Jessamine
When Kier had said I would be heavily guarded, I didn’t expect an entire train of guards outside his chambers. Six of them, spread across the hallway, two outside the door to his private study, just in case I decided to sneak out through there. There are guards outside too, by the windows. There’s nothing getting in or out of here without Kier’s permission.
He left last night, right after telling me about…making a baby, and then he stated that I would be staying in his chambers to make the lie convincing enough. Male wolves are territorial with their pregnant wolves, and they almost never let them out of sight.
I told him I didn’t want to have his baby. I told him he was crazy. He didn’t respond and I spent the entire night thinking, anxiety keeping me awake, and every time the door creaked, I would shoot up from the bed, half expecting it to be him, but he never came.
I’m not usually an impatient woman. I’m Jessamine. I always know what to do next. There’s always a rule from mother to handle a hard situation. In the past months, I genuinely didn’t think much would come of us. I stopped thinking of a future with him the moment Darrock took me home. Now, I don’t know what he’s thinking. I don’t know what he’s doing. It’s hard to control what you don’t understand.
I used to have the ball in my court, Kier in my thrall. Now, I’m not so sure, and I don’t know how to regain control of this situation; of my life. Everything is in chaos, and I feel like a pebble in a hailstorm.
Breakfast is brought to me the next morning—an assortment of dishes and awful tasting tonics from the pack doctor who believes it’ll make the imaginary pup stronger. After the food taster had ascertained each dish was safe to eat—yes. Kier is an overprotective jerk—she had remained until I ate the entire thing and drank the tonics.
They made me drowsy. Sleepy, and at some point in the middle of the day, I fall into fitful sleep in Kier’s large bed, his scent clouding my nostrils and filling my dreams with disgustingly erotic images.
Something heavy crashes loudly into the floorboard and the muffled grunt that follows stirs me awake. I sit up, squinting through the dimly lit room to the hunched figure at the foot of Kier’s bed panting and groaning. Fingers clutch at the black silk sheets and a ragged sigh fills the air as Kier pulls himself up, freezing when he sees me staring at him.
He’s shirtless, and sweaty…and…he’s shirtless. I force my gaze to the window instead. “Why not use the door?”
Kier rises, tugging on the elastic waistband of his pants that hangs loosely below the v-shaped indentation on his waistline. Somehow, seeing that makes my mouth dry. “It’s my castle. I could burrow a hole into my room if I wanted.” He walks, moving a couple of things around. He throws the door to his dresser open and pulls out a couple of shirts. He seems to pause for a moment before adding, “I didn’t want to wake you.”
Someone’s punched my gut and now I’m finding it difficult to breathe around this man. I clutch the sheets tightly, gathering them up to my chest to shield my perky nipples from him. “I need to speak to Darrock. You can’t hold me in here forever.”
He merely bobs his red head once. “I assumed you would need to speak to him, so I did it for you.”
“What do you mean you did it for me?”
He doesn’t look at me, but his clothes rustle as he pulls out another shirt—a dull, grey hideous thing. “I called off the wedding on your behalf. You cannot wed him with my pup inside you. It is unheard of and I will not allow it. He will return to Dawn and inform your father that you are safe and cared for.”
I pull the covers back and get out of bed. “It wasn’t your call to make, and I’m NOT fucking preg—”
His palm bite painfully into my lips, covering them as he whispers against the shell of my ear, “Yes. Yes, you are. You will speak it until it becomes true. That is the only way I can keep you safe; the only reason those men out there will guard you with their lives; the only way you survive the next few days, because believe it or not, the council is trying to kill you and I do not want you dead.”
“You’re overreacting—” I’m saying when he peels his hand off my lips, but his next words have a chill running up my spine.
“The food taster who inspected your breakfast was the third I acquired today.”
I want to ask what happened to the first and second, but I have a strong feeling I don’t want to know the answer to that. My head spins with this new knowledge of how close I’d come to dying this morning without even realizing it, and I take it back, calling Kier an overprotective jerk.
I lift my eyes to his. “Children are not merely formed with words, and if you really do wish to keep me safe, take me home. I’ll be safe at Dawn and out of your hair.”
His big hands curve around my hip and he yanks me into him roughly. My pulse flutters and my skin tingles where his touch filters through the silk, painting my skin with a warmth that becomes too hot in the next second and color that I know has spread through my body, a flushed scarlet. His free hand snakes up my back, and the air hisses between my teeth when his fingers clamp down on the back of my neck possessively.
He forces my head back and drags his teeth along the pulsing vein of my throat, slowly. A tremor runs through my body, and my thighs clench together, a painful, delicious ache throbbing between them. Tension coils tight in my stomach when he kisses his mark on my neck, leaving me lightheaded. The skin is sensitive, still sore, but his lips are the healing I need. His mouth makes me feel whole again. My strength drains away like way, resistance deflating like a popped balloon.
“Fuck, yes,” Nyx moans, and I think I moan too. I think I’m holding him for support, but I don’t remember where. I don’t need to. He is my pillar. My temple. Shall I let you in on a secret? That night, my first time with Kier, when he pushed into me, I learned then what true submission meant. It scared me. Mother didn’t teach me that. She didn’t think it possible that I submit to a man. She taught me control, strength, possession. But she didn’t teach me how to resist the devil called love.
I surrendered that night to him, and he has no idea because he was delirious. It must have been the second round or so. After he told me he loved me. His eyes had burned gold and he whispered to me as he thrusted into me, “Do you still love me, Jessamine?”
I no longer had the brain cells to think when I told him, “Yes”
He bruised my wrist, but the pleasure of his length inside me was a reward for the pain as he said, “You’re a prideful little creature. Beg me, Jessamine.” The words were his, but the voice was Zephyr. “Beg me to take you. Beg me to make you come.”
And I, Jessamine Hunter, betrayed myself. I begged him like I would die if he didn’t fuck me. Goddess, I begged and I mewled. I moaned and I cried. Whore? That word doesn’t even hurt anymore because that night, I was his dirty little slut.
Had Kier commanded me to worship him and adore him like a deity, I would have done it. It was as though, I had been tethered to a god made flesh, an unbelievable, unfathomable being of passion, lust and power that made me drugged, drunk. I accepted his dominance like I had been starved of it. That night, he didn’t just make love to me. He owned me. He possessed me. He dominated and I submitted.
Kier once said he was scared of me. What he doesn’t know is that he frightens me. His hands instill fear in me. His mouth can kill me. His skin against mine is a thunderbolt to my heart, and what he’s doing right now, smooching my neck with that lazy slowness, he’s taking me to the After and bringing me back.
He stops kissing me, and I touch the earth again. He doesn’t pull away from me, though. His deep voice vibrates along my skin as he says against my neck, “I will keep you, Jess, because I now realize I can.” He nips the skin of my neck for effect, and continues only after he’s extracted a shudder from me, “I’m tired of playing tag with you. I relinquished whatever rational part of me I had left when I marked you. Home is no longer Dawn for you. I am your home and I have claimed you as mine, irrefutably. You will not be leaving, and if on an off chance, you run from me, I will hunt you down and kill whoever helped you escape me. I will bring you back here, chain you to this bed if I have to, bind your legs apart, feed you, bathe you and fuck you until you bear my child.”
I’ve never been shaken awake fast enough. His words strike me with fear, dread, panic and Goddess forgive me, arousal. I don’t acknowledge the last feeling. I bring up my palms and slam them into his chest and torso, throwing all of my strength into them to get him off me, but he doesn’t budge. He’s like a freaking boulder.
I don’t…I don’t understand. I could flip him perfectly fine before. I could hit him and make him bleed. Or did he just let me have my way? I don’t know and frankly, that is the least of my problems. The most being the obvious—Kier seems to have lost his mind. “Do you have any idea what you sound like?! You’ll hold me here against my will and take advantage of me—”
He bites my earlobe and…Gods above, I can’t get the rest of my words out. He drags the skin softly between his teeth, and his hands arch over my ass, squeezing hard, fondling them, kneading them with the expertise of a cook. “I can hardly call it that if it is what you want.” His voice is gruff, but I feel him smile against my ear. “You think about it too, don’t you?”
“What?” I whisper, my eyelashes fluttering slowly and I lick my lips, though I’m not sure why my mouth has become so dry.
Kier draws away with a measured grace, his full mouth tugged up at both corners. “You want a repeat of that night, and it bothers you that you do. You think of it so often, your thoughts are often projected into my mind.” His hazel gaze is direct, intense. “Last night, though, was particularly amusing. Shall I narrate your thoughts and dreams?”
My cheeks heat up. It hadn’t been intentional. What else was I supposed to think about when the last thing he mentioned to me was, “Jess, we need to make a baby” ?! Of course, I was thinking about the process it might entail.
I can’t meet his gaze, and I don’t want to talk about it either. So, I ask something else instead. “Moira is still Luna—”
“Not for long,” he counters easily, backing away from me and I hate that I miss the solid heat of his body when he resumes rummaging through his things. “Whether or not she wishes to step down, there are plans I have set in place to force her hand, and I will proceed as we agreed and make you Luna.”
I grit my teeth. “We didn’t agree on shit.”
“So, you keep saying,” he mutters. “Yet, I seem to have missed the part where I mentioned you had a choice. The minute you killed my mother, you stopped being my guest. You are my hostage. Mine to punish. Mine to do with as I please.”
“You cannot abduct me and expect that I will love you or show you affection.”
He pauses, and his expression becomes contemplative as he stares at nothing in particular. “I do not act because I am after your love or affection, Jessamine. You do not need to love me to have my children, though, I must admit the process would be less…difficult if you did.” He shrugs, deciding on a white shirt that he pulls on swiftly. “You should rest and replenish your strength. You will be needing it.” His eyes rove my figure in a way that makes my toes curl. “All of it.”
This cannot be real. Kier walks past me, heading toward the door to his study.
“Where are you going?” I ask. He only just got here, and fighting with him is much better than staring at the furniture.
His hand pauses on the door knob. “Hunting. Careful now, you might actually sound worried for me.”
My eyes narrow. “Whatever might you be hunting at this hour?”
His smile is creepy. “Traitors. I’ll be back in an hour.” He twists the knob and the door creaks, but he doesn’t leave. He stares at me, long and hard. “All of this is for you, Jess. I will keep you safe, no matter what it costs me. I’m sorry it has to be this way, but this is the only way I know, and I will no longer hesitate to take what I want. Do not hate me for this.”
“I already do. I hate you, Kier,” I say, even if the lie leaves a bitter taste in my mouth.
He shoots me a knowing smile before slipping out the door. My fingers rise to my hair, playing with the strands slowly. How come the word ‘hostage’ doesn’t sound so bad when the captor is Kier? I absentmindedly curl my hair around my finger, my teeth biting softly on my bottom lip as my body heats up. My gaze drifts involuntarily to the mirror and I stare at my reflection. My cheeks are flushed and my eyes are dark with desire.
My chest rises and falls and…I…shimmy out of the night dress, biting more nervously on my bottom lip as I stare at my own naked body. My heat throbs at the sight of Kier’s mark on my neck—a large moon, jagged by the sharp edges of his teeth, but nonetheless, beautiful—and I caress it, raking my nails along it. My eyes close, and…my hands drift down. I don’t know what comes over me, because I suddenly cup my breasts in my palms. Maybe it isn’t that I want Kier to abduct me and bind me to his bed. I mean, I would be mad to want something like that. Maybe I just need to get off—
“You’re going to get me killed if you keep thinking about things like that, love.”
I yelp at the sudden voice in my mind, and Kier chuckles darkly through the mind-link as I slam my mental walls up. I grab my dress off the floor, cussing loudly as I force it on and creep back into the bed, drawing the covers over my head. I thrash against the bed, screaming in my mind as my feet and fists pound against the sheets. The shame and embarrassment I feel might just be the death of me.