by Maia Dylan
Rohan had no idea where this daring streak of his came from, but he figured, by the way Olwen’s heart rate accelerated and her breathing became even more of a pant, his soon-to-be-mate loved it just as much as he did. As soon as he watched her gaze slip down to where they were about to be joined, Rohan rolled his hips so that the head of his cock slipped inside her.
“Oh my,” Olwen whispered as her legs lifted naturally to cross across his ass, causing him to slip another inch or two within her hot caress and his damn eyes to cross. He rushed forward again, watching her face for any sign of discomfort. He had surprised the hell out of himself when he’d had the presence of mind to stretch her a little when he had tasted her to try to limit the pain of this first time.
Pushing forward, he tried counting backward from ten in Latin to take his mind off the fact that Olwen, the woman he loved, was currently lying beneath him, and he was about to be buried balls-deep within her. His control shattered when she suddenly snapped her own hips forward, slamming them together and taking him to the hilt.
“Fuck!” he groaned as he threw his head back. He heard Olwen moan and ice water filled his veins. Damn it! He had been so lost in his own passionate response he had not thought about how it might have hurt her. Calling himself all kinds of names, he began to withdraw slowly, not wanting to cause her any more pain.
“Oh, gods,” Olwen moaned, reaching her hands up around his shoulders and making him shudder by dragging her nails down his back. “That feels so damn good! Do it again, take me, Rohan. I love the feel of you hard and full within me, but I want it harder. I need it harder. Fuck me, my mate!”
Rohan had a moment of pure shock that his mate would not only love the way he took her but would want him to take her harder and faster. She truly was his perfect woman. Then he was moving, lifting up onto his arms to give him leverage to take her the way she seemed hell-bent to drive him to. He began slamming his hips into hers, his eyes drawn to the way the sudden impact had the perfect globes of her breasts bouncing enticingly.
“Christ, Olwen, you look so damn beautiful when your body reacts to my possession, and that is what this is, my love. I am taking you completely.” Rohan’s voice was harsh and interspersed with large, panting breaths as he fought to draw air into his lungs. He lost his steady rhythm moments later and was simply pounding into her, reveling in the sounds of pleasure she made, and the eager way she moved her hips and hands as if to draw him closer to her.
He felt a tingling in the base of his spine and knew that sensation meant his release was not far away. He watched her face and saw the need and desperation in her widened eyes, her mouth held in open in awe, and he saw the moment she gave into the sensations and came.
He felt the strong rippling of her pussy against him and struck in a blur, leaning in and biting down on the fleshy part of her shoulder. The taste of her blood exploded across his tongue, and he moaned at the flavor. He felt another hard ripple around his cock and knew his woman—no, his mate—had just come a second time.
He drew back, and gently swept his tongue over the bite marks to ease in their healing, then threw his head back, roaring his mate’s name to the Gods as he came hard. Shocked, he felt Olwen bite against his right shoulder, hard enough to surely break the skin, and just as it had with her, it had him slamming uncontrollably into her and coming a second time, this time, so damn hard he saw stars.
When the shudders of his orgasm released him from their grip, he slumped down on his mate, gasping in as much air as he could. After what could have been hours but was probably more like minutes, he lifted up so he could look his mate in the eye. The smile on her face as she met his gaze was more peaceful and beautiful than anything else he had ever seen.
“You bit me,” he accused with a grin.
Olwen nodded happily and stretched beneath him, bringing his body back to life. “I did! It seemed like the fair and just thing to do, as you bit me first.”
“Well, when you put it that way…” Rohan laughed softly as he rolled to the side, pulling her tighter into his chest. The lay quietly in the darkness for a moment, simply reveling in the fact that they were together, wrapped in each other and, for the moment at least, safe. Olwen’s fingers ran gently up and down the scars that marred his back, just as his did hers. It was horrific that he had endured treatment that mirrored her own, but it somehow made it better knowing that he understood what she had been through.
“You told me that he took your life force?” Rohan asked gently and then pressed a soft kiss to her temple. “What does that mean exactly? Are you…dying?” The last word was almost whispered, and Rohan tightened his arms around her.
Olwen reached up a hand to pet his chest, soothing him as best she could. “No, my love. Aeron took my life force to strengthen his own. He hasn’t killed me, or shortened my life by anything. He simply took my strength and used it for his own.” She hesitated for a moment and then decided it was best to simply have it all out in the open. “An entirely more hideous act would be if he were to have bound his life force to mine. That would have meant that killing him would mean my own demise. Aeron was too damn arrogant to think that my Elementals would ever be that much of a threat to him.”
Rohan stared into her eyes. Despite the darkness, she could see him quite clearly. “That’s what Argon has done to me, isn’t it?” Olwen hesitated, not knowing how to answer. “It’s okay, love. I had a feeling she was doing all sorts of black magic shit to try and get me to feel anything for her but hatred, and I am guessing that if you kill her, then you will be killing me, too.”
Olwen swallowed the sudden lump in her throat and nodded. “Yes. That is what it would mean, and I had a few magical ways to undo what she had done, but now I am not sure any of that would work.”
“What? Why not?”
“Well, because, quite simply, you are not human anymore. You are a bear shifter, and that changes you not just physiologically but also psychically as well. You carry an animal spirit within you, and I am not sure that what I had planned would work.”
Rohan huffed a sigh. “Well, that doesn’t sound too positive.”
Olwen smiled gently up at him. “But what will sound positive is that now that we are mated, and you have claimed me, I believe that means that we have connected our life forces together. Just as it is with all mated shifters, if you were to die, I would, too, but I can feed you my life force just as you can to me. When Argon’s life force is stilled, then I believe that I will be able to feed you my life force and tether you to this plane.”
Rohan stilled, and from the way his jaw had just turned granite, Olwen had the feeling he was furious. “Are you trying to tell me that if Argon dies and the life force she has bound to me ends, I will die, too, but more than that, because you are now my mate, that I will take you with me?”
Olwen winced. “Theoretically, yes, that could happen, but—”
“Theoretically? Theoretically! I would never have claimed you if I knew I was placing you at risk. We should never have done this. God, why the hell did you let me do this to you if you know it was going to kill you?”
Olwen, her own anger rising within her, smacked him hard in the chest. “Don’t you dare regret the fact that you just claimed me. That will do nothing but piss me off and I might have to turn you into a frog or something. I’m not sure what will happen now that we are mated. Argon has to die because if she were to live, with the connection she had to you, she places you and everyone around you in danger, and that is not something we can live with. Hell, I am not even sure what is going to happen if you try to leave this realm. Did Argon or Aeron devise some kind of failsafe to stop you from being able to leave?
“Who the hell knows? I don’t know what being mated to me will mean, but I do know this. Being claimed by you tonight was the single happiest moment of my life, and you are lying here ruining it for me by talking about regret. If you think that I would want to continue without you in my life and in my arms now that I know that
you live, then you do not know me very well. I lost you once when I made a stupid decision to come to this godforsaken realm under some misguided sense of family loyalty. It almost killed me. I will not survive it again.”
Rohan kissed her, and she could almost taste the intense emotions that swirled within him. Pulling back, he pressed his forehead to hers.
“Forgive me, Olwen. I do not and never will regret the moment you gave yourself to me. The fact that you would let me claim you, and hell, claim me in the same moment, humbles me more than anything. I could not survive losing you again, either. We will fight and do everything we need to do to make sure we both get the hell out of this place, make it back to the Earth realm, and live the life we should have always had. You are right, you are always right, and to save myself from any further misery in the future, I am willing to admit right now that you will always be right.”
Olwen grinned as she wrapped her arms around him and twisted to push him over onto his back so she ended up sprawled across him. “Exactly, and now that you seem to have come to see things my way, I think in the interest of ensuring that we do things in the fairest and most equitable way, I should get to be on top this time.”
Rohan’s cock, which was still buried deep within her, was now full and in total agreement with that statement. He threw his arms out to his sides, biting back a moan as she shuffled into a kneeling position over him. Her blonde hair fell in a silken wave down her back, and he could feel the ends of it tickling his thighs.
“Take me, goddess, show me how much you love me,” he challenged.
With a raised eyebrow and eyes blazing with joy, she did exactly that.
Chapter 6
Olwen sighed as she snuggled back against the chest of her mate, pulling the thick blanket she had conjured tighter around her. In all the years she had dreamt of being reunited with her Captain, finding out he was a bear shifter and she was his mate was definitely not one of the scenarios she had thought of. Now that they were together, he had claimed her as she had him, and they had spent the night constantly reaching for each other and delivering a whole world of pleasure she had never known existed, she wouldn’t have it any other way.
“Why aren’t you sleeping?” Rohan’s voice, thick with sleep, came from behind her. “Surely you are not ready for more loving, my goddess?” Olwen smiled when she felt Rohan reach for her breast at the same moment his erection pressed against her from behind.
“I have the feeling that I will always be ready for you.” She rolled over so she could look up at him in the muted light of dawn. The sun must have just started to rise on another day in the Otherworld, and she thought back to the previous day. As reluctant as she was to talk about her sister, she knew that they needed to. Argon would not allow them to simply leave the Otherworld. “How did you manage to escape Argon?”
Rohan pressed a kiss gently to her cheek and lifted up to support his head on his hand, absently rubbing circles into her tummy with the heel of his palm.
As Rohan told her the story of his escape, her anger toward her sister grew. Not only had the bitch decreed that the love of her life be shackled for all this time, she let others beat on him until he lost consciousness.
Rohan paused and frowned, obviously sensing her anger. Olwen reached up to smooth the lines of worry that formed around his eyes, mentally counting to ten to calm herself down. The worry seeped away and he smiled back at her, taking her hand and pressing a kiss to the back of it, before he continued.
“The thought of you out there with those big, ugly bastards chasing after you filled me with a rage I can’t even begin to describe. A red haze literally covered my vision, and by the time I had calmed enough for that to fade, I had shifted into my bear form, busted out of my magically strengthened shackles, killed the three guards in the room, and left. I followed the fetid scent of the bastards that were sent to kill you, and I hunted them tirelessly and without mercy until I had killed each one. When I felt the portal open a second time, though, I thought perhaps you had changed your mind and gone back without me.”
Olwen froze at that last sentence. “You felt the portal open again?”
Rohan frowned at her and nodded. “Yeah, just before I scented you up that tree, I felt the same damn sensation I had the day before when you had come through the portal.”
Olwen closed her eyes and moaned before snapping her eyes open and clambering up and off the makeshift bed as quickly as she could. She cast a look of regret back at her naked and truly amazingly hot-looking mate, then reached for her clothes. “Damn it, I should have known they wouldn’t have been able to stop themselves from coming after me.”
Rohan was off the bed in a blur, gripping her by the shoulders and turning her to face him. “Who the hell is after you? I will rip them limb from limb.”
Oddly flattered at the outburst of promised bloodshed, Olwen stood up on her tiptoes and pressed a quick hard kiss to his lips. “Aww, that’s sweet, my bear, but these ones are nice and not to be torn asunder, okay? If you felt the portal open, then I would say that my Elementals have come to the Otherworld to aid me in your rescue. Let me see if I can reach them.”
Olwen opened the psychic link she had with her Elementals and called out to them. When nothing came back, she knew that either the link did not work in this realm, or something must have happened to them. “I can’t reach them.”
“And if they are out there, then they may very well cross paths with Argon and her army.” Rohan caught on quick to Olwen’s concern and looked around the cave. “I guess we’d better go find them. I hope your Elementals aren’t the shy type. I have no clothes, so they will be meeting me in all my glory, so to speak.”
Olwen stopped in the process of shrugging into her jacket and turned to look at him. Her body warmed at the sight of him standing there, hands on hips, erection jutting out toward her, and one word came to mind. “Mine!” she growled. Rohan grinned at her obvious show of possessiveness.
Her Elementals were not shy, but they were female and all of them would appreciate her mate’s form, and that was something she did not want to have to deal with. “You will travel as your bear. We’ll make up more ground that way with the added bonus of keeping all your yummy hotness to myself.”
Rohan’s eyes twinkled with mirth as he dipped his head in acceptance, no doubt knowing that her suggestion had more to do with the fact he would be completely covered than speed. “And you, my goddess, how will you be traveling today?”
Olwen winked as she snapped her jacket closed. “I will be traveling by bear as well. You told me I rode you pretty damn good last night. Let’s see how I do in broad daylight.”
* * * *
“Trīgintā trēs…trīgintā duo…”
Olwen frowned as she heard Rohan counting in Latin again for what had to have been about the hundredth time in the past couple of hours. They were making their way back toward the Uruheim lands, and Rohan was walking in his human form. Bear riding, it turned out, was damn hard on a girl’s ass. They had removed the trousers of the young fighter who they had left tied to a tree back at the clearing, but he had refused to wear the shirt, which Olwen was more than happy with.
“Vīgintī septem…vīgintī sex…”
Again with the counting, and Olwen turned around so swiftly she caught the fact that Rohan had been walking behind her with his eyes locked to her ass. When his eyes lifted to meet hers, he simply grinned and didn’t look one bit sorry that he got caught ogling her.
Olwen crossed her arms across her chest. “What’s with the counting?”
Rohan’s grin turned slightly sheepish and he held his hands out from his sides. “I’m trying to distract myself.”
“From what?”
“Your ass!” Olwen opened her mouth to respond, but then shut it when nothing came to mind. “I have been without you for so long, it seems like a gift from the gods to have you here with me. Then when I think about that, my thoughts turn to how you were last night, in my arms, I
get assaulted with a kaleidoscope of images that have my cock so hard, and so damn fast, that I’m in danger of passing out from lack of blood supply to my brain. I started counting to ten in Latin to try and bring myself under some semblance of control, and when that stopped working, I tried counting backward from fifty.”
Olwen smiled softly at her mate. He was usually a man of few words, and that might have actually been the most she had ever heard him say. “How’s that working out for you, lover?”
Rohan threw his hands up in frustration. “Terrible! It’s not working at all. All I can focus on is the soft cheeks of your ass and how desperately badly I want to bury myself between them. I am constantly fighting my need to fuck you as hard and for as long as I can.”
Olwen had once heard one of her father’s courtiers talk of being aroused so quickly she felt her entire body heat, and the arousal within her swell until every nerve in her body cried out for the one she desired most. At the time, she had dismissed it as frivolous, feminine gibberish with absolutely not real substance to it. Now she knew the truth. Her entire body screamed in need for the man who stood before her, his body so tense all the muscles in his torso stood out in stark relief.
Taking a deep breath in order to calm herself, she held her hand out to her man. When he simply stared at her in confusion, hunger raging in his beautiful brown eyes, she smiled softly at him. “Come to me, my love. You are not the only one that craves. One look at you and my body heats, my pussy weeps and clenches in need of your body.”
Rohan moved swiftly to bridge the slight gap between them, sweeping her up into his arms and slamming his mouth to hers with a moan. Olwen wound her arms around her lover’s neck, then let her legs lift to wrap tightly around his hips, offering her own moan at the sensation of her most sensitive parts pressing against the hardness of his abdomen.