One Last Try Page 4

  Dio laughed, his fingers in my hair gentling. “Lick it.”

  My breath caught. Unable to resist, I glanced up.

  “You heard correctly.” A smile stretched his full pink lips. “You didn’t shift, despite harrowing circumstances. That degree of self-control merits a reward.” He waved his dick at me. “Now, lick.”

  Of course I hadn’t shifted at the prison. Shifting hadn’t occurred to me, but that didn’t mean I was willing to forgo my treat. I leaned forward eagerly. My lips parted and I darted my tongue to the head of his cock, shrouded by foreskin. The softness of it amazed me. How this part of him could feel delicate, like silk when the rest of his dick jutted achingly and urgently hard perplexed me, but the slightly salty flavor of him soon intoxicated me. I liked his taste. Liked the musky smell of his groin. I enjoyed lapping at the skin shrouding the last inch of his cock.

  “That’s it,” he said on a throaty growl, petting my hair in encouragement. “Play with the tip.”

  Squaring my shoulders, I bent over his dick and licked him in earnest. Since I liked to tease my foreskin back and forth over the tip of my own cock when I masturbated, I used my darting tongue to generate the same effect on him and preened, my confidence building, when his chest vibrated with a low wicked growl. His bitter, salty taste dizzied me. Was this what his seed would taste like? I desperately wanted to suck to find out, but the bunching of his fingers in my hair warned me to behave.

  Greedy, I set to my work. I trilled my tongue over the head of his dick, occasionally rewarded with a teasing sample of the seminal fluids swelling his knot. I traced the veins along the length and sighed my contentment when his grip shifted to give my mouth room to nuzzle his knot, already grown rigid with the promise of his cum.

  I wanted him spilling it inside me. In my mouth, inside my ass, I didn’t care which as long as the prize was mine. I craned my neck, grateful at his guiding palm at my nape urging me to his balls. I dared taking one into my mouth, gently, reverently, and when that generated no punishment, I worshipped the other as well. Dio moaned, appreciating my efforts. What I lacked in expertise, I made up for with my enthusiasm. The more sounds he made, the higher my confidence soared.

  I could pleasure my alpha. Mated many years to Ella, a strong alpha in her own right, Farron hadn’t desired me. Lost in misery and grief, my father might not have protected me, but Farron hadn’t wanted me anyway. Perhaps out of respect for my family, he hadn’t touched me, but I’d sometimes wondered if he’d rejected me because his wolf believed me too damaged. Even committed couples occasionally brought unguarded omegas into their dens, the temptation to bed us too beguiling and the possibility of siring more offspring from us too rich. Farron, though, had rarely laid a finger on me and never like this. I hadn’t seen his cock, much less been invited to taste it.

  If my old alpha had doubted my ability to please him, Dio’s snarling pants as I licked his glorious dick proved Farron wrong. Dio soon jerked my ravenous mouth from my exploration of his balls and his knot, returning me to the tip.

  “Suck me,” he said, chest heaving.

  Opening wide, I gladly swallowed the head of his hard dick, and he thrust, filling my mouth. My jaw stretched. Spit pooled around his length. I hollowed my cheeks to suck, as he’d commanded me, and he praised me by rocking his hips, sliding the heavy weight of his cock over my tongue.

  “Look at me.”

  I stared up, heartbeat skipping at the yellow of his beast disappearing behind pupils blowing wide and black with lust.

  “Eyes on me. Keep licking.”

  He fucked my mouth, using me for his pleasure deliciously. The bulge of his knot beat rhythmically against my stretched lips. Drool leaked from my overstuffed mouth, wetting my chin. I slid my tongue across his hard thrusting length as best as I could, my stare unwavering on his as ordered. His hands fisted my hair at both of my temples to hold me in place for his rocking hips, angling my jaw to better please him.

  Submitting to him felt good. Right. Easy.

  Incredible.

  The creeping panic and hellish agony coiling inside me after the disaster at the prison unloosed with every thrust of his tasty cock into my mouth. My worries for my brother and for me frittered away. Dio mastered me, smoothly, elegantly. Completely. His lust drove everything from my mind, save for the intense joy of his dick fucking between my lips. For the first time in years, the constant clamor in my mind quieted and I felt peace.

  As if my acquiescence was what he’d been building toward, Dio gradually slipped his cock from my mouth. “On your knees.” Gasping for breath, he jerked his chin toward the bed. “Brace on your elbows.”

  Legs stiff from kneeling, I scrambled to heed him. I’d hardly positioned myself on the mattress when the silky heat of him brushed my ass cheeks. “Be still.” He shoved a slick finger into my hole. He pumped it only twice before adding another, and I blew out hard pants at the burn. A third finger rapidly followed. I whined at the sting of the fourth, but I fought to relax. Didn’t move. He’d force his knot inside me, and already full of seed, the girth intimidated me. The less I fought him, the less I’d hurt later.

  He slid his fingers from my ass and leaned over my body. Lined the head of his cock with my hole. I gasped as the first thrust sank his dick into me by several inches. I scrabbled for the air to whine when he continued his unrelenting push inside. My fingers clenched the quilt. My toes curled. My chest expanded. Overwhelmed, I struggled to relax muscles that had reflexively tightened at the hard, thick length invading me, but my alpha’s lust left no room for mercy. He steadily filled me until his bulging knot pressed to my rim and my wild keening prodded him to stroke a soothing palm down the bumps of my spine. Again and again, he petted me, and I slowly adjusted to the rigid dick stabbing into my ass. Once the clench of my body began to ease, he looped an arm around my waist and grabbed my needy, jutting cock.

  I lost track of the world outside the pleasure igniting me at his first stroke. On my dick. In my ass. Senses swamped, I couldn’t distinguish between the two. Arousal destroyed me. The insistent press of his knot at my opening as he thrust and the pain of allowing that bulge into my body couldn’t stop my shivering delight. He played with my dick, toying with me as he fucked me until I begged for his knot, pleaded with him to stuff it into me.

  More. I needed more.

  Dio demanded my surrender and won it, the orgasm his skillful hand and stabbing dick yanked from my body almost painful in ferocity. My teeth clenched. Ecstasy jolted through me. A scream worked from my chest, and I sprayed cum onto the quilt in pulsing bursts. He wrecked me, draining my happy cock and sapping my urgent desperation from me. Mind gluey, my body exhausted, I collapsed to the mattress and my alpha rode me down, pumping into my ass in feral abandon. Too tired to clench or fight it, I finally allowed his knot into my sore ass with a soft yelp.

  Shuddering, I stopped squirming at his threatening growl into my nape. Pinioned by his cock in my ass and his knot locking us together, I submitted. He rocked, wedging himself deeper, and then he stiffened, his cock spitting semen into my bowels, my guts… and into my opened womb. I cried out at the heat of his seed filling me. Part of me yearned for his semen, the wolf’s instincts as strong and as powerful as my ruined body was broken, but even in my dazed exhaustion, I knew those instincts would be frustrated. No matter how deliciously my alpha commanded my body, I could not give him what an omega should: a child.

  Shaming wetness burned my eyes. I shoved my face into the mattress while he climaxed, every pulse of his jetting dick excruciating to me.

  I’d failed him.

  My purpose in my pack was as barren as I was.

  I hadn’t managed to step into my dead father’s role visiting my brother at the human prison. Seeing me had triggered Joth, pressured him to shift. For the first time in six years, Joth had attacked. In the end, my brother had been unable to reach or harm me, but he’d destroyed the fancy visiting room the humans had built for shifters. Joth had sh
attered the window and hopelessly dented the metal table on his side. I’d seen it and known.

  My brother lied.

  Oh, he’d destroyed me that day six years ago. As he had meant to do and he was right that taking my life hadn’t been necessary to devastate me.

  But deep down, where my brother became the monster, he regretted not killing me. I felt it in my bones. I excited him. Tormented him. Reminded him of the lives he’d brutally snuffed out and stirred the ugly darkness in his soul because he wanted to take life again—mine.

  He’d kill me if he could. Suck the juicy marrow from my bones, just as I had eaten the rabbits Dio had brought to me the first morning after he’d fucked me. Joth would not stop until I died. The human doctors and policemen wouldn’t be able to control him any better than they had that afternoon. My brother despised me. He longed to rape me.

  I shoved my face, damp with my tears, into the mattress as Dio spent in my ass, and sobbed.

  Swamped by my heartache, I didn’t recognize his big hands stroking me for long minutes. Gentle on my skin, comforting. Soothing. Tied as we were until the bulge at the base of his dick emptied, his heavy weight pushed me into the bed, holding me still for his semen but also for this tenderness after. Grief ate at me. I would’ve run if I could have, simply shifted into my wolf and raced to escape it. I would’ve done anything to flee the rapacious hurt.

  Dio held me through the storm of my weeping, the only sounds disrupting the quiet my ragged gasps. His silence gladdened me because, really, what could he say? Words could not ease this misery, nor husky rumbles soothe me. Only my tears could leech the poisonous grief from me. I should know. I’d had six years’ worth of experience in relieving the pressure of my pain.

  No one had held me close or petted me in years, though, and I eventually responded to Dio’s gentle patience. When his decreasing knot finally allowed him to slip from my ass, he rolled onto his side. Turning me in the shelter of his arms, he pulled me into the cradle of his broad chest. I snuffled, nose dripping, horrified at the notion of wiping my fluids on him, but his steely grip at my nape denied me any measure of retreat. My alpha would force me to accept whatever comfort he chose to offer me, just as I’d had no choice over taking his seed into my ass.

  I couldn’t resist him. I didn’t try.

  Eventually, I quieted and pushed into his palm caressing the line of my back down to the swells of my sore ass. I felt phenomenal, but limp with sated exhaustion, I wriggled closer, no longer mindful of snot or semen smearing his clothes. If he cared not for the mess, why should I? He let me nestle into him and I gratefully took whatever pleasure from him I could.

  Fingers threaded in my hair, he grunted when the shadows of encroaching nightfall had darkened the room and the stress and rigors of the day had drugged me into a drowsy stupor.

  “The safety glass has never been as thoroughly tested under live field conditions. Joth managed to pierce it once, with a single claw.” He tipped up my chin, lowering his forehead to brush mine. “The Secret Service thanks you.”

  A bubble of laughter climbed my throat, incongruous, awful, but somehow right. He grinned at my damp chuckle and my foolish heart lurched.

  The bow of his mouth stretched wider. “They’ve been developing another reinforced glass I’ve been guaranteed is stronger. I’m not sure who is more excited to test it under real-world conditions: the human doctors or their engineers.”

  My gladness sputtered, but I bravely clung to it.

  His lips thinned as well. “They want to meet with you,” he said, voice low and pensive. He arched an eyebrow at me. “Their psychiatrists.”

  Pressed against him, my brow furrowed. This was hardly a surprise. Humans had been pushing to put me under their collective microscopes since I’d emerged from my coma six years ago. Raw with grief, I’d shifted to my wolf to speed my healing and fled the human hospital with its antiseptic smells, its stench of illness and death. I’d run. Even from my father, especially from him, I’d streaked to the woods of our pack lands and ranged there as a wolf, hiding from everyone. The pack had hunted me initially. Shifters didn’t leave a sick wolf to suffer, after all, but I’d escaped them. Fled the territory altogether when the hunt grew too dangerous for me to linger. Judging time in animal form was notoriously difficult. I couldn’t guess how long I’d roamed, but when I was ready, I’d returned. Shifted back to my human form too, to prove I still could. None of them had realized I’d come home until after I’d built my den in the workshop behind my father’s house. After the pack’s first flurries of alarm, they’d left me alone and Farron hadn’t mentioned returning me to the humans again.

  Perhaps because the old alpha had known in his gut, if they tried, I would run. Maybe run forever.

  Dio’s growl warned me. “They believe they can help you.” He scowled. “I agree.”

  I gulped, my throat as dry as the sandpaper I worked with. “I’m not like him.”

  “No one is like Joth, thank God. No one is like you either, though, and you’re worth ten of your brother.” He stared, gaze uncompromising. “You’ll see Dr. Bennet on Tuesdays before visiting Joth and you will talk to him. I’ll see the reports. Don’t think I won’t know if you defy me. Don’t entertain foolish hopes I might fail to punish rebellion, no matter how minor, because I fuck you.”

  I would’ve given anything to tear my gaze away from the command in his fierce glare, but I didn’t move a muscle. I hardly dared to breathe. “Yes, sir.”

  My fate sealed, he leaned forward to brush my mouth with his in reward. My aching heart soared at the softness of his lips for this, our first kiss. My first kiss, though he’d fucked me twice. I enjoyed the warm puff of his breath, the taste of him only a hint behind the seal of his lips. Heart thumping a quick cadence Dio was sure to hear and note for his arsenal against me, I wallowed gluttonously in the affection he’d given me and realized I’d gladly offer him a lot for only a chance at more kisses. Deeper kisses. Wet kisses.

  My alpha was as clever as he was determined, though. He pulled his mouth away, and fingers in my hair, nudged me down to rest my cheek against his chest. “Go to sleep.”

  With the raw tang of his semen on me, inside me, and perfuming his den, I closed my eyes to submit to him, and in his arms, for the first night in years, I did not dream.

  Chapter Three

  After I woke in an empty bed the next morning, Asa returned me to my den. Fresh game in the form of two rabbits rested in front of the door, but I stepped over them, my mind whirling with plans as I strode past my tools and straight to the cramped storeroom where I kept the wood I selected, cut, and seasoned myself.

  By the time the driver arrived the next Tuesday, the last coat of sealant on my gift to my new alpha dried in the unseasonably muggy heat. I’d already stretched a tarp over the rocking chair I’d completed for Maise’s full moon pickup, along with a three-legged stool, a pair of occasion tables, and three of the cedar hope chests Farron had informed me fetched a nice profit for our pack in the towns. The set of shelves I’d meant to complete my offering to the pack for the month still lay in pieces inside the shed as the driver helped load Dio’s bench into the Cherokee. Contributing to the pack was important, but I had keenly felt my failure to welcome my new alpha, fixer or not, with the appropriate gifts from my hands. No shifter would find a breath of disrespect from me toward my alpha again.

  A beta escorted me to the cabin and ordered me to shower, as if the tepid water of the creek was inadequate in making me clean. I dressed in the same blue jeans, white T-shirt, and gray hoodie I’d worn for the last two visits. Though I wasn’t breeding, another beta ordered me to stuff my belly with an extravagant lunch of trout, mustard greens, and strawberries. Accustomed to meals composed of only what I hunted and foraged, I ate until my stomach swelled and bloated.

  My driver led me to the Cherokee, and soon, he turned me over to the unsmiling Yolanda who guided me to an office in the heart of the administration wing I had until now only
hurried through.

  She knocked on the door, opening it at the quiet responding “Enter.” She ushered me inside, shutting the door behind me.

  The human doctor sat behind a desk—metal, I instantly hated it. He tapped at a laptop open in front of him. Books and binders stuffed a wall of shelves on the right. The collection boasted of the human’s qualifications and stature, as well as the pair of windows looking out on a yard sparsely populated with inmates I could make out in between the stripes of tired window blinds.

  “Almost done,” the human said. “Please. Sit.”

  Since I’d had my fill of arrogant twats making me wait to puff up their self-importance and I was under no obligation to tolerate it from a human, I crossed my legs and dropped to the floor by the door.

  Shutting the case of the laptop, the doctor winged up an eyebrow at me. “I meant on a chair, Nox.” He waved. “Or the couch.”

  I lifted my chin. “I’m comfortable.”

  The human frowned. He pushed to his feet. Once he rounded the desk, he maneuvered one of the cushioned chairs I’d rejected to face me and bent to retrieve a palm-sized electronic device from the desk.

  “All right if I record this?” He placed the gadget on the floor between us.

  I nodded.

  “Audio feeds on the cameras in my office aren’t active. You have to say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ into the mini-recorder to log your answer.”

  “Oh.” I stared at the device he indicated. I lived rough, but before the murders, I’d been as normal as any boy, human or shifter. I’d played video games and had my own phone, but I didn’t recognize this contraption. “Yes.”