Come Out Swinging (Reach for the Moon Book 2)

by Sam Hall

  “This’s driving you nuts, isn’t it?”

  “You’ve never showed an interest in…” I looked around, saw that another couple was behind us as well as in front. “That before.”

  “That?” His smile was gently mocking. “And what do you think ‘that’ is?”

  I grit my teeth, knowing I couldn’t exactly say BDSM or spanking. I leaned in as if to kiss him as the ride operators went and checked everyone’s car, ensuring the restraints were properly in place.

  “Touching people vigorously.”

  He snorted then choked back a cackle at that, trying but failing not to laugh. My eyes narrowed at him, but the sudden buzz of the tracks let us know the ride was about to take off, followed by a muffled announcement by the operators. And off we went. He waited, until we went flying down a crazy steep descent, when our bodies were angled back, when the wind was in our faces, the air filled with people’s screams, his mouth fitted to my ear.

  “We don’t know each other anymore, not really.” My hand slapped down on his as it slid up my thigh. “What we want, what turns us on. Before, it was just teenage fumbling. Hot, hot, teenage fumbling that features way too heavily in my spank bank, but, Paige?” My hands slammed down on the bar that held us in our seats as we whooshed back up a hill in the track. “We’ve had some time apart to work out what we like and dislike as adults, but haven’t had too many opportunities to explore what that might be like together.”

  His palm slid right up between my legs for a brief second, just long enough to feel the dampness of my bikini before grabbing the railing like anyone else. “I like stuff that gets my heart beating, that sends a thrill up my spine. You do that, babe, always. But the thought of you dominating me, or me dominating you? Being forced to experience curious pleasures? That’s fucking hot.”

  “You’re not the boy who was my first boyfriend anymore,” I said as we reached the top of the roller coaster track. The train paused so you could look out at the beautiful panoramic view of the bay from this vantage point, but all I could do was look at Declan. See Declan. And perhaps for the first time since I got back to town, I was really seeing him. My eyes had been obscured by memories and assumptions, but right now, they’d been peeled away and I saw him.

  He was so tall, so muscular, he was a commanding figure now, where before, he was a boy. And that sweet, funny guy was still there, in his ready grin. But when it slowly faded away, letting something else seep forward, a hint of silver in his eyes, I realised there was more going on.

  “So let’s find out who you are now,” I said, watching his body go rigid at the thought of that, his knuckles white on the metal bar. “Who my mate truly is.”

  It seemed fitting that this was the point the rollercoaster took an abrupt turn, shoving us up against each other before flying down a long descent. I leaned into the dive, willing the train to go faster and faster, feeling the rush that came with just surrendering to the sensation of being dragged along at a rapid speed.

  Declan had us up and out of our car as soon as the restraint was raised, hurrying us down the boardwalk until we found the haunted house.

  “Aren’t we waiting for the others?” I asked as he paid for our admission.

  “They’ll come,” he bit off, then drew me inside. The darkness, the cringey props and spooky music all seemed to be a funny place to rush towards, but as the place seemed empty, today’s kids having watched too many R rated gorefests to find this a fun attraction, he shoved me against the wall, stiff faux cobwebs sticking to my hair as his mouth slammed down on mine. He forced his way between my thighs, not stopping until I could feel the hard length of him pressed right where I needed it, and then he began to grind.

  “Dec…” I panted as his teeth scraped Micah’s bite, making me squirm.

  “I’ve been waiting, patiently. You need us to be patient, I get that, seriously.” He growled out the words between kisses, as if he couldn’t bear to pull away from me for long. “But you’re my girl too. You were mine first.” Before I could reply, his mouth closed around my bottom lip, tugging on it gently, letting his teeth sink into it before releasing it with a pop. “We learned each other’s bodies back then. Do you remember the first time I made you come?”

  Of course I bloody did. I’d tried on my own without success, letting Dec know some time in our relationship, once trust was established. He’d just nodded, looking like a deer in the headlights, and I’d been sure that would be the end of things. But the next day at school, he waited for me to get off the bus, taking my hand as per usual, but the look in his eye was something altogether different.

  “Mum and Dad won’t be home after school today,” he’d said, just waiting for me to put two and two together. “Come around.”

  “OK.”

  We’d walked home side by side, like we often did, but he’d pushed away his mates, isolating me, herding me into his house, then to his bedroom, before dropping to his knees and pushing my skirt up.

  “I did some reading,” he said, kissing my thigh, but I only just heard his words. My hand went to his hair, messing up the long strands, feeling a strange prickling inside me. “I want to try something.”

  He’d paused, looked up at me, and waited for my permission, not moving until I nodded shakily. He’d peeled my underwear down, separating my thighs, something we’d done plenty of times before, but rather than arrowing into the spot where he longed to go, he went higher.

  I knew it was my clit. The internet and Bridge were better sex ed than health class, but I could never seem to get the amazing results from it everyone else seemed to gush about. The first gentle stroke of the hood had slick running down my legs, something that just made Dec groan, his fingers growing bolder and more insistent, then his tongue took their place.

  “You do remember,” Declan here and now said, breathing in the scent of my arousal. He grinned, slow and cocky. “I want that now.”

  “What, to make me come? Because I gotta say, this is not a good place for it,” I snarked back, but we both knew what he meant. He saw straight through my bluster.

  “No, I want time, in that massive fucking bed or one of the small ones. I want to play with this Paige, see what makes her squeal, makes the slick run down her legs.”

  “I do not squeal!”

  He pulled me away from the wall, turned me around, and swatted me hard against my butt, and dammit, I bloody did squeal in surprise. He kept me in that position as he pushed his body against mine, and the newly sensitised skin of my arse, now throbbing and stinging from the blow, became all too aware of his hardness.

  “You’ve given us this time to find each other, and I’m just saying I want you to get to know this Declan too.” He stretched my hands up above my head, keeping them pinned against the wall as he rained kisses down my neck and spine, my moans blending in with the fake ones on the soundtrack.

  “So that’s where you got to.”

  My eyes opened slowly, the sensual haze taking a little while to fade, but when it did, there they were, my pack.

  “Bridget and Gavin have gone on the Ferris wheel,” Mason informed me, looking around the room before arrowing in on us. “Looks like it’s just us in here?”

  “It’s why I picked it,” Dec said with a grin. “And why I didn’t wait for you fellas.”

  “No?” Micah asked, padding over and then grabbing a handful of my arse, making me jolt as the skin began to sting again. That made him smile, his eyes glowing bright in the reddish light. “You told her.”

  “We won’t have long,” Dec replied. “The universe, the Mother, whoever’s driving this thing with us and Nance, won’t give us downtime for long, so it’s time to put our cards on the table, show who we really are.”

  “So that’s what this is?” Lorcan asked, eyeing the interior of the haunted house. “Then we better dive in.”

  We walked past plastic skeletons and cartoonish bats, splashes of fake blood, and cages with corroded looking bars, low groans coming from within.
It was all pretty cheeseball, but I admit, I jumped when a mannequin toting a toy chainsaw leapt out from the wall, the sound of a revving motor drowning out my squeak, but not their laughs. Declan looked down at me with a smirk, rubbing his thumb across my knuckles.

  It was dumb, I got it, but maybe just to save face and stop being so skittish, I started paying a whole lot more attention to the crappy attractions, scanning the walls, looking for the next stupid thing to lurch out at me. I anticipated the mummy that was sent jerkily out for a few steps before being jerked back again, letting out a long sigh before I heard it.

  A wolf howling, that was stock standard horror fare, I figured, yet all of us stilled at the sound of it. As we listened to it, it sounded clearer and crisper than the scratchy sound effects pumped into the place. My eyes narrowed. They used different speakers in the room to make it feel more 3D, but this was something else. The sound travelled around the room, like a wolf was padding across its territory, letting the others know to keep out. I frowned, and when I looked up, the others were doing the same.

  “C’mon,” Declan said, moving in front of the pack, and we followed behind.

  If this was an experience designed to reveal our true selves, we were sorely mistaken. We stepped into a fun house style environment, where the walls were all lined with mirrors created to distort our reflections. I walked up to one with Declan in tow, the two of us long and thin, like some kind of alien, smiling as I raised our hands, which became impossibly slender. He pulled me against him, kissing my neck until my eyes began to glow and so did his.

  We were probably scarier than all the OTT kitsch in this place. Strange creatures with preternatural eyes, disguised in the bodies of beach goers, they should’ve hired us to give people a scare. But in the distorted surface, so much of the room reduced to a vague blur by the twisted glass, I saw something move. Large and dark, it passed like a shadow, both of us turning around to see where it came from.

  “What the fuck?” Lorcan asked, all of us following its path. From mirror to mirror, we saw it jump, the first actually scary thing in this place. A loud bang had me jumping, but this time, the others did too. We turned around to see the door to this room had slammed shut.

  “Shit,” Mason said, striding over and trying the door. Of course it was locked. The wolf howl started up again, louder, drowning out the sound effects until there was only him.

  “Father Wolf,” Micah said in an eerie tone. I wasn’t entirely sure if Micah was home right now, his voice somehow empty and hollow sounding.

  “Obviously, we need to get out of here,” Zack said. “We should’ve known that wasn’t the end of things. You two, you were connecting. That’s what brings him forth.”

  Our eyes jerked upwards at the sound of masculine laughter. Long and lazy, it was an unhurried sound, because of course it was. I was willing to bet all my future happiness he’d been watching and waiting for some time.

  “So what’s up ahead?” Lorcan walked up to the next doorway. “Oh fuck.”

  “What?” The guys surged forward to look at what was before us.

  Was it here beforehand? A maze of mirrors spread out before us, each one reflecting this intricate web of lines made of neon lights in a space that looked like it went forever. But this seemed way more complex and a helluva lot less cheese than the rest of the place.

  “Whatever’s going on, it’s trying to make us step out into this,” Zack said, eyeing it warily. “Which makes me think we shouldn’t.”

  “We can use our phone GPS,” Declan said, grabbing his out and checking it. “Oh…”

  “Lemme guess, it doesn’t work.” Lorcan snorted, then shook his head. “The next thing is for us to get separated.”

  He was right—that was the script. Dark mysterious space, creepy shit underlying the silly stuff, something lurking in the gloom, so I should’ve known better than to step away from the guys. But I wasn’t thinking that when he appeared, gleaming like a dusky gem in all the glare, reflected a thousand times over in each mirror. His eyes glowed silver, unable to dull like ours did because he carried her in his face every day. He stared at me through long silky strands of black hair, his lean chest on display, just like the guys, but only a primitive form of brown leather pants on his legs. But it was his hand that drew my attention, that and his cruel smile. He reached for me through a million panes of glass, and because he was a god and I was a girl, I stepped into the maze.

  Chapter 32

  I didn’t feel his fingers when I reached for them, I felt glass. Glass that gave beneath my fingers as the wall of mirror swung open, admitting me to the maze.

  “That’s it…” he crooned, luring me forward with the dark silk of his voice. “Come closer, little wolf.”

  I walked inside, seeing the same triangulated view reflected in front of me, my hands slamming up against the glass until I found the one that gave beneath them, walking deeper.

  “It occurs to me that if you’re all powerful, this is all weird window dressing. You could vaporise the glass, the haunted house, the whole boardwalk if you liked.” I tried to keep my voice calm and clear, but it wavered. “You’re a god. You want my attention. Why fuck around with foreplay?”

  That same silky smooth laugh licked over my skin, but I saw him in the mirror, a reflection within a reflection. His arms crossed, his lips twisted into a smirk, and those alien eyes bore into mine before he reached for me again.

  “In all cultures, the way to the gods was always a series of complex steps. Simple creatures, you don’t value what is easy.”

  “You’re a wolf who tore a goddess’ daughter to pieces because you couldn’t work out how to fuck her. I dunno if you should be bandying the ‘simple’ label around.”

  It was then that I saw the first truly scary thing in this place. He emerged from the darkness at the centre of each piece of glass, his lips parting to reveal a mouth way too full of fangs. It was right about now I deeply regretted watching Bill Skarsgård in the Steven King movie, because damn, Pennywise had nothing on wolf god boy. I grit my teeth, slammed my hand against the glass, and pushed the next entrance open.

  “What do you want?” I asked, not fucking around now. My hands felt each wall of glass, finding the way forward, then moving to the next. “Why the big theatrical thing? Why can’t you just come out and tell me what the fuck is going on? You can’t have Mason back. I won’t fucking let you. He’s mine.”

  “No,” the reflection said as I shoved the wall open, but as I reached out into the next space, my hands landed on warm flesh, not cool glass. His covered mine, holding them to his muscular pecs. I could feel the prickle of his chest hair, the rise and fall of his ribcage, the beat of his heart. When I looked up at him, peering past that curtain of black hair, I imagined those moonlit eyes softening somewhat. “I don’t need to take back your lovers. They are already mine, as is every shifter that identifies as male. They are my sons, my soul split into a thousand pieces, scattered to the wind, just as you” —his hand went to my cheek, and I only flinched a little when it landed there— “are hers. Daughter of the moon.”

  His thumb brushed my bottom lip, which lowered for him on automatic, the tip pushing past to slide against the wet flesh there.

  “My daughter, my lover.” He spun me around, held me against his chest, his hot breath playing on the sensitive skin of Micah’s bite. He smiled when I shivered, when he shivered, the dark hair bleeding away to much shorter red hair, that full mouth almost hidden by his beard. I jerked away, but he followed me until my back bumped up against the glass.

  “I need you.”

  Declan breathed the words on me, a spell that sucked me under, that had my lips tilting up to meet his, that needed the crush of his when they collided with mine. I tilted my body back like a flower following the sun, and his hands cupped my breasts, one sliding up to collar my neck possessively as his tongue burned its way into my mouth. But not for long. He pushed me up against the mirror, hands on my hips as he ground his body
against mine. I was caught between the cool of the glass and the heat of him before he pulled back, drawing my hips with him.

  I was bent over now, turned around with my hands still on the smooth surface, able to catch the O of my mouth form in infinitum.

  “Hold still. Don’t move. It’ll hurt more if you move.”

  “Hurt?” My body twisted, my hands moving from the mirror as I tried to look at what Dec was doing, but he planted my hands back where they were, moving me into position with a hiss of frustration.

  “Hurt,” he said definitely, hand on the back of my neck, the other plucking at the ties to my bikini. The top fell to the floor first, my breasts bouncing free, something a million Declans watched with a dark smile, then the bottoms were loosened. I didn’t feel the cool air on my skin for long, the fabric soon replaced by the broad width of his palm.

  “Love always hurts. I hurt when we split. I hurt when you picked Mase. I hurt when you left without a word. I hurt with longing for you, snooping in on any cursory mention of you, and I hurt when I tried to stuff that down, pretend that wasn’t how it felt. This, what I’m gonna do to you, it’s just an externalisation of that.”

  “You want to punish me for that?!”

  I tried to jerk free, but this version of Declan was impossibly strong. He held me pinned, those hands biting hard into my flesh when I thrashed around before one came slamming down upon me.

  Crack! I felt the vibrations all the way through my body first, but hot on their heels came an almighty throb. Of pain, of heat, of a sharp stab of pleasure deep inside me, my clit twitching wildly at the referred pleasure-pain.

  “The point isn’t pain or punishment.”

  The voice was calm, even, the fingers broad and probing, pushing between my thighs when I tried to clamp them shut, sliding in all too easily through my slick, and spearing into me. This was getting me off in its most basic, brutal way, my legs spreading of their own accord as he slammed them into me. But right as I was at my most vulnerable, panting, when he had me right where he wanted, he looked over my shoulder into my lust hazed eyes before easing his fingers out of me, only to slap his hand down.