Page 51 of Pack Rage (The Splintered Bond #4)

Chapter 50

A Special Glow

FLOR

F innick was a machine. He’d licked every inch of my body, and a particular few square inches enough times that I wondered if my bones had turned to liquid. Then he’d started fucking me, and… never stopped. I was half-sobbing as he held me close, his chest to my back, his cock moving inside me without softening, and without coming.

Why wasn’t he coming? I’d had a hundred orgasms, it seemed like. But he hadn’t come once, though I could tell in our bond that he was loving the process.

My other mates had taken care to introduce me to more kinky stuff than I’d ever imagined could exist over the past few weeks, promising it was just the tip of the iceberg of fun. So I wasn’t inexperienced anymore, and I knew this level of stamina was… unusual. Was something wrong?

Somehow, I gathered the courage and the breath to ask.

He huffed against my ear, his lips teasing the too-sensitive flesh of my neck where two of my mating bites lay. Bites he had worked on for long enough that it felt like each one of them had turned into a clit, or something. I’d come twice just from him nipping at them, and felt my mates’ groans echo in my mind as his actions had obviously had a similar effect on them, wherever they were.

“I can fuck for days without coming,” he growled in my ear. “I can fuck forever. I can give you more pleasure. I will give you more, until you order me to come.”

Wait. I had to order him? If I’d had the energy to laugh, I would have. Had he been waiting for an invitation? “Come, Finn. Please, fill me up, I need you to come inside m?—”

Oh, thank the moon , someone said in my mind, though I wasn’t certain whose voice it was, as Finn’s release had triggered my own.

It was a tidal wave of pleasure and power, and I could have sworn the lights went out as Finn came and came, his shouts echoing in the dark. My face was buried in the pillow when I finally returned from whatever plane of existence Finn had fucked me onto.

“Oh shit,” he muttered. Somehow, I mustered the strength to turn over and saw he was…

“Glowing?” I sat up. No, more like sparkling constantly, blue shimmers and a few red gleaming like glitter all over his skin.

The room was dark, and the city lights that had been glimmering outside the window were dark, though as the seconds ticked on, they started to flicker back on, one building at a time.

“Are you?—”

“I don’t know,” he muttered, staring down at his own torso. He had a gorgeous, smooth chest, with small, dark pink nipples, and ridges and valleys of solid, lean muscles all the way down to his long cock. Which I should not be able to see, given that the lights were all out.

“You are glowing. What did you do?”

“I don’t know!” he answered, slightly panicked, jumping out of the bed. He grabbed a pillow and rubbed at the glow. It didn’t come off, of course. Grigor?

Yes, pup? Grigor’s easy laughter had me relaxing, though Finn didn’t stop pacing the room until he slid out of one of the shadows. “Looks like you two had fun on your date,” Grigor said, carrying a bowl of warm, floral-scented water and a soft cloth to the bedside—who knows where he’d found them. Perching on the side of the bed, he began to clean the sweat and cum off my body. He took special care with my inner thighs, lingering on Glen’s mate mark there until I moaned. “Are you sore, little queen?”

Grigor had a thing for what Finn had told me was called “aftercare.” Almost an obsession, really. He patted my pussy gently now, blowing cool air across it and tutting as he inspected me one last time, running the warm cloth over all of me. He had no trouble seeing in the dark, and the lights were coming back on as he looked around the room.

“I mean, I’m a little sore,” I admitted, but mainly I just wanted him to keep up the kinky sponge bath. I kinda liked aftercare myself, and sometimes it led to more fun.

“Grigor,” Finn interrupted. He’d wrapped a white towel around his waist and ran a frantic hand through his red hair, pushing it back from his shining face. “What do I do? Why am I glowing?”

“Sparkling,” I whispered. “He’s sparkling like a vampire, right?” Glen had forced us all to sit through a movie marathon of his favorite vampire flicks. Grigor had laughed every time the one with the “skin of a killer” came on screen, muttering slightly concerning things that made me wonder just what other creatures walked in the world with us.

I’d ask him later, though. Maybe a few decades later.

“They do not sparkle.” Grigor winked at me, then turned with a serious expression to Finn. “Pup, you’re young, so you may not know this, but good sex can give some shifters a special glow?—”

“Fuck all the way off,” Finn snarled.

I giggled when Grigor stifled a laugh and apologized. “It’s your magic, I think. You’d never reached your potential until now, from what I can tell. You’re not in pain? You’re just powerful then. Maybe this is normal for someone whose magic has been drained for years. I don’t know.” When Finn scowled, Grigor set down the cloth and stared at me. He shook his head, then studied Finn for a long moment.“That’s… unexpected.” Grigor’s dark eyes flashed with excitement before he explained, “You know that our magic needs fuel.”

“Blood, pain, death,” Finn whispered. “And the moon.”

“And it’s strengthened by our bonds,” I added, wondering what Grigor was seeing when he looked at Finn.

“It seems that what you needed to unblock your potential was another source of power. Joy.”

“Joy?” Finn blinked. I found myself laughing again. “I’m sparkling with… happiness?”

“A special glow,” I whispered. “I hope it never stops.”

Finn was not amused. “What if it doesn’t?”

“I’m not worried. Even if it lasts, it’ll just make you sexier to me. Like Brand’s eyes.” Finn’s lips curved upward. They all knew Brand’s eyes did it for me. “We’ll go live at the lake, hunt, fish, and fuck every day. It was already the retirement plan, right?” All of the guys had agreed we’d move to Mountain as soon as the mess was cleared up here. That was only a few months away, maybe less.

Grigor grumbled something about his own eyes. “It’s diminishing a bit at a time. By morning, you should be back to normal—though I think you may need to meditate, focus on… Come on, here.” He stood and grabbed Finn’s hands, pulling him over to a chair. “Shut your eyes. Hands closed on your lap.” He pressed a hand to the center of Finn’s forehead, and the other to his heart. “Sit here and focus on the power. By the moon, you’re leaking all over! Yes, see this? Right, just…”

Their voices got quieter, and I drifted to sleep, only waking to find myself lying next to Grigor. The windows were curtained, and Finn was still in the chair. It was dark outside, but at least most of the city’s lights were glimmering again.

Grigor was sitting beside me on the bed, staring at me like the creeper he was. Apparently, he didn’t need much sleep at all, and wanted to take advantage of every moment we had together. Such a grandpa thing to say, though he’d swatted my butt the last time I’d teased him about acting old.

“Is he done leaking?” I murmured.

Grigor shook his head. “Not yet. But he paid through the weekend, and I’ve put a spell on the door. He’s deep in meditation. No one will disturb him.”

“He’s going to be okay?”

He snorted softly. “More than okay, little queen. He blew open the channels to his power, the passages through his soul that magic runs along. It’s hard to explain, but he’s not hurt. He’s just exhausted, and he should be. When he wakes, he’ll be as powerful as I am, or close to it.”

“Jealous?”

“Not at all. More protection for you, and for our pack, is never a bad thing.” His teeth were slightly sharp as he smiled. “And I have the advantage.” When I lifted my eyebrows, he explained, “More experience, and far fewer of those pesky morals that trip the rest of your mates up.” I rolled my eyes, but we both knew it was true.

And it was one of the things I loved most about my murderous, oldest mate. The others were all amazing in their own ways, but Grigor was the only one who would whistle happily while he plucked the eyeballs from the sockets of anyone who gave me so much as a mean look. Though he would always claim to check to make sure they were bad guys first.

Was it his fault the world was so full of bad guys?

Grigor pulled me from my thoughts, and out of bed, leading me to the bathroom, where I took a few moments alone before he wrapped me in a robe and my crystal flats, then pulled me to the exit.

“Where are we going?”

“Hunting,” he replied, with a dark twinkle.

“Bye, Sparkles,” I whispered as the door closed behind us.

“This isn’t hunting,” I accused a half hour later. The night had been cold, but running with Grigor had warmed me up.

Especially because we were running from the human police. Well, not the humans, but their dogs. Grigor had carried me into the zoo in the center of town, and when I’d gotten sad seeing the animals in cages, he’d decided to let them out for me, as a “belated mating gift.” I’d had to shout over the screaming of seventeen monkeys and the roar of a disgruntled lion before he’d paid attention, and by then someone had called security.

“It is hunting,” Grigor insisted as he grabbed me and wrapped me in a quick spell just in time, leaping to the top of a light post to watch the chase below. The two lovely, fierce German Shepherds, followed by the officers, came running around the corner only a half a minute later, the dogs sneezing as they ran through some magical thing Grigor must have put down while we slipped away.

I sighed as he carried me bridal-style to a bridge over a small stream in the city center, pulling out a box of handmade chocolate truffles from the dark cloak he’d begun wearing after Glen had binge-watched The Witcher with him. He hadn’t liked the way I’d eyed up the lead actor, though Luke didn’t mind. “Looks like me,” he’d whispered in my ear as Grigor and Glen made fun of the hot Englishman.

“I suppose it was a hunt,” I admitted to Grigor when the last chocolate was gone, peering around the park where he’d carried me. “But I thought you meant we would be doing the hunting.”

“Oh, no. We’re not hunting.” He stepped back. “ I’m hunting.”

I blinked and let out a startled, “Oh,” as I understood. Heat started at my feet and raced to my hairline, setting everything between the two points on fire. “Hunting me?”

His reply was a sweet threat, wrapped inside a dark promise. “Yes, little queen. I will hunt you.”

My core tightened, and the air around me went sweet with cinnamon and jasmine, surprising me. I would’ve thought my vagina needed at least a day off after Finn had finally finished.

But no, apparently, I was every bit the hussy I’d started out as on the streambed in the Southern woods. “What do you get if you catch me?”

“Whatever you want,” he replied, crouching. I felt a thin sliver of his magic fall over me, a look-away spell, probably woven with protection as well, knowing him. “The hunt starts in three minutes.”

Whatever I want? “Don’t you mean whatever you —” I started to ask, but he’d vanished already, and a thrill zipped through me. If I could keep him from finding me, I could ask for the moon.

Sounds fun , my wolf purred. Let me play.

Absolutely. I slipped into my wolf’s fur in a blink, lifting my head to the moon before I slipped silently into the brush.

The hunt was on.