by Sable Sylvan
Clove moved his hands down, kneeling on the floor as he moved his hands down from her waist to her hips to her upper legs. He pulled apart her legs even more.
“Is there something I can do for you, sir?” asked Abby.
“Give me one good reason not to give you a cavity check, miss,” said Clove. “I have reason to suspect you’re smuggling a substance more addictive than any drug on the market.”
“I don’t have any good reason to tell you not to do what you want to do,” said Abby.
“Did you have a good reason for forgetting to call me ‘sir’?” teased Clove, and then, without much warning, he entered Abby with his fingers.
Abby gasped. Clove was inside of her, teasing her with just a single finger that was mixing her honeypot. His thumb hit her outer pleasure button, and she let out a small moan. Clove was giving her just a little bit of what she wanted. Sure, some S+M was all about rough, primal sex, but was there anything more painful than being deprived of pure pleasure? No frikkin’ way. Abby’s back arched, pushing her butt out some more, and Clove rewarded her with another finger inside of her, but that was it.
“Please,” said Abby between gasps. “I need you. Please.”
“Well, since you did say please,” teased Clove. “Lean back. Trust me.”
Abby leaned back, and Clove caught her in his arms and carried her to the bed. He undid the spreader bars, but not so that he could let her legs go back together. No, he did it so that he could push her legs even further apart. He pressed the head of his thick cock against Abby’s entrance and pushed into her petals, spreading her.
Abby let out a low, long gasp. It was a gasp, not a moan, not a sigh, but a gasp that was purely primal. She had never felt a cock like Clove’s before. She’d had a sampling of it at the engagement party, but frankly, not where it mattered. Being filled by Clove was an amazing experience. She could feel every last inch of his thick veiny length against the insides of her body and Clove knew how to treat her. He was plundering her body as if he were a Viking, claiming her like his shifter legacy demanded. Bound and blindfolded, the only thing Abby could do was let Clove know just how badly she had wanted his body by showing him a side of her he’d never seen before. With every arching of her back, twisting of her torso, and wrapping of her legs around his waist, she was showing Clove just how much she wanted him.
“I can feel you tightening,” said Clove. “You’re close. Say it.”
“I am, I am close,” admitted Abby.
“I want you to look into my eyes as you come,” ordered Clove as he pulled the mask off of Abby’s eyes. It took her a second to readjust her eyes to the light. She looked into Clove’s eyes, and just as her eyes had nearly readjusted to the light of the room, something flashed in his eyes. For a split second, she thought she had seen a polar bear roaring on a mountain cliff, snow swirling as the bear bellowed out toward an icy sea.
“Why did I just see a bear?” asked Abby.
“Because the bear just saw you,” said Clove. “I’m close, too, Abby. There are two things I can’t hold back, my shift and my desire. I’ve held both back for far too long. The first already came out tonight. The second is coming soon, real soon.”
“Don’t hold back,” said Abby. “Please.”
“Then you’re going to have to hold onto me,” said Clove. He undid the silk scraps that were tying Abby’s arms together, leaving the furry cuffs on her wrists, and putting her arms around his neck so that she was holding onto his upper body with her arms. Abby reached down to hold Clove to her body more tightly, feeling his rock hard pecs against her soft bosom. She wrapped her legs around the man who was claiming her in ways she had never been claimed before.
That was all it took for Abby, the feeling of Clove’s mate mark against her soft breasts making the lovemaking all the more intimate. That mark had answered so many questions for the both of them. She knew that Clove had to be the one for her, and she the one for him. She was utterly relaxed, totally aroused, and absolutely ready to take what he had to offer.
Abby pulled back and looked into Clove’s eyes and Clove, looking down into Abby’s eyes and not breaking contact for a single second, twitched his cock the way he knew she’d love it. He’d thought about doing that to her once he’d learned about that spot inside of her when they had first rolled around on the floor in the next room over. His eyes flicked slightly downwards as he saw Abby bite her lower lip and then, he locked eyes with her again before giving her one last twitch.
Abby came, hard. Her petals blossomed around Clove, and she managed to keep her eyes open and locked on Clove’s eyes as she came. Her mouth opened into a small ‘o’ as she inhaled and then a larger ‘O’ as she said Clove’s name quickly on the exhale. Clove had never felt or seen anything more perfect in his life, and he didn’t even bother trying to stop the flood of white that was bursting from his body. This time, the creamy essence emerging from his body wasn’t his polar shift. It was his seed.
Suddenly, before Abby and Clove’s very eyes, something amazing happened. Clove hadn’t seen anything like this before. The mark on his chest was changing. It had never changed before, and it certainly hadn’t glowed. It was doing both. A brilliant red light appeared, all at once, forming a shape that at first confused Clove, until he remembered he was looking at it upside down.
On his chest was an outline of a red heart. The outline was of medium thickness, in one consistent width around the heart that was formed by the shadowy imprints of Abby’s hands that had appeared on his chest around his eighteenth birthday. The shadowy marks of Abby’s hands did not disappear. They were outlined for the first time, with lines of gold marking the fingers and their slight wrinkles on the inner side of the knuckles.
Abby reached up and touched the mark. She put her hands over the mark, afraid this may be the last time that she would be able to put her hands on the mark and form a heart on Clove’s chest. She was worried that the light was not just a light of change, but a light of erasure, a light that would burn away the mate mark from Clove’s chest forever.
Abby had never been gladder to be wrong about something in her entire life.
The golden light faded away, but the red light started to change the skin on Clove’s body. The outline of the heart was being drawn into Clove’s skin by the light. The heart shape outlined the heart that was already on Clove’s chest so that when one looked at the chest, it was like there was a regular red heart, and behind it, a person making a heart symbol with their hands.
Finally, the red glow faded, and Clove pulled out of Abby, both thoroughly exhausted. They had just had one heck of a night.
Abby and Clove lay back for a second to catch their breath. Abby took the blindfold all the way off and threw it off the bed into the pile of silk scraps that was lying next to the bed. She looked over at Clove. He was breathing heavily, but it was just from the rigorous sex. His chest was moving up and down, and it made the mark on his chest look like a beating heart.
Abby ran her hands over the mark. The red lines around the mark forming a heart had not faded at all. She was worried it was blood or something, given that with shifters, you never knew what could happen, but a quick ginger touch of the mark proved that Clove was fine. The mark had stopped glowing, but the red line remained.
“So what now?” asked Abby. “What does the change of the mark mean?”
“You and I are fated mates,” said Clove. “That much is clear. All we have to do now is keep on being together and get prepared to start lives together.”
“But you’re going to be in Europe this next semester,” said Abby. “Are you sure we should date? We were both trying to avoid drama.”
“I don’t know how your relationship was with Jason,” said Clove. “Obviously, he had no idea how to treat a lady. You’re with me now. You’re my girlfriend, Abby. You know that’s how this works. That means that you are going to be treated the way you deserve to be treated, like a princess.”
“Okay then,
boyfriend, for those of us that haven’t been treated like royalty all our frikkin’ lives, what the heck does that mean?” asked Abby.
“It means that I’ll fly over to you some weekends, and some weekends, you’ll fly over to visit me,” said Clove. “You go to school on the East Coast. I go to school in England. It’s only a six-hour flight. That’s shorter than the round trip between Houston and Dallas. It’s nothing.”
“Okay, and what about when we’re too busy to visit each other?” asked Abby.
“There’s the Internet. We can video chat, and of course we can call each other,” said Clove. “I know you have my number.”
“Ha-ha,” said Abby. “And…you’re fine spending the last year of your wild college life in a monogamous relationship?”
“Are you kidding?” asked Clove. “Abby, you’re it for me. There’s nobody else. There never will be. You’re my fated mate. No other woman has caught my eye since we met.”
“Since we met?” asked Abby.
“Yeah, since we met,” said Clove. “All I’ve done this past semester is stay in my room and study because I am tired of women throwing themselves at me when I go to the library or the dining hall. I came to Fallowedirt to escape that and all the drama back at the Scoville Manor in Oslo but…I ended up finding something more important than solace. I found myself a life companion. I found my fated mate…and at least, unlike Herb and Alice, you were never really lost.”
“I can’t believe things have changed so much since the engagement party. Could you imagine what would’ve happened if we had just had sex that night?” asked Abby. “Things would’ve been so much simpler.
“I wanted to keep going, but…” started Clove.
“Do you remember…the fight we had that night?” asked Abby shyly.
“No, not even a little,” said Clove. “I remember that we had a fight, but I just remember being so frustrated with you! I don’t remember what it was about.”
“I don’t remember anything except for being mad at you,” said Abby. “I’m sure that one of the others remembers what we were fighting about. I think there was something about…a closet?”
“Oh, that,” said Clove, smacking his forehead. “You’re gonna wish we weren’t fated mates when I remind you what happened.”
“Okay, let me have it,” said Abby. “I’m a big girl. I can take it.”
“Uh…so, after we had sex, you said…” started Clove.
“‘I think that we just broke in our library quite nicely,’” said Abby. “And then you said…”
“‘What do you mean, library? This is going to be my walk-in closet’,” said Clove.
“And then I said, ‘What makes you so sure you’re going to get to keep this room all to yourself?’,” said Abby. “And then there was more bickering. I was so mad because I thought you were just going to take this room to turn into a big closet all to yourself.”
“Wait, what?” asked Clove. “No. I meant mine as in ours. It’d be mine, but it’d also be yours. Look.” Clove got out of bed and walked to his closet. He opened the door and motioned inside.
“See?” asked Clove.
“What am I looking at, a bunch of hangers?” asked Abby.
“Exactly,” said Clove. “I don’t care about fancy clothes. You know the Scovilles have a stylist, right? My mother’s English, but she’s very much into fashion from across the channel. That’s why I wear the clothes I wear. The stylist picks them out for us.”
“So, if you didn’t care about having a walk-in closet, then why did you want us to have one?” asked Abby.
“So that we could have a boudoir for you to put on sexy clothes for me,” said Clove. “Lingerie, corsets, you name it. I love a woman in nice things.”
“Well, you better love me out of them, too,” said Abby. “After all, I’m not about to get dressed to the nines when there’s a thesis to finish writing.”
“Of course not,” said Clove. “I mean, of course not to the expectation that you’d wear them all the time, that is to say…”
Clove gulped. The bear roared at him. He knew what word Abby had inadvertently dropped. Now, would Clove ignore it, like he had so many of his cues, or would he finally listen to his beast? The bear had been the thing that Clove was certain would drive Abby away, but so far, when he’d ignored the bear’s advice, he had ended up in a worse situation. At this point, Clove had nothing to lose. He might as well say it.
“…I would love you no matter what you were wearing,” said Clove. “Even if you were wearing a trash bag with the holes cut out of it, or the scraps of silk sheets on the floor, or…nothing at all.”
“You really think you would love me?” asked Abby softly.
“No,” said Clove. “Because I already know that I do love you. I don’t know why I didn’t see it before. I guess I couldn’t admit it. I…I was so scared that you wouldn’t want me. I couldn’t stand being rejected by you, the one woman that I’ve ever wanted to share my life with.”
“What would I reject you for?” asked Abby. “I’m the girl from Fallowedirt who doesn’t exactly have land or a title.”
“I’m a Scoville,” said Clove. “I don’t need a woman with either of those things. My parents were like us. My father met my mother at a cafe when he went to Bonimolean. My mother was what you Americans call a ‘townie.’ She’d lived in that town all her life, and she had seen so many people pass through, people with big dreams she never imagined she’d be able to afford. My father had done some bullheaded thing, and of course, she hadn’t let him get away with it. She was the first person ever to deny him something, and she made him do the dishes. Can you imagine my father, the billionaire spice lord, doing dishes in a cafe because some wench told him to? But as they washed dishes, they talked, and he came back the next day to hear her stories about the town, stories that were more intriguing than anything he’d been taught in the classrooms of the ivory towers of Bonimolean. They married, had five sons, and well, even though she had nothing, it was no matter. My father gave her the world because she gave him a purpose.”
“And your grandfather Morten was okay with this?” asked Abby. “They got their happily ever after?”
“My grandfather may be strict, but he’s no fool,” said Clove. “He knows that Fate is a force stronger than any Viking fleet, any pack of polars, or…billions and billions of dollars. Of course he had to bless their union, and happily. You see…my grandfather has seen young men perish without finding their fated mate. After all, he was in the war.”
“The war?” asked Abby. “Oh…the war.” She remembered. That was how the whole Scoville-Quincy rivalry had started. Two men in a POW camp in Nazi Germany, one a small-town farmhand with big dreams and a big appetite, the other a Norwegian from a noble family that had run away to play soldier, talking about one of the few things they had in common: a love of spiced meat.
“So many young men died in that war,” said Clove. “Millions of young men could have had families, and didn’t. I don’t know who I feel sorrier for: the men who died without ever finding a fated mate or the ones who died having left one behind.”
Abby reached her hand out and took Clove’s hand in hers.
“So yeah. That’s why my grandpa understands that love, in any form it takes, is more important than propriety,” said Clove. “After all, who is going to argue with Morten frikkin’ Scoville?”
“But why would I reject you?” asked Abby.
“Because you’re a beauty, and I’m just a beast,” said Clove. “I can’t even control my shift. It comes out when it wants. I try to hold it back but it’s hard, and it makes me do things that I don’t want to do. The time I kissed you at the engagement party, the time I grabbed your thigh, the time that I fought your ex, and just now when I told you I loved you…each time, the polar took over and made me do it. I couldn’t stop it.”
“Can you usually stop it?” asked Abby.
“Usually,” said Clove. “It’s only around you that I can’t.
”
“Then maybe it’s because you don’t want to,” said Abby. “And all those things the polar made you do…they brought us closer together. Whatever instincts your polar has, they were right on the money. We’re here together now, aren’t we?”
“I guess you’re right,” said Clove. “I try so hard to be in control, but the bear is also a part of me, and sometimes I need to let it be in control, too.”
“I don’t think you’re just a beast,” said Abby. “Clove, you’re a lot of things. You’re charming but stubborn. You’re as hot as our families’ hot sauces but as cold as a Norwegian winter. But, if there’s one thing I know, it’s…that I love you, too.”
“You do?” asked Clove. “How could you?”
“I love you because you’re actually into me and treat me like your equal,” said Abby. “My ex, Jason, was only jealous that somebody else wanted me, and I’m sure he figured that anyone who was sending me those expensive gifts must’ve been loaded. I can’t imagine how big his eyes turned when he saw the Mesquite Manor. I know you treat me like your equal because you’re like me. If I weren’t your equal, you would be nice and civil to me. But, because I’m your equal…you treat me the same way you treat yourself.”
“Maybe we both need to treat ourselves better,” said Clove.
“Maybe?” asked Abby. “We definitely do. It’s gonna be hard work, but…we need to stop hiding our emotions. We need to stop being afraid of failing, whether it’s in regards to our senior year or about this thing we have now.”
“You mean dating?” asked Clove.
“I don’t recall going on a date with you,” teased Abby.
“Then I supposed we’ll have to arrange one,” said Clove. “The only question is…my place or yours?”