~ CASIMIR ~When Jesse had stood there a moment, she turned in my arms and looked up at me with an expression I couldn’t pinpoint.Combing her hair back over her shoulder, I examined the bond, but whatever she was feeling was strange, a tangled mix of things I couldn’t quite—“Cazz,” she said quietly, reaching for me. “Please tell me whatever’s next involves you inside me. Please.” She was breathless and quiet, and utterly serious.I caught her hands again—because that wasn’t going to help me keep control. But Jesse raised her eyebrows and looked up at me, her chest rising and falling beautifully because she was still thrumming from that orgasm.“You have nothing to worry about,” I growled, pulling her around to the center of the couch, the saddle of it. “Step over, but don’t sit down,” I ordered her quickly, my heart pounding with anticipation. “I need you standing.”There was a jolt through the bond—her body responding to my declaration of needing her. Our eyes caught for a moment,

~ CASIMIR ~Jesse was leaning forward, onto the rise of the couch. My entire body responded to the sight of her and I had to take a breath, stroking her back, to gather my control. When I was certain I wouldn’t cave to the drive to take her, I dragged my hands up her back and reached for her bra straps, curling fingers under them at the back and running the backs of my fingers slowly up her skin until I was under them at the peak of her shoulders. Then I dragged them down until they sagged on her upper arms.She rippled into my touch and I smiled, breathing heavily as I slipped my silk-gloved hand around her chest and slid my fingers under the underwire of the bra to knead one breast, then tease her nipple between my thumb and forefinger, using the other hand firmly on her shoulder to keep her tight in my lap as I picked up the pace a touch.Watching her body ripple, feeling her tighten on me, hearing her little cries was intoxicating… I was beginning to sweat.I’d planned to play mo

~ CASIMIR ~I strode along the tunnels of the Palace draped in black from head to toe, wearing one of the long, black tunics that buttoned up the front that I was partial to when I was nineteen.Nineteen.Still a child by human standards, but finally coming into my own as a wolf.I was walking quickly, my body humming with anticipation, because I thought I was in love. But my apprehension that someone might smell it on me was actually helpful, coating my scent in tension and wariness.It was becoming harder and harder to hide my true feelings from my father. I did my best every time I was near him not to think of her, unless it was to replay our sexual exploits in my mind.Daddy dearest didn’t give two shits who I fucked.But love?Worse, considering her as a mate?I shook my head and kept walking, hands clenched at my sides, praying I wouldn’t see anyone important before I reached our meeting place. But thoughts of my father kept crowding in, reminding me of that female he’d caught m

~ CASIMIR ~“Please, Cazz, I needed your help!” she croaked, desperate and terrified, but now gaining hope, because she’d seen me hesitate. She put her hands down on the carpet and started inching towards me, her body still naked and flushed from fucking my brother.“He hurt you?” I asked carefully, doing everything I could not to let her see that I knew she was lying.A volcano of rage was rumbling in my chest, threatening to erupt.“Yesss!” she hissed. “He said… he said if I didn’t do it he’d kill me! I just prayed you’d forgive me!” Her voice was a thin rasp, barely a whisper. She crawled towards me, keeping her head and shoulders lower than her plump ass that I had bitten more than once, and cupped, and squeezed, and wondered if it tasted like her shoulder and whether I’d claim her after we were mated.My body shuddered as the cold wind of betrayal punched, sliding a frozen knife between my ribs.“Why did it have to be him?”It was the question I should have asked him before I sto

~ JESSE ~We were now sitting on the normal couch that squatted against the wall of the room. I’d led him to it when he started shaking in the middle of that story. It was wide and flat and he was a lot less likely to fall off of it when he swayed. He hadn’t even stopped talking, his eyes darting left and right as if he wasn’t seeing this room at all, but the events he was describing.When he sat down, He bent forward, elbows on his knees, head hanging from his shoulders and buried his face in his hands.But he didn’t stop.When he first started speaking there was a pinch of jealousy in my chest because he smiled when he remembered caring about her, hiding her from his father. The hope… I’d never seen him hope before, and I ached for it.But I wept for him when he described the moment he discovered them together.I sobbed when his voice cracked as he tonelessly described shifting and killing his brother.And when he talked about confronting, and ultimately killing her… I could barely