by Sam Hall
Whoa, that word. It had a whole other resonance now. Lupindorf was where I was born, but it felt…sullied now. Nance, the family, generations of bullshit, that was what I thought about when I heard the name. No, the city, the gym, that was home now. I grabbed some more yoga pants and T-shirts, looking at the cluster of guys in defiance.
“Oh yes, grab more of them. They make your arse look fucking fantastic,” Declan said with a grin.
“Especially when they hug really tight” —Lorcan’s smile grew lazy— “and you can pretty much see the lips of your—” I put my fingers to his lips to stop the words from coming.
“Don’t say pussy in the shops,” I hissed.
“Why? You just did.”
“We agreed we’d try out some low-level sexual things to see what happened,” Micah said, low and sexy but with just a little hesitance. I could see it in those heated grey eyes, the twin desires to thrust the skirt he was holding out to me and tell me to put it on with every ounce of dominance he had, and the fear he had no right to. That ended up sealing the deal for me. We’d woken up a little awkwardly, but we were tied to each other now, so it was time to start making allowances for the other.
“Yess…” Declan hissed when I snatched the skirt from him. This one was knee length and made of a heavier fabric, so it was unlikely to be flipped up by the wind. But his hand covered mine when I reached for underwear. “No underwear, remember?”
“Fine,” I said with a smile, “but you lot go commando too. You want to watch and listen to me get fingered in the back seat? Want to fill the cab with the scent of sex and my pussy? Then no undies for you either. I want you just as easily accessible, even if I don’t choose to touch any of you.”
Zack laughed first, grabbing the packs of undies they’d selected and hooking them back up on the displays. “That’s my girl. Show us who’s boss.”
“And some of you are going to miss out entirely because you’re driving Bridget in the hire car.”
“Oh.”
I smirked as they each looked at the other, trying to decide who was gonna do what.
“I’ll drive our car,” Mason said.
I looked him over, and it didn’t take long to see that I was right back where I started with him. I had to remind myself of what had happened, of us together, of him being swallowed down by the giant wolf.
“I thought I could take the easy way out, take myself out of the picture to protect the rest of you,” he said by way of explanation. “I should’ve known Paige wouldn’t let that stand. But what we saw, that’s fucking dangerous and seems to come when we connect.” His eyes flicked to Micah. “She might still be sensitive, but get her off, and get her off often. I want to hear her pants, her cries, her begging for more over and over. We need to know what the wolf bloke wants.”
“Sounds like a plan I could definitely get behind,” Micah said, putting an arm around my shoulders and brushing a kiss across my temple.
“So we’re leaving?”
The flirty edge to the morning was well and truly gone. I stood in the carpark with Bridge, the bruises on her face all the more stark in the bright light. The doctors had been shocked at her recovery, but for a shifter, it was awful. We healed so fast, remaining wounds were almost an affront. I went to hug my cousin and she let me, but the stiffness in her embrace hurt me.
“Time for a new life, to start over. Time to be safe.”
“And what about you, Paige?” she asked me, a shrewd light entering those brown eyes. “Will you start over? Will you be safe?”
The words died in my throat as I remembered Aidan just standing there, staring at a hollow-eyed reflection.
“There’s people I have to go back for, including Nance. I have unfinished business, but until I know what I’m doing with this new power, I’m not confronting her. And to be blunt, I need to know Nance can’t hurt you anymore. What she did, what she intended to do…”
“What she intends to do to Selma. I know my sister is an uptight bitch, but no one deserves to have another person forced upon them. I dunno, is a straight man raping a lesbian worse or better in the sexual assault spectrum?”
“Aidan won’t touch Selma. I saw to that last night. It’s all part of the discovery process we’re going through right now.”
Bridge was hurting, I could see that. I half considered sitting with her for the drive, but she made the decision for me.
“Fine. I assume I’m going with your mates over there?”
“You can go in whichever car you want.”
She nodded solemnly, such an odd sight on the face of someone who was always full of mischief.
“I’ll go with them, give me some time to think.” Her eyes rolled up to meet mine. “But I want to see this gym that made you such a badass. I…I don’t ever want to be in a position of weakness like that again.”
“I’ll train you myself,” I said. “I run a women’s self-defence class.”
For the first time, she mustered a weak smile.
“Thanks, I’d like that.”
Chapter 26
It was right about now I hated my decision. Declan sat on one side, Micah on the other, Mason in the driver’s seat, following Zack, who had Lorcan and Bridget in the hire car. I was worried about Lorcan’s snarkiness but then considered it’d probably be the best thing for her right now. Gallows humour was better than none. But as we rolled out of town, I hated feeling like we were running away with our tails between our legs. I hated the pain Bridget had been forced to endure, and the stuff surely to come. I hated leaving the district under a cloud, again, to run away to the city, again. I hated I was right back where I started in some ways.
But I also hated that I wasn’t. Mason’s eyes flicked to the rear vision mirror, catching quick glimpses of Micah, Declan, and me. I hated Micah’s hand on my knee, drawing small circles on the skin, my focus barely able to move away from that small gesture, wondering if or when he was going to move it farther up my thigh. I hated that Declan had folded up a towel under me, gesturing for me to sit on it with a smirk before latching my seat belt like I was a child. I hated the press of their bodies, the scent of them that made my bones liquid. I hated that no matter how much pain my cousin was going through, my focus was entirely on them. That same humming feeling, though not as strong, filled the cab, linking each one of us together. I hated that I knew they were hard and straining under their jeans, all because of me.
“Touch her and get her out of her head,” Mason said. I didn’t often see the similarities between Zack and Mason, but that bossy tone? It was becoming more apparent.
“While my cousin is in the other car, being driven away from hospital after being forced out of the only home she’s ever known by her homicidal mother?” I snapped.
“While you start to test this power that seems to rise when we connect sexually.” His focus swung to the others. “Keep your dicks in your pants. Just make this about her. Micah, if you feel that…presence that rose yesterday, let us know. Everyone stops at that.”
“Right,” I heard the others say.
No, not right, but at the same time, yes, yes, yes. Declan seemed to sense my distress, lifting my hands and brushing his lips against them.
“This feels selfish to you.”
I bristled at him telling me how I felt, but he was right.
“How can it not?”
“What can you do to help Bridget right now? Selma? Aidan?” The last was more of a question than the others. I hadn’t shared what I knew about him with them yet. “How can you do anything to make things better?”
“I know.” My eyes dropped down, following those circles that Micah drew on my knee. Round and round and round. It was like us, a circle of power, and I felt something prickle in response. “It just feels like I should.”
“You should do exactly as Mason says—let us make you feel good, help us to understand what the fuck just happened. You saw that massive wolf before when you rescued him.” I nodded jerkily as he pushed my
skirt up slightly, inch by inch, baring my thigh to the car. “He comes when we use power, he comes when we fuck. I don’t see any raping scumbags around here to fight, so I guess it’s this instead.”
He’d inched the skirt up far enough that with his keen eyes and Micah’s, they’d be able to see my pussy in the shadow between my legs.
“Fuck…” Micah hissed, his finger stilling. But I reached over, forcing it to move again. That circle, there was something to it. It was like the power was wound up tighter and tighter, growing in its intensity, but so was my response to them. I hated the groans that came at the first flush of my slick, trickling down my arse to collect on the towel beneath me.
“We packed several towels, Mase?” Declan asked.
“Yeah,” he ground out.
“Good, because I think our girl is gonna soak all of them.”
Declan’s mouth was on mine, hungrily devouring my lips in ways his younger self would never have dared. Because this was a man, confident in his desires, in his ability to serve mine, and I felt like I had totally done the right thing by picking things up again years later. My hands dug into his hair as the bland landscape of field after field of farmland whizzed past. There were very few cars around, being a remote road, but we kept everything below the waist, except his kisses. I slowed him down, sucking his full lip between mine, feeling the ragged plush of his beard as I made myself thoroughly reacquainted with his mouth.
“You’ve had practise,” I said, pulling back.
“Not as much as you think.” He pecked a more chaste kiss on my lips. “I knew I needed to move on, find my mate. I went on dates sometimes, but…”
“No one gets over you, Paige,” Mason said, his eyes blazing in the mirror. “You get under our skin and stay there. Other women, they don’t matter. All you can think is, ‘she’s not Paige.’”
“It’s why he’s been such a grumpy cunt for so long,” Micah drawled, looking at me with hooded eyes. “All work and no pussy” —his hand dipped down between my legs, swiping between my folds before I could close them— “makes Mase a very dull boy.” He licked his fingers, neat as a cat, and then smiled toothily.
“I’m starting to seriously reconsider this plan,” the man himself rumbled in response.
Micah just laughed, wild and chaotic. “Mate, we’ve got another nine and a half hours of this.”
“Fuck…”
It was all circles.
I was glad for all my yoga training as each man had a leg on his lap, spreading me wide, flicking the skirt down whenever a car came close, but otherwise, they were driving me out of my mind. Their fingers traced long lazy loops on my inner thigh, sensitising the skin, making me ache for them to inch closer. My clit throbbed sulkily, and that bruised feeling I’d described so eloquently to Micah the night before grew and transmuted into a need for more. A little moan escaped my lips, met by a low chuckle from the two men beside me, but not Mason. His eyes met mine for way too long. Thank fuck the road was straight and empty, but it took us starting to veer off for him to drag them away.
“You said you were gonna get me off multiple times,” I growled out. “How about we start with one?”
More chuckles, but those hands moved closer to where I needed them, my head landing on the headrest behind me, my eyes closing. More circles, but much tighter ones now. One did lazy loops around my clit, skirting the sensitive nub, but the movement was enough to pull at the hood, making me gush. Another hand was there to collect that, circling my entrance, dipping in slightly before ringing it over and over.
“Jesus Christ, I don’t wanna be a nix anymore,” I sobbed. “I’m fucking horny all the time, and I’ve got five mates who never give me what I want.” I stiffened as a smaller circle was drawn much lower, around my arse. “And you guys won’t let up on the butt stuff.”
“You say you don’t want it,” Micah rumbled against my neck. “And if you don’t want to take us there, we won’t push, but…” I tensed, feeling two fingers push inexorably deeper inside my cunt. His little finger brushed the ring of muscle below, and my pussy clamped down tight. “But your reactions, they say you like this. Your cunt is strangling my fingers. I want to push another one in, but I can’t, not until you relax.”
At his words, the death grip inside me released, only to be rewarded by another finger. “I’m thinking a couple of flicks from Dec’s fingers and you’d be coming all over my hand, coating my palm with your sweet slick…” Dec’s hands moved just as Micah described, my spine tightening in response. I let out one, two, three little pants in rapid succession, and then a rush of pleasure, of a deep down ache of a good kind, of relief, of my body going tight, tight, tight, then endlessly loose. And then affection, deep and abiding, as I collapsed back against the seat, the mess of kisses the two of them bestowed upon me lulling me into submission.
“Goddess…” I sighed, rolling my head to look at Declan. “That felt amazing.”
“I’m glad.” He pressed a slow kiss against my lips. “You’ve got a day of this, of pampering our girl, treating her like the queen she is. It’s what we had planned before you got…” I reached down and took his hand as his bright smile faded. “I didn’t want to leave, but now it seems right. We’re taking back what’s ours, what Nance tried to take.”
Our eyes rolled sideways when we heard the noisy sound of Micah sucking his fingers. There was something of an animal about him, as if his beast was closer to the surface, but he was my beast, I realised.
“Next gush I’m gonna rub on my dick,” he said.
“This is about her pleasure, not yours,” Mason said.
“I’m not gonna get off, but I want her on me. I don’t have her mark yet.” He grabbed my hand between damp fingers, set the nails to the skin of his collarbone, and dragged them down. “But I’ll take that until she does.”
“You’re bolder now,” I said, trying to move my legs, but each man held me firm.
“We don’t mark women, they mark us, but I gotta admit, I like the sight of my bite on you. You’re mine now, that’s what makes me bolder.”
He leant in and kissed me definitely, thoroughly.
“I wanted to go slow, give you a chance to get to know me, to choose me, but…” His eyes danced with devilry. “I ain’t sad with the way things went. Now I get to introduce you to the real me.” His head cocked to the side as he brushed his fingers across my lips, watching them part. “The part that came up with a thousand horny scenarios when you came to town, who stroked his dick raw thinking about you. There’s something savage in you, once the gloves come off, just as there is in me.” His eyes rolled upwards. “I wanna be there when she comes out.” His gaze shifted to Declan. “Let’s get her going again.”
“Fuck, this is gonna be a long trip,” Mason grumbled.
“Where’s Mason going?” Zack asked when we all got out at a service station. He was filling his car while Declan did ours. Mason had tossed him the keys and strode inside.
“Toilet, I think,” I said and took off after him. I was sticky, sore, and desperate for a wee, so I went through the sliding doors, meeting him as he grabbed the toilet key.
“What do you need, Paige?” Mason was trying for polite, but I could hear the frustration seething there.
“Same thing you do,” I said, plucking the key and walking out the door.
“What? Fuck… Look, I just need—”
“I know exactly what you need.” My eyes jerked down where he’d tried to hide his raging boner beneath the untucked hem of his flannel shirt, but I knew. When I met his eyes, I saw my confirmation. Mason was dying to get off. “I guess we both better be quick.”
I walked around the side of the building and unlocked the door, glad to see it was relatively clean. A unisex bathroom, it just had two stalls, so I pocketed the keys and went in one, hearing the other stall door slam open. It was a little weird, taking a piss where he could hear it, but the sound of his zip being ripped down, the frantic little noises of him fishing
out his cock, the long groan he made when he took himself in hand vanquished any performance anxiety, because another much more spectacular one was playing out next door. I finished what I was doing and washed my hands, only to see that he hadn’t locked the door in the mirror. He wouldn’t have worried about anyone else in his state, because you couldn’t get in here without a key. Perhaps that’s why I went to the doorway.
“Fuck… Fuck…” He gasped out the words, the muscles in his arms popping, his grip brutal on his rigid dick. But it didn’t stop him from turning his head, his body still resolutely facing the toilet with the seat up, his eyes straining to catch mine.
“Damn…” I said. “You’re really wound tight. Need some help?”
“Paige… We’re not supposed to. I shouldn’t.”
Mason and me, we’d had sex drunk and under the influence of whatever the fuck that was last night, but never this—just him and me. He shuddered when I placed my hand on his shoulder blade, the soft furry fabric of the flannel nice on my skin. I licked my lips, which were suddenly dry from the sight of him, strung tight as a bow, at the mercy of his hormones for me. I deserved this, this homage, even in the shitty surrounds. I deserved him half out of his mind, jerking one off in a public toilet from listening to me get off all morning. And so he gave it to me, panting right before he angled his dick precisely, his cum splashing the water below, spurt after spurt.
A knock on the door had him zipping up quickly, checking for mess before flushing the toilet, then turning to face me. His eyes dropped to my lips, staring way too long before moving to wash his hands.
“Mason…”
He picked up my hand and pressed a kiss to my palm.
“I’m glad they’re treating you right. I’m glad they please you. You deserve pleasure.”