Page 23 of Bred Mate (Stalked Mates #2)

“You look good,” Karl says. He meets me outside the bedroom, running his hand through my hair, helping it get a little more volume. Who the hell is this man?

“Thank you,” I say. “And thanks for the clothes. I’m so glad not to wear a prairie dress.”

A special dinner has been planned for our family reunion.

My brothers are all looking good. They’ve all had haircuts, and they’re all dressed better than they ever have been.

Looking at them makes me feel so guilty.

This is what I was standing in the way of all this time.

I should have done what the other adults told me what to do and let them be taken by others.

They’d be so much better off if I hadn’t kept them in the swampy forest.

Tim and Tate tell me how they’re starting apprenticeships in construction. They look good. Happy. Fuck.

I smile my way through the meal because I know that’s what’s expected of me. This isn’t really all that different from the horror show my mother organized, except I like Karl and I want to make my brothers happy. Fortunately, the three of them carry the conversation quite happily.

Connor has a favorite subject in school. Art.

I never got him so much as a pack of crayons.

The longer I listen and the more I hear, the more my smile gets forced and the more the meal feels like it’s sitting in my stomach like a pile of lead.

I give myself a huge amount of credit for not crying at the table, but I know that would just upset my brothers and make them feel guilty for being happy. I am thrilled they’re happy. I just wish they’d been happier earlier.

“You were quiet tonight,” Karl notes as we prepare for bed. I’m uncomfortable here in this fancy house with these fancy things. His room is relatively bare by comparison, but it’s still solid and dry and the furniture hasn’t been inhabited by swamp things.

Can’t really complain about any of that. This is probably much healthier. I should have developed a preference for it earlier.

“Hm? Yes. Maybe,” I say.

I’m looking at the bed, a big king-sized thing with four posts and a big black bedspread. The sheets are a cream color. I don’t think it matters, really, but my attention is drawn to it.

“What’s on your mind?”

“Nothing important,” I say, stripping to my underwear. I want him to stop asking questions. Getting into my undergarments should be enough to make him think of other things.

He grabs my elbow and turns me toward him. I find myself looking up into his rough, scarred face as he inspects my expression.

“Tell me what’s going on with you,” he insists.

“Can you just let this go?”

“I’m not letting anything about you go,” he says. “You’ve been through so much. You were kidnapped by Rainer. You were almost forced to marry his son, and you held him hostage for ransom.”

“None of that was an inconvenience for me,” I say.

His good eye narrows slightly.

He’s going to see it in me. The fact that I was comfortable doing terrible things in the wild, and that I wasn’t comfortable at all around his dinner table with my family. This should be my happily ever after right here, but it doesn’t feel like it and I can’t explain why.

“Just drop it,” I tell him.

There’s a moment where he looks at me as if I might be crazy. “I feel as though you’ve forgotten who you’re talking to,” he says. “Or holding a man hostage has gone to your head. Why aren’t you happy?”

“I don’t know. Why are you an asshole?”

The question makes both his brows hit his hairline.

“You really want to fight, huh?” He lowers his voice and his tone. “This is going to be painful for you, Ellie.”

“I don’t care. I’m not staying here,” I tell him. “I don’t belong in the city. You do. The boys do. But I don’t.”

“Where do you think you belong?”

He seems strangely unbothered for a man who was planning to keep me and breed me and turn me into his perfect little mate.

“I belong in the woods. I belong dirty. I belong struggling. I don’t deserve things or want things.”

“I’m not going to let you run wild.”

Oh, I understand why he wasn’t worried. He wasn’t taking me seriously.

“I’m a wolf. You don’t have any choice.”

He smiles at me, his eye lighting up with pleasure. “I can keep you captive if you like. But we had a deal…”

“Our deal was I get the forest. I didn’t get the forest. The deal is void.”

He frowns slightly, and I wonder if I’ve hurt him. Karl doesn’t seem to be the sort of man who has feelings. He was an enforcer before he was an alpha, and enforcer is just a fancy name for executioner. We met because he was trying to kill me.

“We’re in love,” he says. “I know we are.”

“That wasn’t part of the deal.”

I’m being a bitch. A huge fucking bitch. I know it, and knowing it makes me feel worse, but doesn’t make me stop. If anything, it makes it worse. I am completely spiraling right now.

He pulls me close and kisses me, roughly, deeply, possessively.

“You’re being a little monster,” he growls in my ear. “Do you want me to treat you like one?”

A little thrill runs through me. I do want a distraction from how much I am hating myself in this moment. All the guilt and the regret, the things I feel I should have done, and the things I realize I shouldn’t have.

“You’re still mine,” he tells me. “I’ve claimed you. I’ve made you mine, and no matter what you do, you can’t escape.”

“Bet I can,” I mutter.

He gives me a look as I challenge him, wearing an expression that makes me feel even more excitement.

He rips the rest of my clothes off in two rough swipes.

“You’re staying here, and you’re going to learn to be civilized, just like your brothers. You’re going to have my babies and you’re going to be happy.”

He picks me up, throws me down on the bed, and strips himself just as swiftly. “You’re being an absolute brat,” he says. “The boys were no trouble at all compared to you.”

I sit up.

He pushes me back down, his big hand splayed across my chest.

“Stay,” he growls.

I don’t stay. I sit up again. He pushes me down once more, and I enjoy the feeling of him taking control.

I feel so terribly animal, so utterly fucking feral. I don’t just want to have sex with him. I want him to dominate me so ruthlessly there’s nothing to think about except how much I need him.

Sex is my savior. It’s the only thing that turns my brain off.

Karl understands that, and our rough chemistry flares into life as he pins me back against the bed, spreads my legs with his other hand, keeps them spread with one thigh, and starts spanking my pussy with sharp, whipping strokes of his fingers.

“Ow!” I complain.

It does nothing for me. He doesn’t show me any mercy, and I don’t want him to. I want this to hurt. The more he spanks my pussy, the more my clit tingles and stings, and the wetter I get. I writhe as he punishes me.

“You’re such a fucking feral little animal,” he growls. “You know how many females would do anything to be in this bed?”

“They’d be too fucking terrified,” I shoot back.

“You might be right,” he grins. “You’ve never been as afraid of me as you should be.”

I would respond, but I can’t because he is swiping his fingers along my drenched slit and pressing them against the tight bud of my ass.

“No,” I whine.

“Yes,” he counters. “After all of that attitude? You are going to take a long, hard ass fucking from me. A rare time I don’t feel the need to breed you. You’re probably already bred anyway. Just haven’t started to swell yet.”

That thought, along with the slow but deliberately dominant invasion of my ass puts me in a completely different headspace. What if it’s all over already? What if I am already destined to have his baby?

“You’d do this to the mother of your pups?”

“I’d do this and so much more,” he confirms, twisting his fingers deep in my ass.

“We haven’t had enough time to really explore our dynamic, or for you to understand what I expect from you.

Don’t worry, baby. I’ll teach you how to behave.

You’re going to give me any of these holes I want, aren’t you? ”

“No,” I snap.

He laughs and starts pumping his fingers in and out of my ass. My pussy is stinging and my clit is throbbing, and the urge to run away is subsiding somewhat, but only because my body is locked in responding to him.

“Yes,” he says. “Yes, you’re fucking mine. Yes, you’re fucking bred. And yes, I am going to fuck this tight little ass.”

He pulls his fingers out of me, gets up and I hear his hands being washed before he returns with a thick lube, which he uses to liberally drench my pussy and ass.

I feel it rolling down the crack of my ass and pooling beneath me as he grabs me with big, strong hands wrapped around both of my thighs.

He lifts me up toward him, his thick cock running down my slit and finding the tight little niche between my cheeks. He pushes in slowly, keeping my eyes on him. If I try to look away, he turns my head back to him with his hand on my chin.

I expected it to hurt more than this. His cock is thick and I am tight, but he’s stimulated me to the point my body is craving almost any penetration at all.

His fingers slide between my lips and into my mouth, and I suckle on him as he slides his cock deep inside me over and over again until I am too aroused to do anything but take it.

“You’re going to be a good girl for me,” he growls. “There’s no choice, is there?”

“No,” I whimper.

“Yes,” he insists, moving forward, pulling my legs up over his shoulders, and pressing me down to the bed so that I am completely open to him, and so that each and every thrust goes unnaturally, animally deep inside me.

“You can run if you like,” he says, brushing some of my hair out of my face with an almost tender touch. “But I promise you now. I will hunt you down and you will pay with these tight little holes. There’s no escaping fate, Ellie. And yours is to be happy being my owned, little fuck mate.”

He speaks those loving yet raw words in a growl that becomes more and more intense. He’s reminding himself how much he owns me as much as he’s telling me, and we are both starting to get closer to an orgasm that feel like it’s going to rip me apart.

His words turn into snarls as he cups my face and fucks me deep and hard until his cock starts to knot and his cum flows inside me, and I have to take every drop of it.

My tight little hole is locked around the base of his cock, but the interior is stretched wide around that thick, natural flesh lock.

He starts to rub my pussy nicely for the first time, rubbing in the sting and the lubricant, and giving me some little reward of pleasure. It’s fucking monstrous, because I need to come so badly, but he’s keeping me right on the verge.

“You’re stuck on my cock, aren’t you,” he teases, rubbing my clit. “You’re coming, over and over on my thick dick.”

“I’m not coming!”

“Oh, aren’t you?” He chuckles terribly. “Is my little rebel mate not getting what she wants? Are you not getting the orgasm you need so badly?”

“Fuck you,” I growl.

He is enjoying this far too much, and I am not enjoying it nearly enough. I want to come, but his fingers keep dancing around just as I get close to climax.

“Please,” I whimper. “Please.”

“Oh, you do have manners?” he taunts me. “I wouldn’t have thought you were capable of asking nicely. Show me how nicely you can ask.”

“Please,” I whine.

“Try a full sentence,” he says, drifting his fingers over my lubricated clit.

“Please let me come,” I moan. Asking makes me blush, but I don’t have any pride left anyway. I am consumed with the need to climax. Nothing else matters.

“Again,” he growls. “And tell me what you are, and what you’re going to do.”

“Fuckkkkk…” I whine, earning myself a warning slap to my clit.

“I’m your mate,” I whimper. “And I’m gonna have your babies, and please let me come.”

“That’s right,” he says, satisfied. “You are mine, and you are going to be bred over and over, and now that I’ve fucked your hot little ass, I’m going to let you come.”

He rubs my clit in quick little circles, putting just the right amount of pressure to make my thighs quiver and my hips jerk and then orgasm rushes over me, giving me a cascade of delayed pleasure that makes my whole body contract around his cock.

HIs knot has started to soften, and his cock slides from me as my orgasm fades. He wraps his arms around me tight and snugs me into bed.

There’s nothing else to say. We fall asleep, sated and perfectly happy.