by Sylvia Frost
“Two fingers now.”
A second finger slips into my opening. It’s still not enough to stretch me, but now with my sex tightening I can really feel it. The need is building. Gutting me.
“Three.”
I’m panting now, breath coming in a ragged gasp as I fit a third digit inside myself.
“Look at yourself, Artemis. Naked, wrapped in the sheets, in my bed, pleasuring yourself on my command.”
I do look at myself and I shake around my fingers. The reality of the situation crashes over me. Oh, God. He’s doing this to me.
I moan.
“Close your eyes.”
My eyes flutter shut and the blackness in front of me intensifies the sensation. Sweat trickles down my naked back, another new wetness added to my already damp body. The sheets feel transparently thin.
“Now you’re going to imagine for me that your fingers are my cock.”
Without even thinking about it, I expand my fingers inside of my sex. Three compacted digits aren’t enough to imitate the thickness of him. And God how I crave the thickness of him.
“Nod if you’re obeying, Little Mate.”
I nod, dumbly, my eyes still closed, my whole body nothing but a focal point for my pleasure. My pleasure as dictated to me by him. Warped. Controlled.
“Good girl. Now you’re going to show me how you’d like me to fuck you.”
Time stops. I can’t breathe, although I can feel my heartbeat thumping all the way from my chest down into my sex against the fingers buried inside me.
“Artemis.” For the first time since Orion walked back to his chair, his voice is low with warning. “Don’t pause. Don’t think. Just do.”
I obey.
I start tentatively, because that’s how I’d want him to fuck me. I’ll be afraid when he first pushes inside. Although lubrication won’t be an issue; my fingers dip in and out with perfect ease.
Too much ease.
I need more.
I speed up my pace. Reasonably at first, but then faster and faster until my palm bashes against my mons in a way that should hurt. But I’m beyond pain. Beyond pleasure too.
I’m floating. Shattering a little bit more each time my fingers hit my deepest place. No, not my fingers. With my eyes closed, they aren’t my fingers anymore. They’re his cock. And he’s holding me as I break for him, whispering in my ear.
“Yes, beauty, keep going. By the gods.”
The cracks in my soul splinter a little further. The warmth radiating outward from my ass to my clit blazes a little hotter. I can’t keep my fingers from fumbling toward my clit anymore.
“Wait for it, beauty.” The warmth of his voice, the nearness of it wraps around me. My throbbing clit remains unfulfilled and I keep pounding into myself, the way I know he will. Just the way he did in my dream.
“If it was really my cock pounding into you, you would’ve come three minutes ago. Without even brushing against your clit. Because you’ll know that when I fuck you, you’ll be mine. Forever.”
I throw my head back and howl with pleasure, the sound primal and so strong that I think it’s going to scar my throat. I need to be taken. My other hand drifts to my breast and pulls at my stiff, plump pink nipple. But it’s still not enough. Pleasure is everywhere, like a mist. I need it to rain. To pour. To fucking hurricane.
So I add the fourth finger.
Now I’m full to the brim, my pussy stretched wide open with every thrust I make. I cry out again and again.
“Look at me, Artemis.”
My gaze flies to his, and I notice that he’s not just devouring me with his eyes, he’s analyzing me. Taking in my every motion, every angle, to use as a future tool on how to make me more his.
I’m giving him everything.
But he’s giving me everything too.
It’s written in every movement of his body, the way his strong muscles are pulled tight, his jaw gritted, feet digging against the floor. And his pants… His cock must be in physical pain given how furiously it’s fighting to pierce his jeans.
“Do you see how much I want you?” he whispers in a choked, needful tone that’s a gravelly mirror of my own. “Do you see how much I need you?”
I whimper.
His eyes flash and he grips the chair so hard I swear I can hear something break. “Then you know I’d fuck you harder. Wouldn’t I?”
I nod.
“Then do it.”
I do. I didn’t think it was possible, but I do. Now I’m pistoning in and out of my own entrance until I can’t breathe. I can’t. I can’t.
“Who do you belong to?”
His voice grasps me, pulls me back from the abyss of my delirium. I moan, unable to do more.
“Say it, Artemis. Speak.”
“You,” I gasp.
My fingers crash into me, pulling me apart. No, not my fingers. His cock. I’m so close. So motherfucking close.
I’m about to look away when Orion barks, “Louder.”
“I belong to you!” The force of the cry hurts my throat.
“Say my name.”
“O-Orion,” I rasp.
“Louder,” he coaxes, offering me no quarter.
And I take none.
I let the darkness consume me, take me, trusting my sanity only to him. Bolt after bolt of unadulterated ecstasy strikes me and I fracture. I collapse.
“Orion!” I scream.
Life and death, pleasure and pain, need and fulfillment are all two sides of the same coin, and that coin is being flipped, tumbling end over end. About to land in the palm of his hand.
And then I do land.
I’m his.
15
What do I know of werebeasts? Have I ever seen one? No. Have I ever loved one? No. All I have of their history is echoes. Ghosts of stories that slip through my fingers like sand.
But I will take that.
I will use that.
Because if we wait until we can speak with certainty on a subject—any subject—we would never speak at all.
Beasts, Blood & Bonds: A History of Werebeasts and Their Mates
By Dr. Nina M. Strike
I am naked and trembling on the bed, beyond my own body, beyond sensation. All I can think, all I can feel is him, even though he never touched me. After a moment I slip my fingers out of myself and the subsequent emptiness is enough to make me whimper.
Some time later, I feel strong arms around me and I think I hear Orion murmur something in Werelatin. But I can’t be sure. My awareness is fragmented. Here the pressure of him cradling my form to his body. There a whiff of his cleansing, fresh scent, washing away the heady musk of my own arousal.
All I know for certain is that eventually I end up alone on the soft bed, some of the pillows returned like a fort of comfort, to make up for the fact that it’s not him lying next to me. Still naked, I curl up into a fetal position.
Orion didn’t stay.
But he can’t be far. Downstairs, maybe. If I were to peer over the railing I could see him. Although after he turns out the light, downstairs may as well be in a different dimension for how close it feels.
I don’t sleep.
In the darkness, I toss and turn for a moment, the even breathing of Orion sleeping the only sound keeping me from jumping out of bed. I have no illusions. If I go downstairs, naked as I am, I will be his when I come upstairs again.
What I’ve already experienced was intense enough for one night.
At some point, I turn over and something flashes at me from the nightstand.
Only half awake, I turn on the dim lamp on the nightstand and grab the source of the glinting. It takes me a moment to figure out what it is. I rub the sleep out of my eyes, then turn it over in my hand, the metal cooling my fingers.
It’s a coin, I realize. A quarter.
My chest constricts and every nerve prickles alive instantaneously as I sit up in bed.
Orion.
He must’ve gotten it for me.
; Surveying the nightstand again I notice two handwritten notes, one scrawled on lined paper and the other a Post-it note. The Post-it note makes my heart flip, but it’s the lined note I grab first.
I’ve never seen Orion’s handwriting before, and it’s more scratch than scrawl. But I can read it easily.
While you were speaking with Stefania, I investigated the old evidence locker. As you know, your father had a lot of quarters, and I am not the paragon of paperwork, so it will perhaps come as no surprise to you that I missed some of his quarters in my initial survey. I found this one at the bottom of the locker. I thought you deserved to have it. And your father is right.
I shove the note back onto the nightstand and greedily reach for the Post-it note. My heart is thundering. What does it say? What is my father right about? It’s been so long since I’ve had anything my parents left behind to look at. Is it some kind of secret clue?
I pluck the Post-it from the stand and stare at it a moment. The first thing I recognize is my father’s handwriting, tight, orderly, just like his quarter collection, his meticulous book-cataloging system and his dry sense of humor. The exact opposite of my mother.
But the words themselves are anything but calculated.
When Artemis gave this to me, she smiled, and it was the most precious thing I’ve ever seen.
I trace the indentations his pen made with my fingertips. He loved me. My dad loved me. That doesn’t change, even after his death. Even after what I just did with Orion.
It will never change.
I forgot that, somehow in all of this, stuck in all my guilt and grief. My father might be gone, but his love is still here, resting in my hand.
As I set the note back down on the nightstand I debate going to thank Orion, but decide against it. Instead I dive under the covers and for the first time in what feels like forever I let the warmth of the memory of my parents and the affection I felt from Orion carry me to sleep.
Or at least I try to.
Until I hear a knock at the door.
“Stay in the bed, Little Mate.”
Orion’s voice reaches out to me through the darkness, not even slurred with a hint of sleep.
I pull the quilt to my chest.
The knock comes again.
Orion flips on a lamp, not the full light that illuminated the cabin earlier, but it’s enough that as I sit up, I can see him rise from a leather armchair. But he doesn’t walk to the door.
The rapping gets louder.
He sniffs.
And louder.
Still he doesn’t move to answer, but instead cocks his head up to look at me. Our gazes latch, but instead of sending a pure shot of desire through me, I feel a different, deeper warmth from it.
“It’s just Stefania, She’s decoded the stick, apparently.”
Then why didn’t she announce herself, instead of knocking a couple of hours past midnight? I don’t say that aloud, though, because I know that however sturdy the walls of the cabin are, there is the small possibility that she’d be able to hear me. It would be foolish to let Stefania know how suspicious I am of her.
“North. I know you can smell me,” Stefania calls.
“Orion,” I hiss.
He nods once. “I’ll be careful, but Stefania is all bark. Yipping, more like, actually.”
I wince.
I remember a girl who was all bark once. Who jumped at shadows.
Only twenty-four hours ago, that girl took a gun out and almost shot Orion to protect Lawrence.
And Stefania’s paranoia runs deeper than mine.
“North!” Stefania cries. The warbling of her voice does sound a little panicked, but in an almost cute way.
Orion inclines his head at me. Waiting, I realize. For me. He’s asking whether he should open the door or not. We are a team, just like he promised. I get choices too.
Biting the inside of my mouth, I think: Orion is a werewolf. Stefania is a desk agent. The equations should be simple. Ignoring the tugging in my gut, I focus on the logic. Stefania is on our team. If she wanted to do something to me or Orion, she could’ve done it back at the FBSI office.
I nod once.
Orion opens the door. “This better be good—”
But he never finishes his sentence.
A gunshot does instead.
* * *
To Be Continued….
Afterword
Wow! What a ride writing this serial has been. We’re almost to the end, and I’m sure you’re eager to get to the next book. Join Artemis and Orion for the final installment… Heartbound. Or connect with me on via my mailing list or secret facebook group to get exclusive access to great deals and the latest release information.