groin met my thighs.

  “We’ll have to buy some fresh clothes before we pick up Bridget,” Zack said in a low voice. “But for Paige, it’s a skirt and no underwear.”

  “Fucking hell,” Lorcan said. “I dunno if I’m in heaven or hell.”

  Chapter 25

  “I’m not wearing that,” I said, looking at the several different skirt options the guys held out. We were in the local Kmart, picking up some supplies for us and Bridget. She was being released today, and we were keen to get out of town. The farther I could get her from her mother, the better. We’d ditched the old Toyota and were renting another 4WD to take us all home.