I’d flinched when that wave of power left him, felt the impact in my bones like a sonic boom. And yet, when I took a breath and blinked, I was still myself, while every man around me cowered or knelt, all their eyes on the floor, every head bowed. Except Rake.
As if the wolf had seen it coming, he’d stepped back and away, and was obviously untouched. Stunningly, so was I.
Cazz hadn’t touched me with it.
I looked up at him, trembling. What was he doing?
He didn’t even look at me, just swept me up like I weighed nothing and carried me from the room without a backward glance.
His breath was harsh in my ear as he stormed through the maze of tunnels and hallways outside. Voices raised in protest behind us. But he ignored them completely, one hand under my knees, the other curled at my ribs, his chin low and brows pinched, eyes glaring—and glowing again.
I would have felt afraid because he looked enraged. But from the moment he’d let go of that power, I could feel him again. Could sense the tangle of anger, jealousy, thrill and desire that twisted together inside him.
I stared at him and saw him as the others must—cold, calculating, disdainful. And yet, it was the strangest sensation to also feel him from the inside, to know that alongside those cold things he was carrying that dark, aching abyss.
Then he muttered a curse, and the sense of him disappeared like he’d slammed a door on it.
I tensed, pulling tight against his neck where I’d laced my fingers when he picked me up. But moments later I realized he wasn’t gone entirely. That I was still aware of him. But like a voice through a thick door: Muffled. Unclear.
I peered over his shoulders, watching as a handful of the men stumbled out of that chamber, calling after us.
“Do you like what you see, Jesse?” he snarled without turning his head.
I looked back at him, his stunning profile—jaw tensed and muscles flexing, eyes shining, lips peeled back slightly from his teeth, which were gritted.
He looked like a fallen angel, about to rain hell on someone who deserved it.
Thrill and nerves coursed through me. “Yes,” I breathed, stunned by how different it suddenly felt to be close to him.
As if I knew him. Understood him. As if we were already… intimate.
I blinked.
“It’s the bond,” he muttered, turning a corner so tightly my toes brushed the wall. “Do you feel the pull of it?”
I nodded slowly, still stunned and trying to understand what was happening. “Why are you running? Is there danger?”
He huffed, his lips curling up into a wicked half-smile that made my stomach flutter. “The only real danger in your world now, Kitten, is me.”
I should have been terrified. Should have been screaming, fighting him, running… But despite the nerves and thrill, despite the uncertainty and sheer desperation of this entire day… since that bond had snapped into place it was as if I’d found my purpose.
I understood why I was here. Why it had to be me. And what I was supposed to do.
If he’d let me.
Then the door he’d slammed on that link between us cracked open and a jolt of desire came at me through the bond. I gasped, suddenly aching.
Casimir gave a low, throaty chuckle and smiled again, shaking his head. “It’s always fun at the beginning,” he murmured.
“What is?” I asked breathlessly.
“The bond. The need. The insatiable appetite…” He finally turned his head to meet my eyes and if I hadn’t been in his arms, I think I would have sunk to the floor under the weight and promise of those eyes. The flames roaring behind the slick, frigid ice he placed between himself and the world.
And every tongue of flame that licked at the ice of him, also flickered at the core of me. My breath was coming faster, the hair rising on my arms.
“Yessssss,” he hissed. “That’s it. Dear god, it’s going to be good between us.”
“You need to show me… I haven’t…” I stammered, uncertain how to say it. But he cursed again.
“I know. I told you… you do not need to fear me.”
And yet, at those words, it wasn’t fear I felt, but a chill that turned in his chest. It was muffled and distant, the roll of thunder far enough away you weren’t sure where it came from. And yet…
“Stop blocking me,” I whispered. “I understand better when you don’t.”
“Kitten, you understand nothing.”
He was practically running up a flight of stairs now, taking them two at a time, carrying me effortlessly. Then he took the turn to a landing at the top and suddenly, we were in a massive, echoing space, with triple-height ceilings and a plunge off to his right to another level below. A thick, hand-carved banister kept us safely on the wide mezzanine, but while I marveled at the massive chandelier hanging from the tall ceiling and the grand pillars and double, arched doorways, he only fixed his eyes on a door halfway along the mezzanine and picked up his pace until he was practically running.
Shouldering the door open, he kicked it closed behind him, then walked me to the center of the massive room and finally, with some care, put me back on my feet.
The moment I had my balance, he let me go, muttering again, but it was only to stalk back to the door and lift a large beam from where it leaned against the wall, slotting it into braces on the thick, double-doors with an echoing boom… and we were locked in.
~ JESSE ~Cazz stood in front of the door for a half a second, hands still on the beam, head cocked as if he was listening to something. There was a strange tension in him that made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. But then he turned and found me with his eyes.In that space in my chest where I'd been connected to him, I felt the spear of desire that rocked through his body. It made my breath catch.When he began to walk towards me, it was with the slow grace of a predator, the fire in his eyes burning inside me as he locked on, only the rapid rise and fall of his chest outwardly giving away the tension in him that I could feel. A few strands of his hair fell over his eyes, but he peered out at me through them, like a wolf in the grass and when he spoke, his voice was guttural, so deep it seemed to come up from the stone beneath my feet, and barely loud enough for me to catch the words.“You’re stronger than I gave you credit for,” he murmured, prowling towards me.I swallowe
~ CASIMIR ~Standing behind her as I was, I had a perfect view down her cleavage as her chest rose and fell very quickly. I looked forward to plunging my length down that dark valley.I’d been furling up the skirt of that spider web of a dress and now I set to my task with focus. As the hem drew up to her thighs, I let my fingertips brush her skin as I continued to raise it slowly, slowly, smiling when her skin pebbled under my touch.She shivered when the cool air of the room met her hot skin, then shuddered when I grasped the skirt in one fist and reached for her with the other, urging her to spread her stance a little wider.“Tell me everything,” I whispered in her ear. “What you like, what you don’t. What makes you tremble. Tell me if it hurts or when you want it to hurt more. Tell me when you’re going to come.”She gave a short little huff, but then I slid two fingers into her folds and she tensed.“Relax,” I growled, and had to remind myself not to give her a taste of the compul
~ CASIMIR ~“Quickly,” I rasped. She was keeping her body just clear of mine, reaching up to pop the brass buttons at my chest, but her eyes were on the bared skin at my throat and collarbones.“Tell me,” I whispered. “Tell me while you undress me.”“I-I like the way you look,” she murmured, her eyes flicking up and down between my face and the buttons as she worked them loose.Then my jacket was open and she slid her hands up my chest to my shoulders underneath the stiff fabric, pushing it off and back, her hands following the rounds of my shoulders, then down my arms.I hadn’t told her to take it off, but I was too impatient to correct her—and this first time it was better to encourage her when she was bold.Then she leaned against me to push the jacket off my arms and her body brushed against me and I groaned.Had she been more experienced, I would have had my trousers off in seconds and plunged into her. But it was important to train her body to trust that each new step would be o
~ JESSE ~Somehow, when Cazz kissed me I felt it in my belly. An ache started down low and I didn’t just get breathless, I got a little bit desperate.Then he straightened, locking eyes with me—and his were glowing—and he growled, “Get on the bed. Now,” and his voice vibrated against my chest, but I felt it all the way to the soles of my feet and started scrambling backwards, trying to get my ass up on the high bed.I tried to jump and missed twice.Cazz gave a chuckle and shook his head, dropping to squat, his hands sliding all the way down the backs of my legs, then cupping the back of my calves.There was a moment he just knelt there, looking up at me and I looked down on him and everything in me that was aching gave a stab of desire, right behind my navel. My breath rushed out of me and I started to shake. His eyes flashed and I braced my hands on the bed behind me and heaved, and this time he helped lift my weight until I was sitting on the thick fur, and it was the most luxuriou
~ JESSE ~A flash of fear speared through me because I thought he was going to cover me then, and take me. I screwed my eyes tightly closed and gripped the fur, bracing for the pain that I’d heard would happen this first time.But Cazz tsked and his hands returned to stroking up and down my thighs, from knee to hip, top, then back, then inside until I was shaking again.“No, Kitten. No. Don’t tense. Don’t do that,” he cautioned, sounding a touch frustrated. “Just relax and seek your pleasure. Leave the rest to me. Watch.”I opened my eyes to see him take himself in hand. His jaw flexed as he rubbed himself against me, softly at first, just separating my folds and drawing himself up in a very similar way to the way he’d used his fingers, but… it felt very, very different.There was so much more of him and he touched so much more of me. He started slowly, right where he’d enter me, and that made me tense. But then he’d draw himself slowly up, pressing slightly harder as he reached that
~ CASIMIR ~No one had ever come so close to stealing my control.She was stunning. Skin flushed and pink, lips soft and open, she clawed one hand into my neck and I could have howled.When she came, I’d swear I heard God in her cry.And even when she was blinking and stunned, swallowing, I didn’t let up.We weren’t finished.“Hold on. We’re only just getting started.”Her eyes—glazed with pleasure, but clearing—locked on mine and her mouth opened like she’d speak, but then I rocked into her again and her jaw dropped.She was twitching, her body over-sensitized. The risk of course was that she’d grow desensitized, so I lowered myself to my elbows, cupping hands over her head and finally indulging the urge to be skin-to-skin with her. As we rocked together slowly, I groaned and dropped my chin, our cheeks brushing and even that sweet contact was heightened.When her hands came up, her fingers sliding on my scalp, I kissed her and she clung, taking my tongue as readily as she’d taken th
~ JESSE ~Laying there with Cazz’s weight pinning me to the bed, my head was reeling. My insides were at war because half of me was already halfway in love with him. I wanted to hold him to me, keep him there, lay under him and just soak him up like a good smell.I knew—I knew—that I was never going to be the same. And that was scary, because something I had never anticipated was suddenly very clear: Having sex really did affect my feelings.I’d talked to my friends over the years. I’d shaken my head over and over again, baffled about why they were so attached to some douchebag who was inconsistent and insensitive at best—sometimes downright abusive.And they’d always talk about how they wanted him. Couldn’t get enough of him. And how rare that was…I’d been skeptical—naively, as it turned out—that this kind of connection had anything to do with it. I’d never had a man make me feel anything close to what Cazz had just wrung from my body, so I assumed they were just trying to romantici
~ JESSE ~Holy shit. It was suddenly hard to breathe. The immensity of his power, of what that meant… of what kind of man it made him was stunning and utterly horrifying.As my head spun with the implications of what that meant, instinctively I pulled the blanket up and over my chest.“Don’t,” he said darkly, reaching out immediately to tug it back down to bare my breasts. I was about to slap his hand away when I remembered our agreement that I would submit, as long as he didn’t use that power on me.That power that could literally make my heart stop?What else was he capable of?I swallowed back the fear—then quickly forgot it when his eyes zeroed in on my breast and he gave a small smile, reaching out to trace the nipple closest to him with a touch so soft I wouldn’t even have felt it if my nipples hadn’t still been hard.“You’re a beautiful woman, Jesse,” he said, as if the fact surprised him, his tone quiet and suggestive, as if his prior anger had simply melted away. Then he fro