by Odessa Lynne
Kem’s eyes flared bright and hot and his gaze had locked on Devon’s mouth. “I don’t want to kill you. It hurts me to know that I can’t control myself with you. I should have broken protocol and taken one of my betas for a heat mate and left you alone, or taken one of the other humans.”
“You have betas? I thought you were the alpha’s beta.”
“I’m—” Kem frowned, and a trickle of sweat fell from his brow onto the inside of Devon’s forearm. Kem put his face to Devon’s arm and ran his cheek along the surface, his mouth and nose scraping across the skin to taste and smell every bit of exposed flesh on Devon’s arm. “I couldn’t let one of the others have you. They wanted you. I could smell it on them, even Ashikid.” A rumbling growl escaped. “Especially Ashikid.”
The sensation shivered through Devon and made him want to pull his arm free. But he’d pushed his luck too far already so he lay there and let Kem do what he wanted.
His shoulder’s throbbing eased and his heart slowed finally, and he wished he could overcome his foolish temper. Gran had always said they were more alike than he wanted to admit, and times like this he believed her. He hated her for being right about that probably more than he hated her for anything.
“If I had rejected you and chosen another he would have claimed you to mate.”
Devon didn’t know who “Ashikid” was but— “Seemed pretty obvious to me that no one wanted you to choose me. I doubt—”
“If any of them had been more obvious about their interest, you would have just been more desirable to the others.”
“So why’d you get to be so obvious then?”
“Because I’m stronger and my position’s more secure. I’ll be Alpha soon.”
“Ah.”
“You don’t understand.”
“Went through this before. We’re different species. Of course I don’t understand. None of us do. That’s why so many people are afraid of you and wish you’d never found us.”
Kem kissed the inside of Devon’s elbow, softly, and then scraped his teeth carefully over the thinner skin at the crease. “Is that what you wish?”
“I—” Devon swallowed, fighting the sudden rush of blood to his dick. “I’m not sorry you came to Earth. I don’t hate you. Not most of the time.”
“Why not?”
Devon closed his eyes and concentrated on press of lips trailing up his arm toward his shoulder. “I can’t.”
Hot breath fanned out over his skin, very close to his nipple. “Your answer isn’t an answer at all.”
“I don’t want to talk about that. My dick’s getting hard. Let’s fuck.”
Kem’s fingers tightened on his arm, not enough to hurt, but enough to be noticeable. His other hand flattened on the hardwood beside Devon’s head, fingernails—or claws—making a faint clicking sound at the contact. “I want to mate you,” Kem said in the wolves’ language. “I want to turn you onto your belly and I want to mate you.”
Devon could tell Kem had used another of the many words for “mate” or “fuck” but he didn’t know why.
“Fuck me,” he said. “I don’t care how. Just put your cock in my ass and make me come like you did last night.”
Kem’s breath came faster, his body seemed to go from rigid control to release in a single sharp exhale and then Kem reared up, and before Devon could comprehend what was happening, Kem was turning him over.
Devon got his hands and knees under him, ignoring the twinge of pain in his shoulder, and looked back to see Kem ripping his trousers open, exposing his thick alien cock to the air, hard and ready.
Devon went up to his knees and leaned up over the edge of the bed, stretching for the small blue jar of lube, but he couldn’t reach it, and then it didn’t matter because Kem grabbed him around the waist and hefted him bodily up onto the bed, and then stretched for the lube and swiped it right off the table by the bed.
“Hurry.”
“Got it.”
Devon lost the lid as soon as he unscrewed it. He took enough to make sure he’d be prepared for anything and then reached around himself and sunk first one and then two fingers right up his tender asshole.
“Son of a bitch,” he said. “This is going to be—” But no, he was already feeling better, the soothing lubricant stealing away the twinges of pain left over from last night’s hard fucking.
He needed to steal himself a jar of this stuff and take it with him when he left. There was obviously more to it than simple lubrication.
He thought about how the wolves fucked and how long heat season lasted. Yeah. Of course they’d have developed something to make things easier. He doubted gay wolves would fare any better than gay humans with the excessive ass-fucking of a drawn out heat cycle.
Kem dragged his cheek down Devon’s spine and Devon couldn’t stop himself from arching into the warm touch.
“I’m ready,” he said. “Come on.”
“Not yet,” Kem said. He shoved the tray of food toward the table and it looked like it wasn’t going to make it but then it slid off the edge of the bed and thunked with a clatter to rest precariously on the edge of the table. “I want—”
“What are you—”
Devon landed on his back. “I thought—”
“No,” Kem almost growled. “We can’t mate yet. It’s not time.”
“Mate, fuck, I don’t get it.”
“You’ll eventually understand.” Kem kissed him, his mouth hot and firm over Devon’s, his tongue taking instead of asking and he took Devon’s neck in hand and it was both the scariest and hottest thing Devon had ever experienced, the feel of those claws pricking the skin at his neck and those eyeteeth skimming his lips.
His dick ached with the need for friction and pressure, and the urge to rut against Kem’s hip wasn’t one he could resist. Kem brushed the knuckles of his other hand over the shaft of Devon’s dick, and a delicious shudder flashed through him. The whole thing was scary as hell and hot as sin and Devon might regret a lot of things but he wasn’t sure he’d ever be able to regret fucking Kem.
“Submit,” Kem demanded, as if he needed to hear Devon say the words again. “Submit to my will.”
Kem hauled Devon’s closer so that his dick was pressing hard at Devon’s anus, nudging his hole open with a steady, relentless glide. Devon’s foot slipped on the sheets, and he had to squeeze his hands around Kem’s arms to relax into the invasion into his ass, the hot length impaling him even as he muttered, “I submit,” against Kem’s mouth, and then again, “I submit. Now fuck me the way you did last night.”
“Soon. We’ll mate soon.” Kem dropped back onto his hands and started rutting against him, and Devon felt Kem come, spurting warm semen deep inside his ass. After last night, though, he already knew Kem had no real refractory period, not the way humans did so he wasn’t surprised when Kem started to fuck him with quick hard thrusts, his dick still completely hard.
He came again, quickly, rocking into Devon with enough force to shake the bed on its sturdy frame. One of the many pillows near Devon’s feet tumbled off the side.
He wrapped his legs up around Kem’s ass and let himself enjoy the ride as his own pleasure spiraled upward with every thrust into his ass.
“I should have waited to fuck you,” Kem said, but then he nuzzled his head in against Devon’s throat, his warm wet mouth leaving behind a trail of hot kisses as he made his way toward Devon’s underarm.
Strangely enough, Devon was getting used to that maneuver. His dick anticipated the move and reacted with a twitch of excitement.
“I’m going to jerk off,” Devon said, already working his hand between them.
Kem’s hand stopped him. “No.”
“Come on,” Devon muttered. But then he gasped because Kem had shifted higher up onto his knees and his dick caused a jarring spark of pleasure to crawl right up Devon’s spine.
He came almost immediately after that, Kem riding him hard right through his orgasm until he was left gasping and sensitive,
his hole stretched tight even as his own spunk smeared across his belly with every brush of Kem’s taut stomach over his cock.
Kem didn’t finish for what felt like forever but was probably closer to a couple of hours, and by the time his cock softened in Devon’s ass, Devon’s legs were so tired he had given up doing more than tangling them with Kem’s. He felt the long sigh of exhaustion leave Kem’s chest as he made a final effort to bury himself inside Devon.
Semen smeared the inside of Devon’s thighs and dribbled down his crack and soaked the bed under him, and he honestly thought about closing his eyes against the late afternoon sun and not opening them until morning.
A cool breeze fluttered the curtain from the half-open window and sent goose bumps racing across Devon’s overly hot skin. Kem shivered.
Kem eased over on the bed, much like he’d done last night, and tried to curl himself around Devon. He dragged a pillow their way but Devon pushed it aside.
“I’ve got to piss and I need a drink,” he said. “I’ll get the window while I’m up.”
Kem watched him with an intently disturbing gaze that made Devon very aware of how he climbed off the bed, every muscle stretched and worn out, and his ass tender and hot.
He gave half a second’s thought to the blue jar before he caught sight of it at the foot of the bed, contents thick enough that it hadn’t spilled despite being open the entire time Kem fucked him. He snatched it off the bed. No way was he suffering if he didn’t have to. Besides, they might have a chance to fuck again before Devon found a way out of here.
Chapter 8
Devon slept too long. He didn’t know what had awakened him, but he listened for sounds he didn’t recognize and heard none. Kem’s soft breathing, a heartbeat heavy and fast against his cheek, low voices somewhere outside the bedroom door—
Someone knocked.
Devon opened his eyes and then startled when he saw that Kem was staring down at him with those green eyes of his, his stare too direct and intense, and completely disconcerting.
“What?” Devon asked.
“We’re going to mate,” Kem said.
Devon made a sound like “humph,” because he wasn’t ready to outright defy Kem but he also wasn’t about to agree.
Another careful knock echoed through the door.
Kem closed his eyes for a moment and then reopened them. “I have duties that don’t stop even during the heat season.”
“Then I guess you should get to them.”
“I’d rather stay here.” Kem bent and sniffed at Devon’s naked chest, inhaling deeply. “You’re so hard to resist.”
“Nothing but some fucked up chemistry between your kind and mine.”
Kem raised his head, and his gaze flickered over Devon. “Fate sent you. A gift from the universe.”
Devon made no comment because any comment he made would probably just make trouble for him. He felt like a fresh start right then; arguing wasn’t going to help him get out of here any faster so he could go collect his hundred gold ten-dollars.
But—
“Fate’s a bitch according to Gran and she’ll tear off your balls and feed them to you if you don’t keep your eyes open and your pants pulled up.”
Kem looked startled, but then he laughed, and it was probably the first time Devon had ever heard a wolf laugh. The sound vibrated up from deep in Kem’s chest, but where the wolves’ usual vibrating rumble caused a hair-raising discomfort in his nerves, this sound tingled across his skin, a swift sensation of pleasure.
“This Gran sounds interesting—”
“Don’t.” Devon raked his hand through his hair. “She’s more of a bitch than fate could ever be and I don’t know why I mentioned her.” He pointed to the scar on his chin. “She did that. Wanted me to apologize later for making her mad enough to do it.”
Kem reached up with a finger and traced the line that cut across Devon’s chin. “Who was this Gran to you?”
“My mother’s mother. Mom died young and I got stuck with the bitch who messed her up.” Devon felt the usual surge of resentment boil to the surface. It wasn’t fair that his mother had died when Gran had been spared from the same disease, the same one—he growled his own very human growl and wrapped his arm around the back of Kem’s neck. “Look, we can either fuck again, or you can go find out who keeps knocking, but I’m not talking about this shit anymore.”
Kem didn’t resist the invitation, just leaned in to kiss Devon with lips that were warm and gentle and Devon thought he might hate that more than he would’ve hated to see pity in Kem’s eyes.
But he opened to Kem’s tongue and put his own into action. He groaned, but then Kem leaned up just as another knock sounded on the door, no more demanding than the previous, as if whoever was out there knew Kem could hear but was choosing to take his time to answer, as if Kem’s rank was high enough that demanding things from him, especially now, would only bring trouble.
Kem’s powerful arms lifted him up and away and he knelt over Devon and Devon stared up at him. Kem put his hand on Devon’s shoulder. “Turn over.”
Devon couldn’t stop his gaze from flickering toward the door. “Why?”
Narrowed eyes met his when he returned his gaze to Kem’s face. “It’s time.”
Devon huffed but he turned over. “Time for what?”
“To fuck.”
Or mate. Devon wouldn’t swear which word it was meant to translate to. Kem was speaking in the wolves’ language.
He heard Kem move and felt the dip in the bed, then—
The drag of claws scraped lightly at the skin over his back on each side of his spine down to his ass. He took a deep breath and tried to relax but those claws so close to his spine made it hard to control his instinct to flip himself onto his back. His heart took up a heavy tempo and his buttocks tightened when the clawed fingertips continued on their path, down over the backs of his thighs and over his calves. His foot jerked as a claw drew a line right down the middle of his arch.
Devon couldn’t stop a half-shout. “Hey!”
A hand landed flat between his shoulders. “Submit!”
Devon’s hands rested at chest level where he was ready to push himself over at the first sign of trouble.
Another series of knocks sounded, measured and precise. Devon counted eight short raps before the knocking stopped.
There was no way that whoever was standing on the other side of that door hadn’t heard him or Kem.
Kem put his hands under Devon’s thighs and pulled Devon up to his knees and elbows.
Devon swallowed roughly, feeling the thick length of Kem’s dick settle at his crack. “I’m not ready. I can’t do this without lube.”
The jar of lube that Devon had returned to the bedside table before their nap rolled into his elbow and Devon reached around with his hand to pick it up. His voice was unsteady when he spoke. “I thought you had duties.”
“I need a witness. He’ll witness.”
Devon’s fingers tightened around the jar. “Witness what? You fucking me?”
Kem’s mouth came down on Devon’s shoulder blade. Warm breath fanned out in a moist circle that made him want to both shy away and ask Kem to do it again. A shiver raced down his spine as Kem seemed to read his mind and trailed kisses along his shoulder and toward the stretch of his spine at the base of his neck.
The position made Devon feel especially vulnerable. He didn’t want to move though because if they were going to do this again, this was the way he liked to fuck and the one time he’d thought Kem was going to do him like this, he’d turned out to be wrong.
But his thoughts hadn’t turned away from Kem’s earlier comment. “Why do you need a witness?”
“I’ll be alpha, but I’m not alpha, so I need a witness when I mate you.”
Devon clenched his fist. Kem still spoke in the wolves’ language and what he was saying didn’t make any sense.
“You didn’t need a witness any other time you mated me.”
He wouldn’t be staying at the end of heat season, no matter what Kem thought. He wouldn’t.
He still needed to make more of an effort to find a way out of here, but he hadn’t been given a chance. The bathroom windows opened out to the same woods the windows in this room opened to, and Devon hadn’t felt like attempting the run. Yet. The area was probably guarded anyway so—
Excuses. Just excuses. He would look for a way out tonight. After sunset, after Kem left for food or—or—something. He would. He had important business to attend to and he wasn’t going to forget that.
He opened the jar he held.
“We don’t need a witness to mate, only to mate.”
Devon exhaled, unsteady but loud. “You kidding me? That doesn’t make any sense.”
There had been a nuance there in the spoken word for “mate” but Devon had no idea what it meant.
He continued, “Won’t letting someone else in here be dangerous? I thought you couldn’t get close to us unless you wanted to go bat-shit crazy with lust.”
Then he felt a tickle of claw at the cheeks of his ass as Kem spread his crack apart. “I’m going to watch you prepare yourself this time.”
As if he hadn’t watched every other time.
“Ah, uh, okay.” Devon scooped out a couple fingertips worth of lube.
The first press of Devon’s fingers into his hole didn’t feel half as bad as he’d almost expected. He’d been used a lot over the last day and he realized that using the lube before his nap had probably been a smart move.
He could see Kem over his shoulder, Kem’s gaze never wavering from the sight of Devon sliding his finger slowly through his tight pucker. Kem’s forehead and cheeks had beaded with sweat, the skin of his neck and chest flushed and his nipples peaked and hard.
By the time Devon got two fingers in and had worked the lube around his anus, he was breathing a little faster and he could feel the burn in his back from stretching fatigued muscle to reach around himself.
He wiped his fingers on the sheet. The bedding already stank of semen and sweat from earlier, so what did it matter?