Page 22 of Stormbinder King (Stormbinder Pack #1)

T he next evening, I frowned as I examined my protective tattoo in the small camp mirror.

Just as sharp and jet-black as the day he’d carved it in me.

It had to be the source of my control.

But how could I remove it?

Desperately, I tried to scrub with olive oil, then a mixture of sand and dirt, then a variety of dried herbs, their scents making my nose wrinkle up.

Nothing

Frustrated, I went outside to where the shifter Packs were eating dinner, a few of them starting to dance in the slanting warm light.

I sat at a table and stared unseeing off into the woods.

What had I involuntarily called the other night?

It almost felt like I could sense things moving underneath the rich loam, hear the rustling of leaves miles away.

Someone moved in my line of vision, and I blinked to see Symeon in front of me, the rich dark leather of his vest creaking as he crouched down.

He held out a bowl of something rich and savory, the steam gently rising from the carved wooden bowl.

When I said nothing, he laid it down in front of me on a thick cloth and placed a wooden spoon beside it.

“Some dinner for you,” he said abruptly.

“I don’t want dinner,” I said. “I want answers. What are they saying in the meetings?”

This time the King did not bother to lie to me.

“We are seeing creatures that haven’t been spotted in many generations and no one can agree on why. Some say it’s because we have forgotten the old gods. Some say it’s because there are too many shifters in the west, that some of us need to move to other lands to hunt.”

He paused, “If even the sea serpent can roam the rivers again, who knows what old gods and powers may be resurrected next?

I shivered at the thought.

“And how did you know where I was in the forest?” I asked.

“Eat your food,” Symeon said. “I scented you. I’m driven to protect my fated mate. Once I saw you for the first time, your scent became imprinted on every inch of my goddamn skin. I can’t do shit without you literally running through my veins.”

“And what would happen if I ran away?” I demanded. “Took one of these outriggers and rode the river as far as it could take me.”

Symeon’s expression did not change as he narrowed his eyes. “I would hunt you, Andromeda,” he said.

One side of his mouth twitched up in a twisted parody of a smile. But I knew his fucking stone heart wasn’t even capable of it. “It wouldn’t matter how far you made it. I would not stop hunting until I found you.”

My fingers felt like they were on fire, flexing and releasing. A restless, frenetic energy was building up inside me.

The stew sat between us, steam rising gently up from the bowl.

“I apologize,” Symeon said suddenly, his voice stiff and cold.

“ You’re apologizing?”

The big Alpha’s jaw clamped down hard.

“Yes. I am sorry for how I have behaved. You are not from our lands, you do not know our ways. I should not have been so angry when I came back and found you with my brother.”

I stared disbelievingly at him.

“You must be joking if you think I could ever forgive you. You’ve called me a slut, a dirty whore for his cock ever since you met me.”

“I was—angry at you for denying our mate connection,” Symeon said. “I should have been patient with you and convinced you we were fated mates.”

Suddenly, he bent forward so he was on his knees in front of me.

“I apologize as a King and your mate. Once I can figure out how to break this ensorcellment, I will claim you as my Luna, my Alpha Queen.”

“I don’t want that,” I bit out.

My fingers were hot to the touch now, my cheeks flaming.

Maybe I was getting sick.

“My behavior was wrong,” Symeon said, his dark brows drawing ferociously together. “Once I break your link to my brother we can work on strengthening our mate connection.”

Furious fucking fury filled me, that he would dare to think he could be forgiven.

“ We don’t have a godsdamn mate connection ,” I said, flipping the bowl of stew on the ground and stalking away from him.

“Andromeda—” the King growled, and I heard him get up from his knees and follow me.

And then Jack was blocking my path.

His eyes were gleaming.

“My poor brother, angry that he can’t have you.”

He drew me out into the center of the clearing where other shifters were dancing to the low, rhythmic beat of a boar-skin drum.

Smirking, he pulled me into the dance, one hand under my hair, the other running down my arm, humming as his fingers skimmed by my tattoo.

“He wants, he craves, but he cannot have.”

The prince gripped my hair tight, bending down to kiss my throat.

I could see Symeon behind Jack, sitting in front of a heavy table, but he wasn’t looking at the food at all.

Only me.

And then Jack moved to the other side of my throat, moving my hair so he could kiss me.

And he saw it.

“What the fuck is this?” he snarled, gripping my chin. “Looks like a bite .”

Adrenaline flooded my veins. It was now or never.

“I fucked your brother,” I said.

Jack froze, his hands tightening on my jaw.

His eyes darkened, that cool ice-blue swirling with dark, angry colors.

“Symeon was able to fuck you?”

His cock was already heavy and thick, digging into my belly, but I met his eyes, that feral space between us pulsing with danger this time.

“Oh, he filled me all the way up. Hard to get a cock that size in, but I managed.”

The growl that emanated from Jack’s throat sent goosebumps of fear all across my arms.

All five fingers of his strong right arm were pressed down on my binding tattoo, and he flipped me around so I was face-first in his belly and ripped the shoulder of my dress down so every other shifter could see it too.

“ This is why you’ll never have her, you bastard.”

“What the fuck is that?” Symeon spat out, standing up so fast his chair fell to the ground with a clatter. “That’s not just a protective spell. That’s a fucking cock enticement spell. You’ve ensorcelled her to fucking crave your cock!”

My heart was pounding.

Not fated, not protected, just compelled by sorcery to be addicted to him.

“You have bound her with dark magic!”

“I wanted him to,” I said, trying to shove Jack away from me.

My skin felt overheated, like I was about to burst out of my own body as I met his eyes again.

“I enticed the King into taking me, I drove him mad with my scent on purpose.”

Jack’s chest was heaving up and down and I could feel him vibrating with fury. The lazy, charismatic prince was long gone. In his place was a cruel hard man.

“Well, I’m sorry to disappoint you, sweetheart,” he drawled. “But you will never be satisfied with his cock. You will always be begging for mine.”

“Accept it.”

He ground my cunt into his thigh and godsdamn it, I did feel that raw, brutal connection between us.

“Fuck you!” I snarled, so furious I took aim and spit directly in his face.

I thought he’d be angry, but even I didn’t expect the feral grin that spread across his face.

Then his arm shot out and he gripped me by the throat.

I opened my mouth to protest, and he jerked me closer and spat back, right in my mouth.

“ Swallow it down ,” he ordered.

I obeyed as those long strong fingers tightened on me with savage power.

I had underestimated Jack.

He was just as brutal as Symeon.

Then he was dragging me over to the table in front of the King.

“You’re going to squirt right here on this table in front of my brother. To show him who you really belong to.”

Symeon made a move to grab me, but Jack tightened his hands around my throat.

“Oh no, I don’t think you’d like to piss me off. She’s such a fragile little thing.”

His lips came down on mine in a crushing kiss.

Then with a snarl, Jack flipped me around to face his brother and set me up on the table in front of the King. He grabbed my dress with both hands and ripped it from top to bottom.

I felt that strange earthy power build up inside my fingertips again, but with Jack pressing down on my tattoo I had no ability to control it.

He gripped my hips firmly, lifted me up, and speared me down on his cock right in front of Symeon.

“Feast your fucking eyes,” he snapped as my own eyes rolled back in my head. “Look how she burns for me, look how she needs to be filled with my cock.”

I moaned as the tension built inside me, arching my back up to get closer, the King’s tortured gaze dark and haunted.

This inflamed Jack even further, and he rolled my hips with agonizing pressure, the tension mounting every time I had to wait with baited breath for him to jerk me down over his cock. I felt almost uncomfortably stuffed in this position but my clit strained for release.

Jack ran a hand across my hips, pressed his arm like a bar across my chest.

“Mine,” he growled.

My body felt on fire. The bite of each tensed finger spread heat across my skin and throughout my body, until I felt like I could not bear it any longer.

I set my jaw hard.

If I could have resisted coming, I would have.

Jack was deliberately drawing out my orgasm, pausing in between thrusts to let the tension build to a fever pitch in my body.

“Look at him.”

I felt something shattering loose inside me, but with his hand on my binding tattoo, it couldn’t break loose.

Symeon was sitting like a stone statue on the throne, his hands gripping each arm of his chair.

His burning eyes were locked ferociously on Jack and I, and I knew if Jack didn’t have one hand around my throat Symeon would have already seized his brother and tried to tear his throat out.

It was unsettling how I could feel his thoughts crawling along my skin, like little skittering spiders.

He wasn’t even touching me, and I could still feel the white-hot bloodwrath pounding through him.

His ability to scent me seared my nostrils, filling them with a deep, plummy smell.

Was that what I smelled like to him?

It was rich, decadent, insistently seductive and enticing.

And it got stronger, headier as Jack put his fingers on my clit and began to rub, slowly at first, then torturously, alternating between fast and slow so that my orgasm hovered just a few inches away.

“You want to touch her, don’t you?” Jack hissed. “But you don’t dare.”

Symeon’s knuckles were so big I could almost feel them grazing my knee. If he bent forward, he could have licked my thigh.

But I could feel his emotions, the way his murderous vision was focused on Jack’s hand around my throat, his deathly fear that I would get hurt.

Thunder rumbled somewhere in the distance and I wondered if we were going to get rain.

I felt a huge release pressing at me, stars clustering at the corner of my vision.

“Open your mouth,” Jack taunted. “That’s the only way you’re going to taste her.”

And his fingers pressed down hard on my clit and he jerked his big cock out as I came, so that I squirted in a huge arc over his brother, spraying Symeon in the face as I groaned in relief.

And Jack didn’t stop, dragging my orgasm out as stars flashed in my vision, shaking uncontrollably as I squirted the evidence of his depraved control all over his brother’s face, soaking Symeon’s stony chin and dripping down his throat with wanton, lascivious streams.

My hips strained as Jack teased the last drops out, then stuck a finger in his mouth.

“Delicious,” the prince hissed.

A dry bolt of lightning split the sky.

The thunder rumbled.

Closer now.