~ 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
~ JESSE ~I felt Cazz shudder and for a moment I thought it was just pure passion. But something in the bond went cold and my entire body tensed.‘Cazz?’ I asked through the bond as I reached back for him, putting my hands on his thighs and squeezing to try and get his attention. He was clinging to my stomach, his face buried in the back of my neck, but he wasn’t moving. Wasn’t even breathing.‘Cazz? What’s wrong?’ When he didn’t answer even in the bond, I grew truly worried and dug my nails into his thighs to try and snap him out of whatever trance he was in.His body was steel behind me, trembling.Then there was a strange sucking noise, and I realized he was struggling to breathe.“Cazz!” I leaned down, fighting against the way he gripped me around the stomach to reach my ankles and unbuckle those cuffs with trembling fingers. “Cazz, what’s wrong? What happened?” I hushed as I got myself free, then started to stand up, to turn around—I needed to see him!But as I started to rise he
~ 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 ~I was frozen just inside the door, gaping like a puppy witnessing their first mating.Cuan’s eyes caught mine and he grinned, then pumped hard into her again, tearing a small cry from her throat as she opened her eyes and they went wide…She froze too… then she smiled uncertainly.And I couldn’t fathom it, because I loved her. I thought I did. I thought I had.But everything about her screamed her arousal.Her eyes were clear and her emotion real—she wasn’t compelled.She wasn’t being forced. She wasn’t being attacked.She was being fucked.By my brother.And she liked it.She and I stared at each other for an endless moment, then she gave me a wary smile. “Cazz—”She said my informal name like she still had a right to.“—Cuan told me about how you two share…”Share? He told her we share?Cuan had never shared anything more than genetics with me since my birth. He had sensed before I had that I was the greatest threat to his birthright, and though we’d worked together to p
~ 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
~ CASIMIR ~At first when she went still and I took the first step back into an entirely new life, fury was still my fuel. My hands shook, but my bones thrummed with power and adrenaline and sheer thrill.I could barely breathe. Yet my body had never felt stronger.I took another step back, then another, taking in the carnage of the room… inhaling the scent of blood.Two bodies.My brother.My love—no, the female who had betrayed me.Both of them, I reminded myself. They were both traitors. Both self-serving, two-faced liars.There was a flash in my head of Sheba curled up in my bed, her head on my shoulder, laughing at something I had said, her hand stroking my chest—I staggered back two more steps as the world began to spin.My father’s voice became a hurricane in my head as I watched the female I had started to think I would mate bleed out on the floor.“…they will use you. They will deceive you. Smile to your face, then bare their fangs behind your back. They will take everything
~ 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
~ JESSE ~At least he didn’t walk away, I told myself.We stood there, staring at each other, my head spinning and my heart aching for him.How could I possibly help him with this?But then he dropped his head and raked his hand through his hair, blowing out a breath before he straightened and met my eyes again, his jaw tight as a bowstring.“Jesse, I know I’ve hurt you. I wish I hadn’t. I wish I wouldn't. But you have to understand, it’s not just you I don't trust. It’s me.”Then he let me see in his head—flashes of memory, flashes of thought. And I stared and drank him in because he was never that open. But… but then it hit me what he was showing me—the inferno of rage that lived in his chest. The violence he’d been a part of. The violence he wanted to be a part of. The ability to shut down his emotions and just act—to let himself act on instinct, brutal and animal though it may be.The tightrope that he walked, day after day. All the ways he had to force himself not to simply destr