Page 26 of Pack Rage (The Splintered Bond #4)

Chapter 25

Yours All Along

FLOR

W e traveled down one dimly lit hallway after another, until finally, Finnick stopped in front of a door. He pressed his hand to the locking mechanism, but nothing happened.

“Show our mate what you can do, brother,” Grigor encouraged.

“I can’t do much,” he argued.

“Show off for her,” Grigor whispered, with a wink to me. “She’ll be impressed.”

To my surprise, Finnick ducked his head, then pressed his hand back to the keypad. Small electrical sparks flew out of his hand, and the door clicked open.

“Magic? I am impressed,” I admitted as I moved beside him, letting my fingers trail across his chest, loving the way he shivered just the smallest bit. Even though I hated the uniform he had on, he looked like a model from a fashion magazine, lean muscles filling out the jacket, and above the open collar, all high cheekbones, flaming auburn hair, and bright green eyes. He filled out the fabric of the trousers, too, I noted, and bit my lip at the substantial bulge that my simple touch had created.

He blushed, but when he ran one hand over my shoulder and tucked a lock of hair behind one ear, it was my turn to turn red. I had to clench my teeth to keep from whimpering, moaning, or something equally dumb at the way his hand lit up every nerve. He could feel my reaction in our bond, and his shoulders straightened as the air filled with the slightest hint of warm cinnamon and jasmine.

Inside the room, a combination of less pleasant scents met my nose. Electrical burning, spilled whiskey, and strangely, peanut butter. The lights were dim, and the room more well-furnished than I would have expected in a prison. One wall was lined with shelves that held a mini-fridge, a microwave, and a basket of snacks. Close by was a small table and chair with a reading lamp and a tablet, and in the center of the wall to the left was a bed.

“Someone slept here?”

Finnick shook his head. “This is one of two rooms the tech crew that worked down here was assigned for breaks. No one’s ever actually used the bed that I know of.”

I sat on the edge of it, bouncing a little. It was small, twin-size, but the mattress was firm, and the only scent was laundry detergent. “Tech crew?”

Grigor answered for him, as Finnick stepped into a small room—an adjoining shower and toilet. I heard water running. “I’m afraid they’re still at their posts, locked into their little office.”

My gaze flew to the camera in the corner of the room. I didn’t think it was working, but who knew? “Are they in there spying on us?”

“From the afterworld, perhaps,” Grigor muttered, as Finnick rejoined us. When Finnick frowned at him, he shrugged. “I told you before, I needed fuel. I didn’t even torture them.” He turned to me. “Don’t worry, my queen. They were not innocents. They were bad men. I checked.”

He checked? I wondered how, as I fought to keep from smiling. Grigor’s bloodthirstiness didn’t bother me one bit, but it would probably be a mistake to joke about it. I took a turn in the bathroom next, cleaning up as best I could, and taking off everything but my too-large, borrowed shirt before returning to the bed.

“So, are we resting then?” I unbuttoned the collar and lay on top of the soft gray blanket, the loose shirt covering to the middle of my thighs.

“Rest. Ah, yeah. I guess you’re tired,” Finnick choked out, though Grigor was shooting him an odd look. He kept glaring at Finnick, then cutting his eyes to me, even tilting his head, like go on. It was funnier than it should be.

“I should be tired,” I said, stretching. My boobs were still small, but they had a little more curve to them now, and they showed through the shirt—the nipples, especially—as I stretched. Two sets of eyes landed on them, hungry, then fell to the bottom hem that was now resting at the very tops of my thighs. The air in the room grew charged with desire. “I’ll just get comfortable.” I lay back on the bed, hoping I looked sexy, but more than a little insecure. I may have bitten a handful of mates, but I wasn’t some sort of practiced seductress.

But honestly, these two were meant to have some skills. Instead of joining me, Grigor pretended to examine the snacks, holding up a package of peanut butter crackers like it was a lost treasure of the ancients. Finnick was looking anywhere but at me.

“I didn’t know getting laid was supposed to be this difficult,” I grumbled, yanking the edge of the blanket up over my face.

Grigor’s whisper carried even through the covers. “All right, pup, get over there before she really does fall asleep.”

“I can’t.” Finnick’s reply was agonized. “Not down here.”

My breath caught as I realized what he meant, and when the blanket was pulled away a moment later, my eyes were stinging. Damn, I was thoughtless. This was where he’d been tortured as a child. Maybe not this room, but this place. “Finn, I’m sorry.”

“No, Flor,” he said, shame etching his features. “I’m the one. I… I lost so much of my innocence down here. I don’t deserve you—no, don’t argue. It’s not your forgiveness I need. It’s my own, and my wolf’s. We know we haven’t earned the right to be with you. But even if we had… I couldn’t bear for our first time together to be here.”

“But we will have a first time,” I said carefully. My own wolf was pacing. This was the mate who’d tried to turn us away before. The one who’d hurt my wolf, in a way I hadn’t realized until now, when she was so close, just under my skin. Agitated, and ready to burst forth. “You’re not rejecting me.”

“Never,” he swore, gathering me into his arms. His mouth landed on mine, kissing me thoroughly, the embrace deceptively gentle. His lips were soft and almost reverent, but his arms were bands of iron around me. He was not letting me go. I fell into the sensations of his mouth on mine, his tongue exploring me. I nipped at the top of his tongue, where my first mating claim lay, and shuddered when his wolf answered my teasing with a low growl.He pulled back a few inches, and his eyes shone with bright fire, blue sparks swimming in the depths. “I’ll never let you go, mate. I have so much to show you. So much to give you. But first, I have to earn back my place at your side.”

He pulled me close again, devouring me with his lips, his hands moving on my back and shoulders, leaving trails of sensual fire everywhere he touched. I pressed my thighs together, trying to ease the building ache there. At last, just as I was wondering if I might come just from his kisses, he broke away.

He licked his lips, his canines too sharp to be human as he stared fiercely, silently, down at me. The hunger in his gaze had me thinking I’d been wrong. Maybe I was a seductress after all.

Slowly, I unbuttoned my shirt and let it fall open. “You sure you want to wait, Cityboy?”

“I do not. But I must.” I would have sworn a spark flew from his eyes to the bed, and I blinked. By the time I opened my eyes again, he was at the door. “Grigor? Your mate needs you.”

“ Our mate, pup,” Grigor purred as he stalked closer, taking off his stolen uniform like the fabric had offended him. “Keep watch?” Finnick’s reply was a grunted yes, before he stepped outside.

Before the door closed, Grigor’s last piece of clothing fell to the ground, and he stood still, his eyes devouring me while I took him in.He was lithe, and his skin was slightly darker than Luke’s, with muscles that flexed and shifted sinuously as he circled the bed, almost like some sort of jungle cat. His sharp jawline flexed, too, as if he were forcing himself not to leap on me and claim me. Every line of his body was sculpted, as if the centuries of his life— centuries, for fuck’s sake! —had perfected, rather than aged him.

He was a legend, and the only one of my mates I hadn’t bitten. The one I knew the least, and the one who seemed the farthest out of reach for a Southern pack reject to be with. The small, faded scar on his chest reminded me that he’d also loved someone else first. My insecurities flooded back with a vengeance.

“So, it’s just the two of us,” I babbled, when he stopped at the right side of the bed. “That’s… nice?” I fought to keep my eyes above his waistline, but I couldn’t. His cock was almost at my eye level, and it was rock hard and long enough to make my mouth water, curving up in a smooth arc to press against his stomach.

“Nice? The things I want to do to your body could not be described that way. I want to own you. I want to leave my mark so deeply inside you, in your body and your soul, that you will feel me there for the rest of your life. I want to make you whimper with need, and scream with pleasure.” His gaze was filled with a blend of lust and compassion as I blushed so hard, I probably would’ve passed out if I hadn’t already been on the bed. His tone was solemn when he finally asked, “But what I want isn’t important. Do you truly want me, little blade? Are you certain you want to be bonded to me?”

I relaxed at the slight tremor in his voice. Somehow, he was just as insecure as I was. “So certain,” I said, knowing the truth was all he needed. I reached out and took his hand in mine, pressing it to my heart so he could feel it beat. “I’ve wanted you since the forest at Northern. You made my heart race then, and it’s never slowed down.” We both smiled as he felt the evidence of that. “It feels like I’ve been yours all along, Grigor. That this is just the final step in some dance we’ve been doing since we met.”

“Since long before that, moya koroleva ,” he whispered, running the back of one hand over my cheek, then down my neck and shoulder, over one of my tight nipples, and to my stomach. My abdomen trembled. “Where shall I claim you, my perfect mate? Where shall I put my mark?”

He leaned over the bed, tracing my other mates’ marks slowly, so lightly it felt like a feather moving over my skin, the electric feeling of his hands shooting into my core, making me gasp.

“Here?” He touched Brand’s mark, then Luke’s. “Here?” He teased the skin around Finnick’s mark, sending a little power into the place. Whatever he was doing, it felt amazing, and I heard a muffled groan from outside the door. Finnick had felt that, too.

Grigor winked. “Glen left a gorgeous mark. I plan to taunt him with it every time I feast on your delicious pussy.” He leaned over and kissed my mouth, a surge of power moving with his tongue over mine, and his hand resting on Finnick’s mark on my neck again. I felt a series of sparks connecting those two places, then travelling down my body to land and go off like miniature fireworks… in my clit.

I whimpered. Had I just come?

“Damnit, Grigor!” Finnick shouted from outside. “I don’t have any other clothes to change into.”

Grigor’s wicked grin had me laughing. “Did you just make him come? In his pants?”

“No, little blade. You did.” His hands moved to Luke’s mark before he shook his head. “Best not to distract that one.”

He distracted me instead. He moved his warm body next to mine, his hands and tongue free to explore, as mine were. I’d kissed him before, at Southern, and he’d tasted me then. More than tasted: he’d wrecked me, moving his tongue at speeds I was almost certain required magic.

But I’d never been able to take my turn, never had the freedom to explore him. I was more than a little nervous to try out my brand new skills on such an experienced mate, but what if I didn’t get another chance? We were heading into a battle we might not survive.

And the jobs weren’t going to blow themselves.

I grinned at my terrible humor, tucked one foot behind his calf and, in a quick move, flipped us so I was on top and he was beneath me. My hair fell over the sides of my face as I instructed, “Keep your hands on the sides of the bed.”

He blinked, then obeyed.

“Now, don’t move.” His body practically hummed with tension as I slid down the bed, my tongue tracing patterns, until I reached his cock. The skin there was smooth as velvet, and I took a moment to run my hand over it, then dropped my mouth to the tip, drawing in just the end. “Mmmmm,” I hummed as I moved lower, one hand exploring a little farther back, cupping his balls. I let a finger stray even farther back, and he stiffened.

“Flor!” He sounded almost shocked, but a droplet of pre-cum had beaded at the tip of his cock, so it wasn’t a bad thing. I lapped up the drop, surprised when it tasted almost minty. It wasn’t cold, but the sensation on my tongue was the same as when I’d drunk from a stream in the Northern packlands. Bright and bracing.

“That could get addictive,” I muttered, before drawing more of him between my lips. He was just the right length and width for this, and after a few attempts, I was able to get my lips to the base without choking.

“Flor,” he repeated, then let out a string of words in some strange language. “I can’t… You can’t…”

I stopped. “Is it not good? I haven’t done this a lot.”

He hadn’t moved his hands, but I could tell he wanted to. “My beautiful, perfect mate, every touch of your hands is a fire that burns me alive. Your tongue is more pleasure than I can bear.”

I tried to figure out what he meant. I felt Brand’s amusement in our bond, and noted the deepening flush on Grigor’s cheeks as it sank in. “That good, huh?” I wiggled my eyebrows, sliding my mouth back down over him, loving the way it made him tense up.

After only a few more strokes, he broke. In a movement so fast I couldn’t tell how he’d done it, he was on top of me again, his eyes flashing. “That good, my love.”

“Fuck me, Grigor.”

“Anything you ask.” He slid one hand up to my hair, pushing it out of the way, his eyes snagging on the metal tag in my ear, emotions moving over his face too rapidly to make them out. He balanced over me and pressed the smooth tip of his cock to my entrance, then surged forward with his hips, filling me in one deep thrust.

I’d already come, so I was more than ready, but I came again when he lowered one hand and set a fingertip vibrating directly over my clit, never hesitating, even though he was still fucking me.

Something was wrong, though. He was moving smoothly, never breaking his cadence, but he was holding back. “Grigor,” I whispered, pleasure zinging through me as another climax approached. “Grigor, please. Let me in.”

His hips slowed. “My queen?”

“Claim me. Let me in,” I repeated, lifting a hand to his hair and pushing it behind one ear. “I want to hear you in my thoughts.” My wolf rose inside me, whining for her mate, for Grigor’s wolf.

His rose as well, his dark eyes shining less with magic, and more with a wild darkness that called to me. He was dangerous, but never to me. His canines slid out to show over his lower lip, and somehow, it made him look almost boyish. Eager.

“Anything you ask,” he repeated, and began moving more slowly. His lips pressed gently on my shoulder, opposite the one where Brand had marked me, just below Finnick’s mark, and he kissed the skin softly. Then he opened his mouth and bit down.

“Grigor!” I gasped. The bed was shaking beneath us, the objects that had been on top of the table and shelves clattering to the ground.

“My mate,” he replied with dark satisfaction, and the bed shook even more violently. No, not the bed. The earth. The whole house above us was moving, as was the ground below.

“ My mate,” I replied, feeling my own teeth become longer, sharper. I tilted my head and sank my teeth into his firm, smooth neck, tasting fire and ice. Power and darkness. Pure love and an eternity ahead of us to share it with one another.

“My love,” he half-shouted, as he emptied himself into me, then opened his mind. I fell into his thoughts, into his memories, drowning in a storm of love, madness, and desire.