Huntbound (Moonfate Serial Book 2) (3 page)

Grabbing me by my butt, he hoists me up onto the wall, his strong arms lifting my not insignificantly sized frame effortlessly. His square jaw doesn’t even grit. I’d worry he’ll drop me, but I’m actually only half straddling him. My right foot still touches the ground for balance.

My heart twists a little. I look away. Adventurous sex positions were off limits with my past boyfriends. Not because they didn’t want to try, but because maneuvering my body seemed such a difficult task for them.

“I’ve never—” I start, but there are too many ways to finish that sentence and all of them are true. I’ve never had sex up against a wall or in a dream or with a werewolf, or with someone who wants to claim every part of me, or with someone who, no matter how I try to resist, seems like he will.

“You will,” Orion promises. The wet, hot tip of his cock brushes against my mons and he lifts me higher, bearing even more of my weight with seemingly even less effort. “You are.”

Then in one glorious thrust, he impales me.

“Ohhh.” I exhale.

This time when Orion turns my gaze to his, he does so gently, until his eyes once again capture mine. I don’t need to assure myself that this isn’t real anymore. In my waking life, no one ever looks at me like that.

“There’s a good girl.” Slowly Orion pulls back, almost too big to fit inside of my tight pussy.

I squeeze my inner walls tight, as if I can force him to stay.

He presses a delicate kiss to my temple. Sweat trickles from his brow onto mine and I can smell my own desire on him, tangy and sweet. But the words he whispers next are anything but. “Artemis, I tried to meet with you the human way. To know you first. But you chose this instead.”

I flinch backwards in surprise, but there’s nowhere to go.

With a flick of his hips he thrusts again, tearing me in two. It hurts, but not enough to stop the pleasure in my veins. “So now you’re going to have to beg.” He kneads my ass, forcing his cock even deeper into me, until it’s touching my deepest place.

“N-no,” I manage to stutter out, even as I wiggle my hips to get more stimulation.

He thrusts again. It’s too slow. I need more. I need…

“Please.”

And again, slightly faster. “Please what?”

“Please, Orion.”

And faster, but never fast enough.

“Please, Alpha Orion,” I beg.

His eyes bore into me as he rips the truth from me, just as his dick rips me open. “I own your body, Artemis.”
 

“Yes!” I shout.

He starts to pick up speed, until his cock is pistoning in and out of me with terrifying velocity. My whole body shakes.

“Say it.” His voice trembles. He must be close too.

Stars prickle on the edges of my vision. “Y-you own my body.” And I am falling, falling, falling. But still not fast enough. Never fast enough. Even in the thick of this perfect pleasure I still need more, so I yell, “You own me!”

And then everything collapses.

Chapter Four
 

Centuries of fear mongering by churches and kings would lead one to believe that many werebeasts kidnapped their chosen mates or worse, raped and abused them. Nothing could be further from the truth. Nothing is more sacred to werebeasts than their mates, for it is only through their mates that they can find peace with their pasts and hope for their futures.

-
Beasts, Blood & Bonds
by Dr. Nina M. Strike

For a moment I’m sure the world’s ending, or at the very least that I’m waking up. But after the trembling echoes of pleasure subside I’m left half-collapsed against Orion. The air is still cold, the walls are still institutionally barren, and most of all there’s still that smell underneath everything. That horrible, chemical smell.

Orion’s stroking my hair again, too, soothing me. But this time it doesn’t work.

I lost everything in his embrace. Stripped myself bare for him. Screamed his fucking name.

And for what? We’re still here.

I grab him tighter, my half-bitten, once-manicured nails digging into his rock-hard biceps. What if we’re trapped here? What if there’s nothing I can do? A sob coagulates in my lungs. I can’t breathe. I can’t do anything but tremble against him.

“Shh,” he whispers.

The rough texture of the white-painted brick rasps against my skin as Orion lets my body slowly slide down the wall until both my feet are once again touching the ground. Then with a hand at the small of my back he guides me to the bed. One thought keeps drifting through the haze of my twisted afterglow as I fall onto the stiff mattress.
Why here? Why is this his nightmare?
That’s stupid — it doesn’t even matter what the nightmare is. All that matters is getting out of it.

The bed dips as Orion sits down next to me. His hands trail across my arms. Funny, he’s the wolf, but he seems to always want to pet
me
.

“It’s alright—”

“N-no—” I shudder as a final ripple of pleasure ghosts through me. Even now, in my despair, my body taunts me with its reaction to him. “I didn’t fight it. I…you—”

I can feel his pulse thumping through his skin. His werewolf heart beats with ten times the strength of a human one. “Artemis.”

My heart squeezes at the way he says my name, and at all the nameless promises hidden within it.

“How did you do it?” I whisper. “How did you end my dream?” Leveraging my elbow, I manage to wobble upright until I’m staring at him. I trail my fingertips over the downy ends of his platinum hair.

And I almost gasp.

His eyes were once a frozen cobalt, but they’ve melted into a kaleidoscope of patterns. Blue, green, purple, even wisps of gold dance across his irises. “From the moment I first saw you alone in the forest, Artemis, I knew that you were mine. I knew that I wouldn’t let you suffer, no matter your past. But you…” He shakes his head and closes his eyes. “You’re less certain. Even now. So here we are. “

I trace his lip with my thumb, not sure why I feel wetness pricking at the corners of my eyes. His mouth is velvety and slightly moist. I half expect his tongue to dart out and lick me or his teeth to worry my flesh, but he doesn’t move at all.

“And where are we, Orion? Really?”

I wait for him to deflect the question. But after only a moment he answers. “This was the safe house where my father kept me for two years.”

“Safe house?”

“Yes.” Numbness, longing and pain flit through his eyes in a storm of magenta and emerald. “In the early days, your government hadn’t decided yet whether to simply brand us like cattle or exterminate us entirely. And with your drones scouring the forests we had to hide somewhere.”

“They weren’t my drones,” I protest.

I don’t know why that fact seems so important. Maybe it’s because in some sense they were. The drones, the Tracker app, all of it was the result of my parents’ murder and the fact that my face was plastered all over social media.

Just like it’s my fault that we’re still stuck here. Shame burns my cheeks bright red. Everyone I love always ends up hurt, and somehow I come out unscathed. Lawrence has been kidnapped and his lover has been killed and what do I get, a mate who wants nothing more than to help me?

And when he does, he ends up stuck in his nightmare.

As I stroke the underside of Orion’s chin I notice that even though the rest of his body is hairless, his face has a light dusting of tiny hairs as soft and bright as freshly fallen snow. I drag my hand lower down the column of his neck, luxuriating in the sensation, until my fingers trip over something rougher and almost wet.

When I bring my hands away, I can see that underneath his neck is a long, angry red line. A scar. And not an old one, either.

Orion flinches, but doesn’t lower his chin.

Gently, so gently, I stroke the area around his wound, wishing there was something more I could do to heal it. But I don’t have magic powers. “How did you get it?” I whisper.

For the first time Orion looks at the room around us, but he can’t look for long. The moment his gaze hits the door he closes his eyes again. “Werebeasts weren’t meant to be confined. It eats away at us. Will drive us mad if we don’t have a distraction. And there is no better distraction than pain.” He grits his teeth. “Although cutting me was never my father’s favorite method, because in the end it might weaken me. Other ways, like poisoning the room with silver, or keeping it just below freezing, I could come to tolerate or even grow strength from.”

Oh, God. I dart my hands away, a sick, hot guilt burning in my chest. Now the tears really do come, stinging my eyes. His is a kind of suffering I can never even hope to understand. Let alone fix. If it’s even possible for anyone to fix it.

And yet.

As I reach out and touch him, tracing the scar with the barest, most careful of movements, his eyes open.

I swallow and steel myself, ready for him to fling some pithy innuendo at me, or worse, command me to touch him again, but he does neither. He just looks at me with those wide eyes.

The tension seeps out from between my shoulder blades. “I’m sorry,” I whisper. “I’m so sorry.”

I remember his words when we first met in the flesh. That love is a human foible. And he looks so very human in front of me, lonely and strong at the same time, gazing at me as if he can’t believe this is really happening.

He’s right.

It’s not.

The world is dissolving around us.

I’m waking up.

Chapter Five

There is no story humans believe we know better than that of Adam and Eve. But the truth, buried within the ancient Greek and Latin, is quite different.

In the ancient werebeast texts, instead of being created, Adam and Eve were angels who descended from heaven to earth in order to seek out new lands. But they weren’t alone.

Lucifer, a demon, rose up from hell, and, in the interest of capturing earth, seduced Eve. Some say with an apple, some say with a kiss, others say with something else entirely: knowledge. Not knowledge of the heavens or the earth, but knowledge of herself. Of her desires. And the potential of what she could be if she only gave up trying to construct Eden and allowed for mistakes. For tragedy. For sin.

Whatever the reason, Lucifer and Eve made love and begot the child, Eth. Unlike Adam and Eve, who could only use their magic to tame the world around them, not themselves, Eth could change his shape. And it was this that was his undoing.

Because one day Adam found the boy playing by his favorite tree and startled him. When he did, Eth turned into a snake out of fear, revealing his identity instantly.

Enraged at Eve’s betrayal, Adam burned paradise and used his last reserves of power to banish Lucifer back to the demon world.

But unlike Lucifer, Eth was not cursed.

While the children of Adam and Eve lost their divinity and power over time, until they became humans, the children of Eth kept their father’s power to change forms. They were also blessed with chosen mates, so that the tragedy of their grandmother’s betrayal would never happen again.

-
Beasts, Blood and Bonds
by Dr. Nina M. Strike

Returning to reality feels a little bit like trying to latch onto a weak cell phone signal. The world flickers between the white walls of Orion’s prison and the equally empty walls of my childhood home.

When I finally awaken fully, I lie on my half-deflated air mattress for a moment, reveling in the clearer details and most of all the blessed summer warmth. Even if the plastic of the air mattress is sticky against my skin.

All too soon thought follows sensation. We may have returned to reality, but nothing is fixed. Lawrence is still missing. Cooper is still dead. And Orion isn’t half the monster I thought he was. He’s suffered just as much as I have.

And speak of the devil. He’s looming over me. He must have awoken a few seconds ago. His naked, sculpted torso and overgrown hair coupled with his flashing eyes are even more out of place in my childhood home than they were in the dream.

I pull my tangled sheets up to my chin, even though I’m dressed underneath them. “Hi.”

I mean to sound resolute, as if I’m ready to move forward and forget about the dream. But it’s impossible when he’s looking at me as if it was my nightmare we emerged from, not his.