Page 21 of Shattered Stars

“Unlike the rest of your family,” I mutter.

“My mother was a good influence on my father. She hated my uncle and while she was alive, we didn’t have so much to do with him. Then she died and … everything changed. If she was still here, things would be different. She’d have cooked you this stew, and we’d be eating it at my family home.”

I kiss his cheek, running my fingers through his dark hair. He’s silent, thinking, his heavy chest rising and falling.

I lean closer to him, wanting to lift him out of his sadness. “Of course, dessert wouldn’t have been as good.”

“Dessert?” he says, jerking out of his reverie.

“Uh huh, dessert.”

I climb onto his lap, straddling him.

“You are going to havemefor dessert, right?”

“Shit,” he mumbles, hands on my ass as I grind against him. “You think we could pause the main course and have our dessert now?”

I smile at him, then lean in to drag my teeth up his throat. He takes that as a yes, freeing his already-stiff cock from his pants and lining me up. I’m not wearing any panties and I glide straight down onto him, gripping his broad shoulders as I do. The food was good, but there’s nothing quite like this, the feel ofhim full and deep inside me, my bond humming with pleasure. I wonder why we bothered with the food at all, why we didn’t just stay in bed.

I grind myself on his lap and he tugs his t-shirt over my head so I’m completely bare on his lap, my tits bouncing as I rise up and down on his cock. Then his fingers are at my clit, getting me off as I find a rhythm that has us both panting.

“You’re so fucking beautiful, Rhianna,” he says, as my legs begin to shake and I lose control. “So fucking beautiful.” I come, squeezing and convulsing around his cock and he lifts me up, slamming me down on the table, sending dishes and glasses tumbling. He sucks at my tits and then he thrusts back inside me, fucking me straight through my orgasm, his eyes locked on mine. “And I can’t get enough of you.”

6

Spencer

There’san envelope waiting for me on my desktop when I arrive back from my run on Sunday evening.

I don’t need to switch on the lamp, examine the handwriting, tear it open, to know who the letter is from.

My mother.

She is the only person who writes to me. The only way she actually communicates.

I haven’t had such a letter for months and months. I’d almost begun to wonder if she’d forgotten about the existence of her youngest son.

I pick up a discarded towel from the floor and wipe it around my wet brow, neck and shoulders, eyeing the envelope the entire time as if I expect it to jump up and bite me any moment.

Then I discard the towel back to the floor, toss my phone and earbuds onto my bed, and stalk over to the desk.

Now I examine the handwriting, my name penned in her elegant hand across the crisp white paper.

I squint at that hand, trying to determine if it was written in pleasure or anger. A neutrality most likely. My mother is not an emotional woman.

Maybe that comes from raising boys like us.

I lift the envelope and turn it over, finding it fastened shut with the usual family seal. I run my finger over it – the outline of a powerful wolf – then I tear the thing open, shaking loose the single sheet of paper inside.

I run my eyes over the words. A short note, congratulating me on the dueling team’s win, on my successful captaincy, on my powerful display.

She ends with words describing my father’s pride. I laugh out loud, a sarcastic, hollow sound in the quiet of my room.

My father spends more time as beast than he does as a human these days, hidden away in the grounds of our family’s compound. I doubt he knows anything about my match. I wonder why she wrote it at all. In case I shared it?

I scrub my hand over my chin, eyes hovering over the words.

It is my mother who has held the family together by the skin of her teeth over the years. Hiding our true natures, managing our affliction, negotiating and bribing those she needed to.