Page 6 of Stormbinder King (Stormbinder Pack #1)

B reakfast in the tree house kitchen was a light, airy flat cake and some savory dried meat, and after we had eaten Jack guided me carefully down the rope ladder.

In the early morning light, the treetop village gleamed as the nighttime fog rolled away, leaving the ground wet with dew.

“Where are all the women from last night?” I asked as we hit the ground.

Jack laughed. “They’re gone now. Moonbright Night is just about hunting and sex. Unless you happen to find your fated mate.”

He squeezed my hip gently and I felt myself blush with delight.

Then he told me about his Pack. Their Pack was large—dozens of families of shifters, a mixture of the more powerful Alphas and helper Betas. The Stormbinder Pack was nomadic but these were their summer lands, and each family unit had their own treehouse.

“Whose treehouse is beside you?” I asked curiously.

“My brother’s,” he said shortly.

Jack’s was the tallest, constructed right next to his brother’s, but a little taller, its place in the trees a little higher.

I wondered what his brother was like, but I didn’t press. I didn’t have any siblings, and maybe they didn’t get along.

The first morning after the hunt it was like waking up in a dream, the mist clearing slowly in the window, the heavy lush forest laid like a dark fairy land around me in all directions.

But like the kind of fairies that bit .

But now I had a spell to protect me.

Jack took me around to show me the boundaries of the village.

There were over a hundred shifters here, spread out in neat gleaming tree top homes.

All the shifters were tall and sleek and well-made, all different colors and ethnicities, golden-bright women with gleaming eyes and sharp-eyed men who bowed their heads respectfully when Jack passed by.

“Our top Beta, Cormac,” Jack said, gesturing to a heavyset man with a scarred face and thick blonde hair.

I stuck out my hand without thinking and after a moment’s hesitation he took it.

Instantly I saw the Beta’s face twitch, his jaw going slack and I watched in astonishment as his whole body shook violently.

There was a smell of burnt flesh in the air, and finally I got the presence of mind to snatch my hand away.

“Be careful,” Jack said lightly, and I saw Aurelia hovering in the background, an axe in her hand and a stack of wood in the other.

“I take protection of my fated mate very seriously.”

The tips of Cormac’s fingers were a terrifying unnatural scarlet, with black charred patches on them.

The protective spell had done that?

“Will that go away?” I asked breathlessly as Jack drew an arm around me and pulled me onto his back.

“In time,” Jack said. “I don’t fuck around when it comes to your safety.”

I hung on tight as he strode through the trees, his legs moving with a predator’s grace and the wind rushing past me, tangling my hair.

He laughed delightedly as I clutched his neck tightly, cresting through a slope to see rolling, distant hills laid out in front of us.

My binding mark burned on my skin, the pain so intense that sometimes I didn’t know if I could stand it.

But as my chest laid on the prince’s back, I began to feel my body heat, and a throb grew between my legs.

Flesh of my flesh

I tried to ignore it, shifting to try to ease the pressure on my cunt.

“All this is Stormbinder territory,” Jack said as we passed through the trees.

How much easier it was to go with him, as he padded with light feet around the heavy, dripping forest greenery.

“What does Stormbinder mean?” I asked curiously.

“It’s mostly superstition,” he replied carelessly.

God, he smelled so delicious, the scent of his skin filling my nostrils, his skin velvety smooth over hard cords of muscle.

“Oh, it’s an old family power that has lain dormant for generations. But my brother the king still insists on keeping the name.”

I digested this information.

“What’s your brother like?” I asked, trying to ignore the throb that pounded between my legs, the heat seeming to grow the tighter my thighs pressed against him.

“He’s an arrogant bastard , ” Jack said shortly. “He’s used to getting everything he wants. But you don’t have to worry about him bothering you.”

“Why would I worry about him? When is he supposed to come home?” I asked apprehensively.

“He’ll return when he returns,” Jack said.

And on these cryptic words, he moved on, through the forest.

The woods were less frightening in the morning, with Jack leading me. I didn’t feel that sense of hushed expectancy that I had yesterday, or the heated menace of the leaves pooled with humidity.

But the further we traveled, the more my cunt ached, and when he let me down carefully to drink from a sparkling stream, I realized slick wetness was dripping down my legs.

Our fated mate bond made me feel weak and dizzy with need for Jack.

My fingers wandered to the tips of my shoulder, which was burning.

“How long is it going to hurt?” I wondered aloud.

I felt Jack come up behind me, blowing on the protective spellwork with his cool, cinnamon breath.

“I burn for you,” he teased. “Is it so bad to burn for me?”

When he gathered my skirt up in his hands I realized what he meant to do and my heart began to hammer.

“What if someone sees us?” I squeaked.

“Who cares? It is the wolf way to take your mate whenever and wherever you are.”

But he tossed me lightly onto his back again, and I clung on tightly.

Then he made a jump into one of the trees to grasp the branches and he began to climb, sliding up through the wet leaves, my hair beginning to stick to the back of my neck.

My fear mixed with arousal in an intoxicating cocktail as Jack sprang easily from one handhold to the other at dizzying heights.

Up so high I spied the strangest creatures in the mossy nooks and crannies—multicolored salamanders, strange spiders with legs that bent like a nightmare, yellow eyes that blinked at me from deep crevasses.

But they all skittered away as we moved closer.

Jack paused and put me down gently on a high branch, my legs trembling as it bowed in a springy, flexible way underneath our feet.

“I’m going to fall!” I squeaked.

“Never!” he murmured in my ear. “I’d do anything to keep you from getting even the tiniest toe hurt.”

Jack pointed to a bigger tree several feet away and held me tightly by the hand.

“Give me a big jump, baby.”

“A big jump?” I cried, but he was already in the air.

I jumped too, but mine wasn’t nearly strong enough.

It didn’t matter, though.

I looked down as we leaped, my trembling hand clasped tightly in his, looking down through the trees to the sparkling bright stream and earthy brown forest floor far below us.

There was a wild, reckless streak in my mate, because I would never have done something like that.

But it only made me feel more alive.

He landed easily on the opposite branch, pulling my flailing body close beside him.

“Hang onto the tree,” he laughed. “You won’t fall down. I’ve got you.”

Then Jack flipped me against the trunk so my breasts were pressed against the mossy slick bark. I clutched on tightly, desperately.

He stood on the branch next to me, and I felt the whole thing wave in the wind, so he stepped on another, bouncing lightly, and he tapped at my thighs.

Risking a look behind me, I saw Jack balancing like a circus performer between multiple springy, flexible tree branches.

If he made one mistake, he’d plummet to the ground and surely be killed.

I whipped my head around and clutched the thick trunk of the tree, spreading my legs and bracing myself with two hands as his buckle clinked behind me.

His size on the curves of my ass felt even more intimidating in the daylight, with my cunt so sore from the night before.

But when he ran his hand up my back to grasp my hair tightly, I was startled to feel need drip down my thighs.

My tattoo burned fiercer than ever, seemed almost alive, my desire searing through me.

God, it stung .

I gritted my teeth at his size, my legs spread as wide as I dared, but I still could barely open wide enough. His cock pressed past my sensitive walls as he ground me against the trunk.

The urgent, feral need I felt for him took my breath away.

He was stroking in and out of me slowly, nipping at my throat with little sharp bites that aroused me as much as they shocked me.

“More, Jack!” I gasped out, ashamed of myself, but I couldn’t stop the words. “Faster, please.”

I felt like I was going to scream if he kept up this slow, agonizing pace, like I was going to fall apart if I didn’t have an orgasm right now.

What was wrong with me?

My knees crashed into the bumpy mossy surface of the tree, and I tried desperately to get some purchase against the slippery bark.

Jack’s cock split me open and still I wanted more.

He rested his forearm against the trunk, leaning closer to take the soft skin of my neck in his mouth and I cried aloud. I could feel the pressure coiling in my belly, and an unfamiliar tingling sensation in my arms all the way down my fingers.

My tattoo , I thought, and then the pressure twisted so painfully inside me as where I had been bound continued to sting, mixing to create a confusing cocktail of emotions, and embarrassing begs and mewls of need began to spill from my mouth.

“ Please, Jack, please ,” I cried, and I heard his wicked laugh as his incisors lengthened against my throat.

His pace was steady, even, his cock stroking against all the dripping walls inside me, and I could feel wet, slick need pulled out as Jack drew his cock back, soaking my thighs and streaming down my body to pool in my toes.

I needed to come more than I ever had in my life.

I wanted to be cool, unimpressed, pretend like I wasn’t madly, irrevocably in love with the shifter prince.

But I couldn’t. Each stroke inside me seemed to drive my lust higher.

“So needy, my sweet little mate,” he said. “Not even afraid of me shifting, are you?”

The arms around me turned to silver fur, the hands on my shoulder to claws, curling loosely around my throat, and then I was coming, so hard that my fingers scraped down the trunk until they stung, my release like a claiming flame burning through my propriety.

I couldn’t control my orgasm, barely slowing down before I was heading for another release, pulsing over and over again on his cock.

Jack tightened his fingers infinitesimally on my throat as he released in me with a satisfied curse, and I only wanted it more, wanted him harder, deeper, wilder.

Did Jack fully realize what being a fated mate had done to us?

How it bound us together?

“You’re mine,” he growled in my ear, and I felt his hot cum pour into me, “I’m the only one who can touch you like this. Forever .”

The throbbing in my new tattoo subsided as my body shuddered with the release, falling boneless and weak into Jack’s arms.

“I love you,” I whispered. “I love you, my mate.”