8: Preparation

Darby    

“How’d you sleep, beautiful?”

Ian nuzzles the back of my neck, his warm breath tickling as he inhales and exhales repeatedly, taking in my scent. He’s spooned up behind me, cranking out the BTUs with that magnificent were metabolism of his. My neck is pillowed on his bicep, but his other hand is freely roaming my body and doing delightful things.

I stretch languorously and against me, Ian growls, inhaling deeply and this time holding it. His fingers cup my mound, easing between my thighs as open my eyes. “Wonderfully.”

It was midmorning when Ian carried me up here after we looked at my jeep, now long shadows creep along the walls and floors, and the last sliver of Arianrhod’s crescent smile is high at the top of the window. “How long have I been out?”

“All day. It’s nearing midnight.”

“I’m hungry, Ian.”

His explorations halt immediately, then with a patient sigh, Ian extracts his hand from between my thighs. He rolls to his back, reaching towards the bedside table and the plate of washed fruits and vegetables he brought up before.

“Not that kind of hungry.” I roll myself onto him, pulling my knees up on either side and wiggle my hips into his pelvis playfully.

From this angle, I can see sparks of green and yellow light in his deep blue eyes even in the dark as he sets the plate aside. His hands slide gently up my thighs to my hips and back down again, pressing my warm wetness into his hardening cock in a regular, insistent rhythm with each circuit.

“I can help with that.”

It’s the low, almost gravelly grumble of his wolf voice and I shiver, the cold touch of fear caressing lightly down my spine warring with the damp heat rising between my legs.

“No need for that, my love.” His hands stroke my thighs without changing tempo. “I live for your pleasure and protection—even from myself.”

The word “pleasure” practically purrs as, beneath my wandering fingers, his powerful core flexes and he sits up slowly, his broad chest pressed to mine. Hips lips glide from my shoulder to the soft behind my ear and he breathes suggestively, “I can’t wait to have those thighs of yours wrapped around my face. You smell good enough to eat.”

Turning to him, I suck his earlobe into my mouth, stroking with my tongue and biting it. “So do you. Maybe we can both have what we want?”

Ian pulls back so he can look in my eyes, evaluating how serious I am and considering.

His are still deep blue with the yellow and green, and the smile he wears is purely seductive, not predatory. Reassured and more confident in the man’s control over his beast half, I kiss his bottom lip, sucking it into my mouth, and his arms tighten around my waist, then ease.

“You have yourself a deal.” A smile cracks his face, his wolf teeth visible and he lays back slowly, crooking a finger towards my hips and whispering naughtily, “Here, kitty, kitty.” Patiently, he tucks his hands behind his head.

I ease myself forward until I’m perched on his broad chest, my legs spread open wide. Ian doesn’t take his eyes off the fine patch of hair on my mound, and I see his nostrils flare, breathing me in. I must admit, now that I’m so close, I feel terribly exposed and not just a little shy and unsure.

As if he knows, Ian smiles up at me invitingly. “This is what you wanted, baby. Turn around. Let’s play.”

Dismounting to one side, I rest my hands on his chest and swing my leg over reversing my direction, Ian’s large hands guiding and placing my knees at his shoulders before his arms wrap around my waist. “You have a perfect, round ass,” he tells me, sinking his teeth just to the point of pain into first one cheek, then the other, then kissing the tiny hurts away.

I run my tongue between his lean abdominals, circling his navel as I lay down on top of him. Still feeling a bit shy and definitely daunted facing his awaiting cock head on, I stroke its generous length with my hands, cupping his balls and giving them a squeeze.

Kissing my inner thigh, Ian groans. “Do to me what feels good to you,” he encourages.

I explore the small slit on his head briefly, then take the whole thing in my mouth and begin bobbing up and down, wetting him and slowly easing more of his enormousness deeper into the back of my throat. Beneath me, Ian’s body is taut with enjoyment, his small lustful grunts coming in time with the pace I set, his exhalations tickling on the inside of my thighs.

Easing him all the way out, I take him all the way I can in, pleased with myself and loving how full my mouth feels, lapping the rich, salty taste of his precome as he slips over my tongue.

Up until then, Ian restricts his ministrations to my thighs, but as he feels me take in as much of him as I can, that magical wolf tongue of his snakes out, fluttering and flicking over my sensitive clit. Shuddering with delight, I try to moan around him.

In just that second, Ian thrusts up, burying himself to the hilt in my mouth, his hand gently pressing the back of my head and holding me there. Past my gag reflex, he pumps several short strokes deep in my throat. “You see, my love? Made for each other.”

When I feel another brief hot jet of more precome, I press my tongue to the bottom of my mouth, swallowing his juices down greedily. Every muscle in his body tenses, quivering with the rhythmic contractions of my throat around him, and a long, savage moan escapes his lips.

Releasing my head, he wraps strong arms around my thighs, his huge hands spreading me wider. His lips close around my aching bud, sucking hard and stroking his rough-soft tongue over it, rapidly pulling a trembling orgasm out of me.

“Mmmmmm. I love when you come. I can’t get enough of it.” He flattens his tongue, lapping my entire sopping slit from my clit all the way to the puckering button between my cheeks. I quiver as he circles it and Ian’s grip on me tightens, his hands stretching me open more. “Don’t run, just enjoy it. Keep sucking me, baby.”

I stroke with my hands, working the swollen tip of his cock with my mouth, yearning to make him orgasm. Though I desperately want the power over him he’s wielding over me, my only focus becomes the feel of Ian’s tongue, teasing my reluctant hole into relaxing. There’s a growing ache there for more of what he has to give, a dark fascination blossoming, demanding to feel him enter this last unexplored part of me, then make it his.

He’s pressing, persistent, at the puckered center when the tip of his tongue slips in. A wild, sweet bolt of pleasure erupts through me and Ian holds, sighing his own pleasure at mine in a hot breath over my stretched skin. He lets it roll through me, then thrusts in deeper, pumping and tongue-fucking my tight hole. I moan, senseless against his abdomen, loving the slight, wet stretch, and feeling my pussy clenching just shy of release. My thighs are slick all the way to his shoulders, my pussy lips swollen and trembling with arousal.

When his tongue slides out of me, I groan in frustration and collapse limp on top of him. He gives a stinging swat to my bottom in response.

“I’m not done with you, don’t worry, my love. Move to my side and stay on your hands and knees.”

Boneless, I slide off of him, slowly pulling my hands and knees beneath me when I get another cruel slap on my bottom.

“I said stay on your hands and knees.”

Impatient, Ian slides one arm under me lifting me effortlessly to the position he wants. He’s behind me, pushing my thighs together and positioning his to the outside. He slaps my engorged lips with his stiff cock and I moan, then he draws the tip through my wet folds before pushing deep in through the narrowed space left him with us positioned this way. He adjusts his stance a bit wider to better align with my snug walls and g-spot, then draws back and plunges in, rolling and fluid like waves on the wide ocean.

Pressing one hand in the small of my back, he arches me up towards him, still stroking regularly. Then I feel his thumb, wet with my own juices, swirling in tiny circles and pressing against my now eager pucker.

“Don’t run, baby,” Ian reminds me, then another bolt of pleasure rockets through my body when the tip of his thumb gently penetrates my second hole.

It’s thicker than his tongue and as it pushes me open, I moan, shuddering, and force my hips towards him. My swollen lips grip his throbbing cock tighter, gliding with hot, new wetness and pulling him deeper inside me. The same motion pushes his thumb all the way through my rear entrance, stretching as he slides in, then contracting below his first knuckle.

This time we both moan.

Ian’s hips still, drawing my focus to the brush of his fingers against the sensitized flesh both opened and clenched shut around his thumb, then dipping to my pussy lips gripping his cock and gently stroking them.

“Ohh, my love.” The words rumble from deep inside him. “I love the way you look taking me.”

He presses harder with his thumb, and I whimper, feeling the tingling sting as my snug hole opens wider hesitantly accepting his knuckle, constricting again as he eases it in all the way to the joint with his palm. Inside, he’s stroking the virgin flesh and stars shoot across my vision with the new sensation.

“Love the way you feel taking me,” he growls, slicking the fingers of his other hand in the new trickle of hot fluid around his cock and using it to lubricate the taut flesh around his thumb, tenderly working it in. “Get ready,” he warns.

His thumb rocks, firing a new set of wildly sensitive and pleasurable nerves, as his hips roll, his cock fucking me deeper. Though a moment before I was tipping precariously at the brink, now my orgasm builds slowly, a groundswell of nebulous, yearning desire.

Ian leans over me, supporting himself on the knuckles of his free hand, and his thumb inside me excites in new ways hooked in this angle between us. His face presses to the pulsing, tingling nape of my neck, his breath ragged and heaving over my shoulders. His hips move faster and he’s whispering curses, trying to hold back, staving off his release, drawing it out.

My orgasm rips through me and I’m quaking so hard, it brings on Ian’s. The long jet of his fluid spews into me, coating and filling my welcoming walls with a dizzying warmth.

While we’re still trembling with aftershocks, he gently removes his thumb. Wrapping his arm around my waist, he pulls me to my side, curling around me, my neck on his bicep. His free hand is warm and wandering over me languidly and aside from the dewy sweat cooling over us, it’s déjà vu.

“I’m never going to tire of this, Darby. Never going to stop wanting to worship every inch of you.”

**

Ian    

We bask for a while in the afterglow, then I rouse Darby from her light doze and make love to her slowly and tenderly, swallowing her cries and moans with my mouth into the wee hours of the morning before I let her sleep.

Ivan had woken the afternoon before and though both Jack and he assure me he’s doing better and healing rapidly, I can tell he’s not at his best. We’ve been missing for more than forty-eight hours and I’m certain Jack’s crews have been combing the woods for us frantically.

We need to get home.

Against my chest, Darby stirs and sighs. She sleeps very still, like she’s under an enchantment, even when she’s not utterly exhausted. It must be something with fae, I think. Not that I mind. She likes to be snuggled and warm, so she’s always up close, cocooned like a slim, unborn butterfly with me all through the night.

I cuddle her tighter now, breathe in the lilac and shortbread of her skin. The heat musk is gone and I still detect no hint of pregnancy in her scent. I’m not going to lie, it disappoints me and I resent the circumstances of our meeting that forced us to give up so much time so she could sleep and recover. I struggle to explain the manly sense of pride and possession that comes from knowing your mate carries your child. 

“There’s time,” I whisper into the stillness of her room. “Many, many more days and nights of pleasuring your delicate body and filling you with my seed.” In my head, my wolf half growls, as satisfied with that thought as I am.

As dawn breaks, I ease myself out of the bed and cover Darby with a heavy blanket to keep her warm. Ivan’s asleep in the other upstairs bedroom and Jack in the same chair that’s too small for him. Tessa’s head lifts quickly when she sees me and she leaps out of Jack’s lap, stretching her back in a deep downward dog then each hind leg slowly, before trotting along at my heels to the front door.

Good morning, Alpha. Where are we going?

Morning, Tessa. You can call me Ian, you know.

I know, Alpha.

Feel like a run and to do a bit of exploring?

Does the run include flushing rabbits?

There’s so much enthusiasm in her request, I chuckle, instantly willing to indulge her. It most certainly can.

The garden is already stirring, filled with the heady fragrance of moonflowers despite Arianrhod’s waning. There’s a spring in one corner, bubbling softly and trickling into a clear, sparkling pool. I crouch beside it, scooping the cold water into my hands and draining them until I’ve had my fill, then splash some over my face and hair, the drops clinging to me cooling in the brisk morning air and raising gooseflesh.

The moon gate opens quietly, its pale blue paint washed clean of the spatter of Ivan’s blood. Jack, I think, grateful for his thoroughness, stepping out into the meadow with Tessa at my side.

Though its already growing over with seedling meadow grass, there’s a visible swath of earth that looks like it was recently churned. Shifting, I lope toward it, Tessa keeping pace at my side.

You shift quickly, Alpha. Not quite as quickly as triumvir Jack.

Yes, he reminds me regularly. But my wolf is larger, so I’m not overly bothered by it, and I can always beat him into submission when he gets too full of himself. Lowering my head, I scent the ground in the recently healed spot.

I have noticed the triumvir can be a bit taxing. Your wolf is much grander and fitting of your status, Alpha. Is there something you’re looking for?

‘Grander’. I can’t wait to lord that over Jack. The best thing about dogs is they don’t stoop to flattery—Tessa genuinely respects my wolf more, or she wouldn’t have said anything at all. Merely indulging curiosity initially, but now I smell vampire. How long ago was the valley attacked?

Their scent takes a few weeks for Milady’s green magic to erase and she was more concerned for her injured grove. The last attack happened in the early morning the day you arrived, Alpha. Your battle with them must have been close to ours—we could feel signs of it against her wards.

So Darby was helping us, even if unknowingly. My brows draw together remembering the agonized shrieks, the crashing rocks, the violent rumblings beneath us and the raging flames. Wards? How many are there?

There are a total of nineteen magical protections over the valley, Alpha.

Shit. I’d seen three, perhaps felt four. How come we were able to enter, but the vampires not?

Obviously, some vampires got in, Alpha—four to be exact—and much farther than any of the others ever before. You’ve been … keeping Milady busy … so she hasn’t yet told me if she knows why. As long as you knew where the valley is, you could have entered. You had no intentions of harm.

The wards can discern intention?

No, Alpha, but they do allow Milady to hear your thoughts if she chooses, then she decides your trustworthiness. It seems she liked you as much as you liked her. You are a fitting mate for her.

That thought I definitely like, and it interests me that despite my status as an alpha, Tessa still sees Darby as holding more value and authority than me. It’s unintentional on her part—she doesn’t know anything about my pack or its success under my guidance. More to explore…  but some other time.

When we’d entered the valley, I’d been concerned for Ivan’s health and on defense to keep all of us safe and alive. And actually a little worried about frightening any humans here. Honorable thoughts, if I do say so myself. It’s a wonder she let Jack in, though I suppose there’s no ill intention in his relentless state of sexual arousal.

Then I remember my thoughts upon finding her. No wonder she told me she’d had enough of them. At least they aren’t full of the kinky stuff Jack’s into, I justify in my head.

I’d like to examine the ridge where you saw our battle.

I’ll show you where, but you must not cross out of the final ward, Alpha. You would not be able to find your way in again.

Got it. Lead on, Tessa.

This way. After, can we chase rabbits?

Of course we can.

**

Jack    

The door to the alphas’ room is still closed and Ivan’s still asleep. I suspect both situations will continue for a while longer. Searching for Tessa, I walk through the garden, then make my way out to the orchard. I’m confused and concerned that I can’t find her, but before I shift to my wolf to range wider and faster, I lower the waistband of these fae seventies disco tights to relieve my bladder.

“I told you to use the toilet.”

Hearing Ian’s threatening growl, I jump.

My stream jerks and the wild arc falls over my foot. I may shift to my wolf faster, but though Ian’s many pounds larger than me, he’s still the stealthiest were of the entire pack. “Dammit, Ian! Was that really necessary?”

“If you weren’t doing something I specifically told you not to, you wouldn’t have just peed over your own foot. How many times do I have to tell you, Jack? Natural consequences.”

I turn toward his voice to see him entering the orchard from the meadow, six dead rabbits dangling by the feet in one hand and Tessa beaming happily and prancing like a fairy princess beside him.

Little turncoat.

“It’s not a total loss though,” he says, passing behind me on the way toward the cottage and cuffing me lightly on the back of the head. “At least now you’ll take a shower.”

“No promises about the shower.” Shaking the dew off my lily, I tuck myself back in the pants and jog to catch up to him. “Thanks for getting breakfast.”

“Tessa did that.”

Between us, she wiggles with pleasure at his praise, her tail lifting higher and swishes proudly like a pompom.

“Yeah, thanks Tessa.”

Damn Ian. I know its unconscious, but as soon as he’s around, women can’t see past him. Something about that alpha presence and that wavy black hair with his deep blue eyes—they melt for it—even Tessa. Though none of us are hard to look at, I have to admit, Ian’s the one I’d look at too if I was a woman. I feel hurt to lose my little gal pal.

Do not be jealous, triumvir. It is a great honor to receive praise from the Alpha and necessary to show the proper gratitude. You are still my favorite were.

You’re the best, Tessa.

Her smile widens. I know.

I focus on Ian. “Do we have alpha babies?” It’s the only reason I can imagine he’d leave his mate’s bed.

His tension crackles around us and I see him stiffen out of the corner of my eye. Uh-oh. Trouble in paradise already?

“If we do, I can’t smell them. I think there’s been too much stress for Darby. Now, her heat’s ended.”

The explanations are clipped and I can hear Ian’s disappointment, even sadness.

I’m a sucky brother and a worse friend. I had no idea he wanted pups so badly.

“She’ll come back into heat, Ian, and it doesn’t have to be then for her to conceive,” I offer softly.

“She had to fend off four vampire attacks by herself down here in the valley while we were fighting up on the ridge.”

I struggle to wrap my mind around Ian’s concern here.

I mean I get it, she’s vegan…ugh… and definitely flimsy as a reed. But the woman damn near vaporized the table and chairs in her kitchen, embedding the pieces she left in actual stone walls without breaking a sweat.

“Wow. A whole four?” I comment sarcastically. “Seriously though, those were some unnn-lucky fuckers. I’d rather take my chances naked with a pack of fully shifted berserker wolves than have her come after me with that rage magic again, I’ll tell you that for free.”

Beside me, Ian snorts and smile cracks his face, brightening his outlook. “Why is there a constant theme of nudity with you? Go grab a shower. Tessa and I’ll get these cleaned. Hopefully by the time they’re done cooking, Ivan and Darby will be up and we can find our way out of here and get home.”

“Yes!” I fist pump and jog ahead to the garden gate. Hallelujah and fuck yeah! We’re going home.

**