Page 44
I stare at Colton’s older brother while he steps to the front of the throne platform, with one hand behind his back and a smile on his clean-shaven face.
That’s who’s going to swear-in to the Rogue Pack? Or should I say Kingdom?
Does Cain know he’s letting a potential revenge-driven threat to his land? I don’t seek his reaction in case Brandon Jackson wants to pretend he doesn’t personally know me. Or kissed me when we were teenagers.
I’ll just go with the flow. I don’t plan to see another Jackson brother beheaded at my feet anytime soon.
Brandon’s smile widens when he catches my gaze, and he steps toward me before approaching Cain. No, no, no…
“Princess Asher,” he says with a bow in complete silence, and hands me a bouquet he was hiding behind his back.
I guess we are not pretending anything.
“Thank you for the flowers.”
Please, don’t say it, please don’t say it , I think, while I’m smelling the same flowers Cain decided to tattoo on his sleeve.
“No problem, your Highness, I remember they are your favorite.”
Shit. I didn’t want Cain to know. It’s another dot he can connect to other clues about our true Goddess-gifted mate bond.
I smile at Brandon politely, “It’s very nice of you.”
I can hear Claudia snickering to herself. She spent enough free time with me recently to know that all of my princess facade is just, well, a facade.
“Rogue Prince,” Brandon bows to Cain, and all the mini wolves disperse into the crowd, probably going back to their parents.
Everyone else is still quiet and observes us.
“This is Brandon, and he will be joining our pack tonight when the King comes,” Cain addresses the crowd.
“Hi, Brandon!” everyone exclaims in chorus. It feels like one huge AA meeting, but I guess that’s what they always do.
Brandon turns and waves at everyone. He seems happy.
Huh. Suspicious.
Cain gestures at the music band again and they start playing. The crowd slowly goes back to dancing, eating, and talking. I give my flowers to one of the servants who were cheering me on before entering, and I wave at Claudia to join me on the dance floor.
“Ooh, dancing? I’ll go with you,” Beta surprises me, because he never wants to do anything with us. With me .
On the other hand… Greg loves to dance and they are true mates.
“I’ll stay with Alpha,” Atlas says, eyeing me. “I have some questions for Brandon, anyway.”
“What, are you afraid I’ll command you to do a striptease for us?”
I chuckle at his dreaded expression, and get down from the platform with Beta’s help. He gives his hand to Claudia next, and the three of us start dancing nearby.
Claudia is simply a self-sufficient Goddess as always, but Lucifer has the talent to lead, so I don’t look so bad myself. Usually, I’m just fooling around with Atlas, not caring how bad we are at this. It’s a nice change .
We have a great time on the dance floor, despite the cold glances from Cain, but if I have to be honest, dancing with Beta Lucifer is weirdly nostalgic. I could swear it feels exactly like dancing with my brother, Greg.
After a few songs, he pulls both Claudia and me with twirls right to his chest. The three of us sway together to the slower bit, catching our breaths.
We finally go back on the platform—only for me to be asked by Brandon for another dance. I agree with a smile, because even if I’m not good at dancing, I still love it.
“It’ll be like the old times,” he comments, obviously thinking about Colton’s Christmas school musical rehearsal we ‘helped’ him with, and I giggle at the distant memory. That was when he kissed me for the first time, and we had a few good dates after that.
Cain growls from his throne, and before I can even comprehend what’s happening, I’m being dragged through the whole ballroom to the empty corridor by his iron grip on my wrist.
I’m being pushed against the closed doors with Cain’s huge, muscled body, as soon as they shut behind us.
“If you want to talk about your office—”
“I don’t want to talk,” he cuts me off, and leans down to kiss me.
What the heck? He was just ignoring me and giving me the cold shoulder the whole afternoon!
He doesn’t kiss me long enough to see if I’ll reciprocate it, and I don’t think he even cares. He kisses me down my neck with raw passion, stopping only at my marking spot where actual tingles erupt at the touch of his warm tongue, and then he quickly goes down to my deep neckline and as low between my breasts as the grey gown lets him.
He moans lowly and I just let him do whatever he wants, keeping my hands on my sides, waiting for the development of action before I decide if I want it or not.
He grabs my hands and pins them over my head with one hand, then with the free one, he reaches into his suit pants pocket .
I hear it before I see it. Condom. He rips the foil package open with his sharp teeth and then asks a question.
“Can I take you?”
“Do you have to ask?” My voice is drowned in sarcasm but deep down, I fucking love the confident and unconcerned way he opened the condom first.
“I’ll take that as a yes,” he smirks. “Keep your arms up.”
I feel like he’s checking if I’m really as submissive to him as I say I am. Maybe this whole thing is just to test me. Well, it’s not the worst way to be tested, so I don’t care.
I’m admiring his cock while he’s putting the latex on painfully slowly. I look up at his eyes, and sure he is observing me with amusement, waiting for me to break. He presses his body against mine again, but doesn’t kiss me this time. He just looks at me with all of this sexy confidence and possessive lust, and a little bit of arrogance. He slips his hand between us to the slit of my gown to move it aside, then wants to do it again with my panties, only to discover with a content growl—I don’t have any. He lifts me by my ass, roughly pushing me up the doors, so I wrap my legs around his hips.
I close my eyes when he shoves his dick up into me with a quick deep thrust, almost splitting me open. That’s how big his girth feels when I’m not properly prepared for it. And let’s be honest, I spent most of the day mad at him, or unconscious, not thinking about sex. But I crave that intimacy now, and there is something exciting in the way he just took me where and when he wanted.
I bite on my lip to not moan out loud, knowing there are a lot of werewolves on the other side of these doors I’m painfully pinned to, and probably a few servants somewhere around on this side.
Cain continues to pound into me with a need and desperation, and it’s so delectable I don’t want it to ever end.
But I know it has to.
And it does, way too quickly. He just jerks inside me, and I look at him with arched brows. It’s not like him. Okay, we’ve only had sex a few times, so it’s too early to use the word always, but every time so far, he did make sure I came apart under his deliberate touch before him …
Wait a minute, he did it on purpose!
“Orgasm denial? Seriously?” I ask him with a laugh, while he helps me stand on the floor again and throws the condom out.
He looks at me with narrowed eyes, as if that isn’t the reaction he expected. Did he really think no orgasm would be a punishment for me? It’s a blessing! The sex was fun and quick, and a little bit dirty and still pleasurable, but at least I have a clear mind without any judgment-clouding post-bliss haze.
“You can try it next time on someone who is not into assholes,” I gesture at him with the last word.
I’ve never seen anyone move so fast as him coming to grab my neck right now, with a surprisingly gentle squeeze, but so much wrath in his navy-blue eyes that I’m actually scared.
“You will never disrespect me publicly again.” He slaps my ass with great force, and I can’t help but laugh bitterly at him again.
Because as much as it stings, I like being spanked by him, so loss on him. Again.
He looks at me sternly.
“Yes, Alpha,” I say finally with a smirk, and turn around to the doors, wanting to go back inside.
“Gamma says they could hear the doors banging inside, while I was slamming my cock inside your tight pussy.”
That stops me in my tracks, and I take my hand off the doorknob.
Is he messing with me? Or did his Lycan ass really have time to mind-link Atlas at a moment like this?
He steps to my back, and I feel his breath on my neck and cheek before he brushes his lips on my ear and whispers, “My father will be coming shortly for the swearing-in of your friend, so I won’t mind if you just spent the rest of the night in our bed touching yourself—while thinking about my cock thrusting into your pretty mouth when I get back.”
He straightens up and presses his loin to my butt instead. Is it possible he’s hard again, or did he not go soft yet?
I stand frozen, genuinely not knowing what to do.
The doors open, and I have to take an abrupt step back—bumping into Cain while Atlas falls out of the ballroom, kissing Claudia’s neck feverishly.
“Oh, Alpha, I’m sorry. I thought you were in the office punishing Luna for getting too familiar with the new guy,” he stops and stands straight, but does not let go of Claudia, who is smiling at me with embarrassment.
They genuinely look shocked they bumped into us, so no one heard us after all.
“Oh, he punished me already,” I say, planning to go back inside. King or no King.
Claudia stops me at the last moment by catching my arm, but looks at my husband instead, “Alpha?”
I look at him over my shoulder, just to catch him rolling his eyes at her but taking off his suit jacket.
Claudia lets go of my arm when Cain puts his jacket on my shoulders. That’s when I finally realize, I must have slightly red shoulder blades from our extracurricular activities, so I mouth ‘thank you’ to her. The last thing I want is for everyone to know Cain was taking me, while they were dancing just doors away.
However, the last thing I hear while stepping inside is Cain saying loudly to his gamma “I highly recommend fucking her against these doors,” while they are still wide open.
Shit.
Now, they all know anyway. And they stare at me. The band could stop playing, and it wouldn’t make it worse than it already is. That’s not the kind of attention I wanted.
I smile politely like nothing wrong happened, and hold my head high while going back on the platform and sitting on Cain’s throne, because fuck that sexy jerk!
When he sees me here, he does a once-over and chuckles. I’m slightly disappointed. I didn’t take knife-throwing classes for being chuckled at.
He comes to me, rests his hands on the throne arms, and leans down, caging me in. He is looking at my lips wetting his with his tongue, and then into my eyes like he is waiting for permission to kiss me.
I don’t know what to do when he acts like this. I guess fighting is my love language, and it should be his too. Is it another way for him to scare me? It’s working.
He’s looking at my lips again. “Do you want to hear pack’s petitions too?”
“Oh, can I?” I ask, with way too much excitement for the sarcasm in his tone, that I register too late to take it back.
He draws back his head a little, and looks at me with such an intense gaze I feel compelled to lean forward to kiss him after all. Anything to distract this devil.
His lips meet mine halfway and he quickly dominates the kiss. He slips his arms around my waist and drags me up, despite my silent protest. I hear Beta’s laughter on my right and then a few ‘awe’ when Cain pulls my body even closer, and deepens the kiss.
He turns us around and sits on his throne, pulling me onto his lap so I’m against his left side, immobilized by his left arm holding my waist like a murderous snake.
“If you have any pleas or suggestions or concerns, you can come to us for help,” Cain’s deep voice beams in the hall, despite loud music and people having fun.
I look around with curiosity, noticing some of the pack members start forming groups, as if they have to discuss their problems one last time before coming to us. Old-fashioned way .
Beta sticks his hand out to me, and a sweet, lemony scent invades my nostrils. I bite on the honey lemon ricotta crostini he offers me.
With the way my brother always forgets to eat, no wonder his true mate is the feeding type.
Wait a second !
It dawns on me that I shouldn’t be suddenly overwhelmed with a lemon scent from some glorified fancy toast, when I’m sitting on my true mate's lap!
I was so deep into worrying about Cain gaining the ability to smell I’m his true mate, that I didn’t even notice I am losing the ability myself! Maybe we both act too toxic to deserve it. And here I thought I was supposed to be a good influence on him… fix him…
But he broke me instead.
“Thank you for this,” I whisper to Cain, discreetly smelling his neck.
Werewolf scent of the dark green forest and fresh spring air, his custom soap, a trace of peppermint mouthwash, and some other cosmetics—maybe not even his but the people he has encountered today—but no lemon. Not the lemon fruit, not the lemon tree, not the lemon flower.
Fuck.
He looks at me with a lifted brow. I guess I wasn’t as subtle as I thought.
“Did you use any perfumes?”
“No, why?”
I contemplate telling him the truth. About not being able to feel the true mate, not about him being that mate, of course.
“I guess my senses are slightly off,” I do not entirely lie.
He keeps his eyebrow up, and grimaces like he knows I’m not telling the whole truth.
Of course, he knows.
Table of Contents
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- Page 44 (Reading here)
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