Kier
My chest heaves. Blood gurgles as his fingers search, brushing against the pounding organ. More metal coats my tongue and I will my body to move. Nothing works. Nothing—
The male suddenly jerks, his face crumpling as a pained moan slips from him. His fingers retract from my chest as he reaches for his, confused. He touches his black shirt and his fingers come away bloody.
“Mick?” the bulky one named Balor says, approaching skeptically, but when Mick coughs up blood, sputtering the repulsive liquid all over my face, Balor breaks into a sprint, falling to his knees by Mick’s side. His eyes widen with horror as he sees something I don’t and his head whips back to the forest behind his fallen friend who’s gasping for breath and dying, to my delight—not that I’m any better. My chest is ripped open, and I’m not healing.
Doesn’t stop me from barking a startled laugh when an arrow flies, much too quietly for the rest to pick up and tears into Balor’s throat, protruding from the other side.
He’s dead before he even sees who shot him.
The rest explode into a flurry of actions, yelling, agitated as they get picked off one-by-one by a shooter so deadly accurate, I might need to recruit them into my elite guards—if I lived for long enough to return to the castle.
And then it stops, and I come to the conclusion that they’ve run out of arrows, and there’s still a dozen more of them forming a circle around me, eyes darting left and right, weapons flicking at the slightest sound. There’s no helping me without getting past them, and the only logical choice left is to leave me to die.
But absolutely fucking no.
I’ve seen her plenty pissed so many times, it’s all I can envision in my mind when I think of her—flushed dimpled cheeks, silver glowing in the depth of amethysts eyes that are narrowed into a glare, nostrils flares and full, red lips pulled back to reveal cute white teeth—but this is different.
Jessamine leaps down from a tree and practically saunters over, the sword she had aimed at my head several minutes ago, bloodied. Blood cakes her cheeks and silvery hair. Her eyes have no violet in them. There’s only silver, and when she cocks her head, staring at me from between the gaps between each man, I shiver with fear and excitement. A pair that makes me dizzy.
Her face is frozen in an icy expression, but the silver of her eyes burn.
When the first male lunges for her, my heart is in my mouth, but I must really just be an overprotective bastard if I thought she couldn’t handle herself after shooting down six men, and possibly killing more on her way here. I really should have believed her when she said she could use her weapons just fine.
I would normally feel embarrassed, getting rescued by a princess, but the heat cackling in my blood as I watch Jessamine kill, for me, has nothing to do with embarrassment. I am in awe of her. She says nothing and just cuts, slices. Dices. Repeat, until she’s soaked in blood and her clothes stick to her body, every lush curve exposed to every eye. I must be losing my shit if I’m thinking of fucking her again, with the blood of our enemies stuck to her skin.
My lust-drive is short-lived because even if my mate is some goddess of death, she’s still a five-foot tall woman with an extra shaving of inches that makes her significantly smaller than her opponents. Her blade is knocked out of her grasp and she barely escapes being carved up by a sickle. Falling into a low crouch, her feet kicks out, tripping the male, and she rolls over to me, avoiding a flail swinging for her head.
She flings out an arm before me protectively as she crouches, her other hand buried in the earth. She glances back, eyes examining every unhealing cut, and her nostrils flare again when she takes in my face, the blood, my nose, my swelling eye. Something rumbles in her throat and her tongue flicks out, tasting the air. “Look…like…shit,” she tells me, though, the words are difficult. She clucks her tongue again. “Can’t fight them all off,” she whispers and look down at her body. “Not like this.”
The men circle us, skeptical of what to do next. Kill me first and then knock her out somehow, or vice versa. They hesitate because it’s been made clear that she is not to be harmed.
Her gaze runs over me again. “How do i…” Her voice trails off, but I know what she’s asking and it kills me that I cannot form the words she need to hear. She’ll have to work it through on her own. I want to hold her hand, but my body disobeys, and when a bow is nocked for my head, the men having come to the decision to get rid of me first, she caves.
She screams, both her fingers digging into the soil, and even if the bane has muted my senses, I feel liquid-hot pain emitting from the bond. It might have taken a few seconds, but it felt like an eternity. Clothes shred and her spine curve, ridge after ridge snapping. She curls into a ball, half whimpering, half growling, half sobbing.
Where she lays, a shadow begins to form, growing alarmingly large. Furr sprouts—the same color with the silvery blonde of her hair, but somehow purer, and muscles begin to form underneath, rippling with power that seems to suck the air from the atmosphere.
In place of where her lithe form laid, a fucking gigantic silver wolf prowls, and when she looks back at me, I hold my breath. Her eyes are blazing orbs of molten silver, ringed by an impossibly vibrant purple, and when she cocks her head at me, I see more of Jessamine behind those eyes. It is startling.
She’s nearly as large as I am in that form, and she’s silver. It’s unheard of. She’s fucking beautiful it hurts me in places deep inside.
Hold on, her gaze seems to tell me, and a silver eye winks at me before she leaps across at the nearest man, and it is over faster than I expect it to. I hate that I can’t watch it all as the exhaustion takes me under, but I know I’m safe. It’s an odd feeling, having had to fight and conquer my battles myself. Alone. I’ve never had anyone do this for me and it takes a moment to understand the lightness I feel in deep in my heart.
Healing.
I am shaken awake by a feral, angry growl. I crack an eye open and Jessamine’s wolf is peering down at me with an expression that looks very much like, I save your sorry ass and you’re goofing off!
I narrow her with a weary glance, and I am met with defiance. But her ears suddenly drop and her eyes lower to the ground in submission. Fuck, I love her this way.
Something soft and damp pokes me in my bare hip; her muzzle, and my brow furrows as she repeats the action again and again, pushing gently, but firmly. Insistent.
“You want me to…” my voice trails, my tongue too heavy in my mouth. “Get on?”
She licks my chin and blinks. I marvel at the intelligence behind her silver eyes. Learning to control and communicate outside my wolf form had taken months of mastery—which is unusually fast, but Jessamine seems to have broken my record.
“Sorry, love,” I slur. “I can’t move.”
She fucking snorts, and her silver eyes turn almost apologetic as she picks me gently with her teeth clamped on my shoulder and hurls me onto her back, like it’s a move she’s seen or practiced before.
Jessamine prowls ahead gently, stepping over body after body, and I lay against her fur, my blood staining it. Every movement hurts and I can’t help a few grunts every time she lurches unexpectedly. Sleep comes and goes, and for a while, I am suspended somewhere in between, a feverish heat seeping into my blood.
The clouds have swallowed up the sun by the time Jessamine stops, and I loll right, falling into the dirt. Or not. She catches me with her muzzle before I can impale myself on spiky stones and sets me down gently against a tree, close to something…warm. My eyes crack open to…fire.
Randale’s hovering over my form, his black eyes uncharacteristically wide with guilt and pain. “I…I’m…I…”
Jessamine growls and he backs up a step, paling. “Fuck. Fine!” he yells and stalks off, disappearing deeper into the woods. Movement on the other side of me tells me Darrock is doing the same. But the male looks back once, holding his slung arm. “I’m glad you’re…not dead.” His throat works and I see the struggled in his red eyes as he meets my gaze. “Thank you. For…buying us time. I am forever…indebted to you.”
To Jessamine, he inclines his head once. “I never did once doubt that you’d turn out magnificently. You look just like your father.” He glances between us and pain flashes in his eyes, as well as understanding. “We’ll go fetch fresh clothes and supplies…and…whatever.” He walks off in the same direction as Randale.
In a flash of fur, skin and pained whimpers, Jessamine shifts back, and even if her eyes are weary and she looks seconds away from passing out, her fingers grasp at mine as she whispers, “I need you to try for me. To heal. You’re losing too much blood.”
I squint into her eyes. “Got cut too many times. It won’t wear out anytime soon. I’ll need to…flush it out…”
Realization sparks in her eyes and she settles on my thighs, her hard nipples sliding over my bloody chest and she flips her hair to the side, baring her neck for me. “Bite me.”
“Jess…”
“It’s fine,” she says, reassuringly. “I’ll be fine. Take however much you need.”
I start to protest but she angles her head left, showing off my mark on her skin and she traces a finger over it and punctures the skin in a quick stab. Blood wells and it smells fucking intoxicating. I inhale deeply, breathing in the smell and my tongue darts past my lips, lapping over the skin.
Gods.
It’s not the first time I’ve had Jessamine’s blood fill my mouth, but it’ll always be unlike anything I have ever tasted. It’s the fact that it is her. It tastes like she smells. Delicious. Spicy. It’s coppery, like blood should taste, but it’s also all of her. Her small, secretive smiles when she watches me and thinks I’m not noticing; her twisted anger always directed at me; her growls; her sobbing; her moans when I’m inside her; the taste of her come on my lips; the dimples in her cheeks when she outrightly laughs at something she finds funny; her blood tastes like every memory of her.
“Kiernan,” she grunts, clutching my shoulders, and I’m suddenly of how naked we both are and how slick she is against my lap.
My teeth sink in deeper and I’m taking so much more. I’m feverishly warm and my fingers start to twitch by my sides, the effects of the bane wearing off. I don’t know when, but I move them eventually, cradling her head for better access. My chest burns painfully as the gaping wounds heal, but I barely notice over the insuppressible urge to be inside Jessamine’s skin.
“Fuck.” Her breath is shallow against my temple and her hips begin to undulate. My hands drifts down her back to cup her ass and I can’t…I can’t breathe. I hurt so bad. She moves her waist again and hell…the movement makes my cock harden.
She whimpers, rubbing her tender breasts against the panes of my chest and her hips buck once, twice. I’m taking too much, I think, but when I start to pull away, her fingers wind into my hair and she forces me down. “More, take more. You’re not completely healed, yet.” Her voice is husky and I feel her wet heat twitch on my thigh.
This…we both need this. I, after having thought I might never…see her again. She, after watching me nearly die. She writhes and her moans are a choked sob. “I was…scared. On that tree, nocking the bow, watching him hit you again and again…” Something warm slides down my chest. A single tear.
“I’m here. I’m fine. You saved me, Jess,” I mumble against her neck, letting my hands drift to wrap around her waist.
“You’re okay,” she says, more to herself than me, and I grab her ass, lifting her higher, moving her until I’m poised at her entrance. Her fingers clutch my shoulders, not tenderly, and she utters a single word, like a prayer. “Please.”
I drive into her, because I cannot be gentle. Not today.
She closes around me tightly, every muscle caressing mine, fitted and molded to perfect around me. My cock brushes against her inner walls, walls only I will ever know, and her slurred, almost drunken moan as she calls my name is my undoing. “Jessamine,” I gasp, her insides growing wetter, wider, than I thought innately possible. “I want to live inside you.”
Clenching so hard, white explodes in the back of my eyes, she slams down, taking in all of me. Her arms wrap around my shoulder and my hips arch up to meet hers as she rises again. I pump once, twice, so hard and fast, I need to stop to take the edge off.
“Please,” she breathes again, soft and hungry, and she buries her nose in my neck. My tongue flicks over the wound, the taste of her making my cock swell painfully inside her. My body jerks awake with life, so much of it, so much of her. I roll my hips and she makes an absolutely filthy sound deep in her throat as she drags her tongue over her mark on my shoulder.
I grunt, closing my hands on her hip bone as I thrust deeper. She gasps, and mewls, her tongue sticking out and her head drops back enough for me to see them glaze over. She reaches behind her and her fingers dig into my thighs for support, her breasts jiggling, begging to be sucked. Her hair brushes against my skin and my hips bucks again at the phantom touch.
My breaths shorten as heat spreads in my middle, down my groin. I need this to last longer. I wish to press her against the earth and take her from behind with her ass arched for me. But I can feel her exhaustion mingle with her lust.
I let my pleasure crest, and I explode, jamming my hips into her again and again until she lets out a low, primal cry that echoes through the forest, her inner muscles twitching uncontrollably around me. It does little to stoke my hunger, but I pull out of her, and she is fast asleep before I can even tuck her into my arms.
It is well past midnight before Randale and Darrock return, the latter staying as far as possible from us, no matter that I’ve shielded my sleeping mate’s body from them. Randale hands me a few clothes—nothing fancy—for Jessamine and I, and I do not miss the relief in his gaze as he notes my healed wounds and the color blooming under my skin again.
“She…really does have a way with words,” Randale says, and his eyes are soft, approving for the first time. “Fuck, she’s better at my job than I am.”
My lips twitch, but his smile is somewhat grim. “We need to leave now, if we hope to arrive in time to crash your funeral.”