Come Out Swinging (Reach for the Moon Book 2)

by Sam Hall

  “Yes…” I hissed over and over.

  But his fingers refused to go deeper, just teasing the moisture from the outer lips of my cunt, rubbing it across his fingertips before sliding them up to bracket my clit.

  “Mmm…!” I let out a yelp and a moan as his fingers settled on either side, a weight that stretched the hood slightly.

  “It’s OK,” he said. “I’ll give you everything you need. Take a deep breath.” But he made that impossible as his fingers began to move, pulling the hood back before sliding back again. “Take a deep breath, love.”

  His voice was insistent, pushing at me, consciousness threatening to intrude before his mouth found my mark again, teeth pricking the scar, making me buck up against his hand before his lips sucked the skin in.

  Jesus fucking Christ, it felt like his mouth was in two places at once, between my legs and on my neck, winding me tighter between each point. And all through this, his fingers worked my clit with a slow, steady pace that was completely at odds with my heart rate. I moved restively, unable to just lie there and let him touch me, particularly when he wouldn’t do what I so obviously needed.

  He gasped when my hand slid lower, and I could see why. As my hand spanned his shoulders, then his ribs, it felt like my fingers left a trailing wake of heat.

  “Fuck…Paige. You’re destroying my control.”

  “Don’t want control,” I murmured. “Want you.”

  It was his stillness that had my eyes opening, and when they did, I’m not sure if I saw what I was expecting. The part of my brain that acknowledged reality and knew where I was and who I was sleeping next to was offline, just like my real body was, but in my dream? I lay underneath a molten eyed Aidan, who looked down at me like I’d personally hung the moon and the stars, his look of vulnerability all too easy to recognise.

  “Say it again,” he said, watching my lips closely. “If you mean it, say it again.”

  “I want you,” I said, because it was true, because it was right. What he was and how I felt about him was an angry snarl in my mind, but threaded through it so entirely that it could not be separated was this—a need for him. “I want you, Aidan.”

  “If you had any fucking idea how much I need to hear that right now.” The pain, the hunger in his voice, in his expression, clawed at me, had my hands reaching for him, but he wouldn’t relent. “I fucking need you like my next breath. I’m…”

  He was going to tell me, about what he was going through, about how he felt, but I saw the confusion, the evidence of my aunt’s meddling rise before he turned back to me. Whatever she’d done, it was never going to thwart this.

  “You want me?” he asked, shifting so he hung above me, drowning me in the shadow of his body. “All of me?”

  I remembered it, feeling him deep inside me and about to go deeper, that sinking feeling so fucking delicious before Mason intervened, and with the logic of dreams, he was now doing just that. His cock was now so deep, pushing in small little thrusts that confused and then set my body alight. My hands slapped down on his hips, my fingers clawing at his glutes as he stared down at me, looking for a sign.

  “Tell me you want this, want me,” he commanded. “I can’t hold back anymore. Everything inside me is screaming to claim you, knot you, take you as mine. You’re mine, Paige.”

  Aidan flickered right then, gold hair giving way to long and dark, wolf eyes giving way to moon, but he reasserted himself soon enough.

  I opened my mouth to say the words, to say something about what was happening, plea or protest, but a long moan came out instead. I could feel it, the hard press of his knot right where I was the softest. Opening, parting, letting him sink deeper. Feeling a deep aching itch to do just that. I could come like this, if he kept going, if he just kept working the heavy length of his cock inside me, particularly if I reached down… He batted my hands away, forcing them back against the bed.

  “No,” he growled. “You’ll have what you want when you say the words, when you open yourself to me. Let me in.” Those words were echoes of ones I’d heard before, my brow creasing as I struggled to remember when. “I’m just a wolf, howling at your door, needing to come in.” His words were ragged, his strokes a strained slow pace. “Please, Paige. I need you so much.”

  “He’s the last part of you, the last part of your soul,” a cool voice said, and both our eyes flicked sideways to see the Father Wolf standing there, arms crossed. His gaze slid over the two of us, watching us move with a proprietorial eye. “Your aunt, she’s a strange one. Could’ve been very useful if she were ulva. Too much of the Mother’s power in her, and yet not enough.” He shook his head. “No, it has to be you, and you’ll need all the parts if you’re to succeed in your petty goals. Let the man sink his knot, then his teeth in you.” His mouth curved into a smile, revealing a set of jagged teeth. “Complete the circle. You’ll get nowhere if you don’t complete the circle.”

  He swung his hand in the air, tracing a circle in the darkness, a corresponding tightness building inside me as it filled up with the cold, white glow of the moon, its surface pocked and pitted.

  “Babe?”

  My eyes flicked open for real this time, the morning light flooding in through the curtains to caress his face, Micah’s, not Aidan’s. But where Aidan had been, Micah was—between my thighs, ready and hard for me, but not in me. He hung over me with a look of concern, but that faded when I grasped his thick length, swiping him through the dripping moisture between my thighs. His lips fell open as mine did, gasping as I dragged him closer.

  “Uh…fuck!” he yelped as he sheathed himself inside me, and I didn’t allow myself the opportunity to adjust. He was thick, long, his knot swollen tight, and I ached for it, clawing at him when he resisted, then dragging him forward, both of us groaning as his knot was forced in. It was only then that whatever devil was inside me was appeased. I just stared at him, wide-eyed and panting.

  “I don’t want to fucking hurt you, Paige,” he ground out, obviously holding himself back by a string.

  I reached up, wrapped my arms around his neck, and tugged him down until I could feel the weight of him on top of me, needing that deep proprioceptive feedback right now.

  “You’re not hurting me,” I rasped out, unable to stop from undulating my hips into his, a long groan coming as a result. “I need this, need you.”

  And that was the truth of it, perhaps what the Father Wolf was clumsily trying to make me see. The status of my relationships with each of them was growing, changing, but the need? That deep down ache to feel them on me, under me, in me, to breathe them in, suck the taste from them, swallow them whole, that never stopped. It just got better, harder, deeper, sweeter, like it did right now. My back arched as he finally succumbed, pulsing inside me, his pace picking up.

  “I can’t be gentle,” he snarled, and I smiled.

  “You’re wrong, you know,” I replied, throwing my arms back in complete surrender. “You’re not a thug, you’re my wild boy. Be wild with me.”

  That savage twist of his smile, picked out in perfect detail by the white morning light, I liked that very much.

  “Yeah? Well, I said I wanted your teeth in my throat when you took my knot.”

  We’d talked about this, been sensible, laid out a path towards developing our relationship, so why did my lips pull back over my teeth, my fangs snicking down? Because Micah never looked so bloody alive as then. He hadn’t marked me, the god riding him had, but he was left to deal with the consequences.

  “Go deep,” I groaned. “Go hard.”

  His hands cradled my skull, his cock doing just that, making me gasp with just how much, and I pushed his hair to one side, revealing that tanned column of flesh. For a moment I just felt everything—him inside me, the rising wave of pleasure threatening to drown me, the growing swell of his knot, my body working, shifting, seeking.

  My jaws snapped around a fold of his skin, my fangs piercing his skin as he pierced me, blood rushing into my mouth
as I marked him.

  “Mine,” I gasped as I pulled back, swiping my tongue along his skin right before I screamed. The world became fire, burning me whole, and in it was him, jetting helplessly inside me, his cries twinning with mine. A door slammed open, my mates stumbling in, stopping to take in what was happening. I met them with a pant, then a bloody smile.

  Chapter 40

  I was tender and a little sore when I got up, but that was nothing on now. We stood inside a training facility with Greta and her coven all surrounding us as Margaret and I sparred.

  It felt like years since she and I had fought. Margaret was so bloody light on her feet, it seemed like they barely touched the ground before she was off again, dodging out of my way, pulling me forward and after her. I knew she was trying to tire me out before delivering a fucking hiding, but I couldn’t seem to stop. Greta and a few of the older ladies sat on the benches by our mat, talking amongst themselves about our performance. I caught fingers being waved, hands cutting through the air, but I couldn’t pay them too much attention. When I did, Margaret attacked.

  She zeroed in when my eyes slid sideways, trying to work out what the ladies wanted from this, my gaze jerking back when I saw something coming at me out of the corner of my eyes. Thank god I had my hands up, as I managed to block her first punch, then her second, before swiping out myself and trying to land a hit. She jerked back and away from me, readying her next sequence, when Greta stood up.

  “She has been trained and trained well, I can see that. We need no further demonstration,” she told us, then looked over at the door as a group of men came in. I saw Jian, one of Margaret’s mates and waved. He came into the gym sometimes to train with Zack. He didn’t wave in return, but the corners of his mouth quirked up. “Now we show you the power of an ulva,” Greta said.

  She nodded to Margaret, who now stood before the group of her men. I watched her do something I’d seen her do plenty of times before—centre herself. Her hands were clasped together as she took one breath, then another. Her eyes were open but unfocussed. She’d taught me to do the same thing, to clear your mind, get your focus on the here and now, not get caught up in the bullshit in your head. But when she did so this time, her eyes glowed, growing brighter and brighter.

  “You will see now why the ulva are demonised as ‘nix,’ seen as rapacious females unable to be satisfied by one man. Breaker of bonds. Underminer of strong packs.”

  Greta’s voice grew louder, more sonorous, carrying with it the weight of ages. Because this time when Margaret attacked, I didn’t have a chance in the world.

  “Get your hands up!” Zack shouted, but it didn’t matter, none of it mattered. I thought this was why Margaret never brought any more of her mates with her when she came to train, because god-fucking-damn.

  She hit me like a freight train, twice as fast and what felt like twice as hard. My defences were cut through like wet paper as she slammed a fist into one shoulder then the next. I went sailing back, dimly hearing my mates’ cries, but there wasn’t much I could do. She followed me at lightning speed as I went crashing down, and when I fell heavily onto the mat, she was already there, her hand around my throat. I could feel it, a terrible power throbbing through her, through her fingers as she stood, staring down at me with silver eyes, waiting for me to tap out. My hand moved sluggishly, but I tapped the ground.

  Margaret was slow to react, and it seemed to take a real act of will to pull herself back, something I’d never expected to see. She always seemed so contained when we sparred. Finally, she nodded and then stepped away.

  “What the fuck was that?” Zack snapped, sliding down onto the ground next to me, not satisfied until he’d looked me over. I shook his persistent hands off, struggling to get into a seated position.

  “Yeah, what was that?” I asked.

  “Margaret, a less physical demonstration?” Greta asked.

  The woman nodded and then went through the same process of focussing, but this time, I saw her guys cluster around her, and when her eyes glowed silver, so did theirs. Like some kind of synchronised light show, the glow pulsed in each and every face, and then Margaret broke away.

  I knew she was a master fighter, that she was graceful and balletic as well as bloody deadly, but I saw now any thoughts I had about comparing myself to her were dumb. She moved like white lightning, through a well choreographed series of strikes and hits, almost too fast to follow. A virtual blur, she pummelled and took down a thousand invisible enemies before coming to a neat stop. Despite this dazzling display, she wasn’t even breathing heavily when she stood still, just took the lot of our gobsmacked expressions in and then nodded to Greta.

  “Ulva is power,” Greta said. “She draws all available, potentially compatible mates to her during her call, and when she settles on her pack…” She tipped a head to Margaret, who now returned to her pack, hands reaching for her. “She becomes twice, three times, many times stronger. The denial of the Father is as much this.”

  Her eyes held mine, a grimness there making me want to look away but not able to.

  “A removal of an ulva’s power base. Instead, she is hamstrung and kept in odd circumstances. Forced into situations that contradict her nature, becoming little more than a means to validate singular masculine power.” Her gaze softened, as if she saw me and all the women in my family and what they had become. “Rejecting the Father rejects the true power of any pack. Thank you, Margaret, gentlemen.”

  The group all nodded in response and then took their place on the closest bench before Greta turned to me.

  “And now, we work on trying to tap into the power of your pack.”

  The older women who had been seated got to their feet, forming a loose ring around me and my guys. Our eyes shifted, trying to get a read on them and what they were going to do. Greta stepped forward, obviously the leader in this.

  “Each of you possesses a power. You know this when you take fur, when you exert dominance. Something invisible and inexplicable inside you allows you to do things no human could. Shifters now navigate the world using that personal power. Some climb to the heady heights of alpha, some do little other than scrub around in the dirt, some are so divorced from their power, they can’t even shift.”

  Her lips thinned down to a line.

  “It is this power you will need to tap into to use that of an ulva. You already have in your interactions with the Father, from what my grandson told me. Unwittingly, you have stumbled upon this, but when you touched the divine, the power that takes you beyond yourself has connected the lot of you to him. Now we need to be more deliberate with things. You will connect with each member of your pack, just one by one. My enclave will contain your power, ground it, send anything excess into the land beneath us, not to the Father. That’s all you will do here, practice reaching out and connecting deliberately, then controlling what you tap into.”

  “And how do we do that?” Lorcan asked with a wary frown. I watched him shift his weight from one foot to the other.

  “A volunteer?” she replied with a smile. “Excellent.” She held out a hand to him, which he took after a couple of heartbeats, then offered the other to me. Her skin felt warm, dry, well callused, but she drew my attention back to my mate. It seemed to take some effort for him to meet my eyes, but when they did, they locked on tight. A long sigh escaped him as he stared, eyebrows slightly creased, tension in his jaw. “You hunger for her,” Greta said softly.

  “We all do,” he replied, breaking our gaze.

  “No, you hunger for her. More than the others, more than anything.”

  I watched the walls go up, that hard façade of his get built up around him, so I reached out and grabbed his spare hand. Whatever he’d been retreating behind fell away at that, his forehead smoothing, his eyes beginning to glow.

  “Yeah, I do,” he said finally, some of that rebelliousness bleeding back in, but this time it was for me, not against me. “I just can’t get enough of her. Her voice, her scent, the feel
of her against me. Whatever I have, I fucking want more.” He blanched at that. “Sorry.”

  “No, that passion makes you a good candidate for what we will try,” Greta said. “You need to connect emotionally and spiritually for you to share power. Think of how you would do that normally.”

  His grin was immediate and full of devilry, a warning growl forming on my lips as he looked me over, slowly, making it clear what he was thinking. But he yanked on my hand, spinning me over and into his arms, both of them pulling away from Greta, and settled me against his chest. My eyes closed, my body softening, my lungs instinctively sucking in deep breaths filled with his scent.

  “Very good,” Greta said, and by the sounds of footsteps, she was walking around us. “Your bond is palpable, so strong. You have much to work with. You love Paige?”

  He went still at that, so still, his tension leaching into my body until he said the words. “With every breath in my body.”

  “And what would you give to your love if she needed it?” she asked.

  “Everything, anything.”

  “Then you must reach down into yourself, into the part where the man bleeds away to wolf. It’s like reaching for fur, when you’re just about to shift, except you don’t. That is the well of your power, the one you pull from to change forms. Instead of taking your beast’s form, just feel it. Feel that great reservoir of power that you were born with as a shifter. Feel it thrumming inside you, like the thud of your paws on the earth, the wind in your fur. Feel it and give it to her.”

  Initially, I thought this sounded like a lot of mystical mumbo jumbo. I felt a prickle of something when she described our pool of power, like there was…something inside me that I’d never really noticed before. Unlike the movies, our shifts were pretty painless things. We were in skin, then we were in fur. Both were completely natural parts of ourselves, and reaching for one was as easy as reaching for my mates. Her words, they forced us to slow down, I could feel it in our combined breaths. His chest rose and fell, and mine went with it, the gaps between breaths growing longer. Our lungs, our heartbeats, I felt the moment they completely synchronised, and then everything stopped.