Posey
Nights falls on the cabin, but neither of us noticed the sunset until Aris mentioned something about the time, which I hadn’t been keeping track of. It’s still raining, and he’s shifting again as it stands, probably to hunt for whatever he’s going to eat raw for dinner seeing as our only other option for cooking is the woodstove, and while I’m capable of cooking like a dream, but not using that. That’s a bit out of my wheelhouse.
Still, I twirl the second vial of contraceptive tonic between my fingers, watching the flakes of herbs dance in the milky liquid. I’d been too sick to my stomach to differentiate each herb, spice, and flower used to make it when I took the first draft, but this time I might be able to. If this heat isn’t a one-time thing, I’ll need this again, won’t I? I should know what ingredients I’d need to make it for myself because I highly doubt the priestesses I’ll be sharing the remainder of my life with will have them on hand.
A crash echoes from outside, and I go still. The tonic falls from my fingers and shatters on the floor at my feet. Unease ripples through me, making every fine, downy hair on the back of my neck stand on end as I move through the dimly lit main room to the door. There’s only a few windows to the outside world, and none on this wall, and whatever’s out there, lumbering through the rainy darkness, is large.
“Aris?” I say through the door, teeth chattering with fear. I swallow it back and slowly turn the doorknob, reminding myself this is a private island in the middle of a secluded lake in the Gem Lake districts, which is about as rural as Eastonia can get, other than, well, the far reaches of Tarsian where only sand survives. I yank open the door to two bright, silver eyes.
Aris is still in his wolf form, and it’s… jarring. Speechless, I step back into the cover of the house while he lumbers up the porch steps, sopping wet, his deep, golden fur slack with water. He’s huge for a wolf. His shoulder could brush the top of my head if he were to try to squeeze through the door, but instead, he stays in the rain, and drops a rabbit at my feet.
“Oh,” I croak, feeling like my heart is going to leap out of my chest, whether in relief or something else, something deeper, I don’t know. “Oh, that’s so nice of you, but I’m not hungry.”
His fluffy tail wags regardless. He nudges the rabbit with his snout–all wolf. Maybe even his mind, as it stands. He’s been in this form for hours now.
I gingerly bend to pick up the rabbit, giving him a wobbly smile. He seems pleased, and turns, leaping off the porch into the darkness again. I promptly drop the rabbit beside the door and step inside, shaken to my core.
It feels strange. He hunted for me. Provided for me. It’s a warm feeling, something that cuts through the slight ache in my temples and the fevered chills beginning to creep into existence as the moon rises far beyond the rain clouds.
I stand by the door, unsure what to do now.
So I wait.
He repeats the process three times.
By the fourth rabbit, I’ve had enough.
“We can’t eat all of these, Aris, and I’m not hungry at all! I have no appetite. Isn’t that part of the heat? That I won’t be hungry?”
He just stares at me with those big wolfish eyes. He seems displeased. His tail doesn’t wag this time, but he’s refused to shift back into his human form or even come back into the house since earlier this afternoon. Maybe he’s just as out of his mind as I am. Maybe my heat is messing with him, too.
I reach for him, smoothing my fingers over the short, glossy hair covering his snout. He huffs when my hand brushes the delicate, translucent whispers. It must tickle because his ears twitch, but he relaxes when I scratch behind his ears and hangs his head to give me better access.
“You’re a glorious creature,” I tell him, marveling at his build. I see wolves all the time. I shouldn’t be this in awe. But I am. He’s a powerful beast. All male energy and the promise of a swift death and as many rabbits as I could eat if there was nothing more tantalizing available.
I’m lost in the cozy, soft feeling of his fur when his massive teeth catch the fabric of my flannel–his flannel, that I pilfered and claimed as my own–and he pulls me out onto the porch. I hiss out a breath in surprise. When I don’t take whatever hint he’s trying to convey, he tugs on my shirt again until I’m forced to walk down the steps with him, his teeth precariously close to my skin.
“What do you want?” I ask, squinting against the gentle raindrops still pattering overhead. The air is sharp with his scent and ozone as the clouds hang low over the lake. “How about you come inside and warm up?”
He snorts–a very wolfish sound, obviously disagreeing with the offer, and turns and crouches low to the ground.
“You want me to climb on your back?”
He turns to look over his shoulder, those big silver eyes alight from within, and nods at me.
I clutch his fur. It’s thick and surprisingly dry underneath the layer of damp overcoat. He’s fluffy, just like his unruly hair in his human form. When I don’t immediately do what he wants, he growls low in his throat.
I roll my eyes and scurry up his side, which is rather hard to do. It takes me several attempts to swing my leg over, and even then, I slide off to the side again, but the second I do manage to balance along his spine, my thighs gripping the taut muscle over his wide ribcage, he runs.
I can’t even scream. The world rushes past while I sink my fingers into his fur, holding on for dear life, and that choked scream dies in my throat and is replaced by a wild laugh–a sound I don’t think I’ve ever made before… like I’m suddenly alive.
He takes me all around the island in a matter of minutes, steady on his feet even on the uneven, slippery, rocky beach that lines the property. Then, he turns into the woods, racing uphill, where cypress trees grow thick, and vines hang from the canopy, blocking the clouds.
“Where are we going?!” I shout, laughing, but he keeps running, his body firm and powerful beneath mine, and this time when he drops down again, the cabin comes into view, lit from within, the windows radiating warm, golden light.
A flicker of disappointment blooms deep in my belly. I grip him a little harder as he slows to a trot, taking us around the back of the developed property. I want to dig in my heels and demand more when he stops at the porch and dutifully waits for me to slide off his back.
I do. I don’t want to. His warmth and pure power were everything I needed, and the feeling replacing it makes me want to scream. I feel that same pounding ache in my temples when I back away from him, damp, my hair sticking to my cheeks, and he turns to look at me.
I wonder if he sees it. Feels it. The ache that’s been growing since before the heat started. The thing that makes me question everything. The pinprick of knowledge that will forever keep me up at night with questions.
About him.
About me.
About his lips against mine and the heat between us.
Willow made it sound like this should be easy. Aris told me not every kiss has to mean something.
Maybe the first one didn’t. But the second? The third?
The fourth?
Aris shifts back to his human form, and suddenly my entire field of vision is blocked by his body. His face. His hands caressing my cheeks before he pulls me toward him and collapses into me, his mouth on mine. It’s the same rushed, aggressive kiss as before, when he was trying to shut me up, but deeper. Like every slow dive of his tongue against mine is searching for something he tasted before and has been thinking about ever since. He lifts me up. I wrap my legs around his waist. My hands travel down his naked back as he carries me inside, stepping over the rabbits he hunted for me.
Warm air rushes toward us, warming the chilled, damp fabric of my clothes. He shivers but kisses me deeply again, groaning into it like it’s giving him life and I am…
He pulls away like he’s coming back to reality, like he’s just realized he’s holding me, and he’s not wearing any clothes, and we’re here, at the cabin.
“Don’t stop,” I whisper against his lips, my voice small and pleading. “Aris–”
He turns, pressing me against the wall to ease some of the burden, and kisses me again and again.
I moan into his hair when he lowers his lips, his tongue gliding up the side of my neck. He inhales deeply with each breath, his muscles tight, his body so rigid I wonder if he’ll snap, and I’ll let him. Goddess, this is everything I never knew could be real. This feeling of being so utterly, desperately wanted? It’s overwhelming the way he grips my thighs, spreading them open, pressing his hips into mine.
His cock is right there, pressed between us. The knowledge explodes through me like someone set a bomb off inside my brain, and I go completely fluid, willing and ready to do anything he could ever ask of me.
I would crawl. I would beg. Just to know what he feels like. What he could make me feel like.
He pulls us away from the wall and turns with me in his arms, walking into the center of the room, to the couch, to where I’d been standing when–
“Stop!”
Aris goes perfectly still, his mouth parting with mine with a sound that echoes through the cabin and allows real life to rush in, cold and empty. His eyes are wild and… horrified. He starts to put me down, but I grip his shoulders, shaking my head.
“I dropped–dropped the tonic. It shattered. Right there.” I point to the ground a mere step from where he’s standing.
He lets out his breath slowly. “Fuck, Posey–”
“I want to keep kissing you. The glass. That’s all I meant.”
“We cannot do this,” he whispers, nose to nose. He curses under his breath when I hold him tighter, refusing to be put down.
I wet my lips, deranged, that fever spiraling back into existence, but I’ve never felt more clearheaded than I am now. “I want to know what this feels like before I go.”
He shakes his head. “Posey.”
“I want to have sex.” It comes out as more of a whine. “With you.”
He takes another deep breath. “You’re just in heat. That’s why.”
“I want to have sex with you. I trust you. I want it to be you.”
He drops his face into the crook of my neck, groaning. “Don’t talk like that.”
“Please?” I could cry. I want to cry, actually. My eyes sting. Desperation clouds my judgment. “Oh, Goddess, please–”
“You’re not thinking straight. I can’t–I won’t do this to you while you’re in heat.”
“It’s not about that. I’ve–since the first time you kissed me. I’ve known since then. I want to do this.”
It strikes me then that he doesn’t want to. Not with me. Dread cuts through the fever, clouding my nerves with overwhelming rejection. I push away from his shoulder, squirming until he carefully sets me down, and I flee, turning away from him before seeing him in all of his naked glory.
“Posey, wait!” I’m already halfway up the stairs. I slip, my shins slamming against the steps. Aris curses something, fabric snags, and then he’s behind me, wearing pants now, at least, and grabbing me around the waist just as I reach the top step. He tosses me like a rag doll onto the bed and pins me down before I can protest.
There’s fire in his eyes. He presses his body to mine, refusing to let up until I stop trying to squirm away.
“Do you think it’s because I don’t want you?”
I refuse to look him in the eyes, to see the cold, hard truth there. I’ll swim back to the mainland if I have to, just to save myself the embarrassment of thinking he–the prince of Veiled Valley–would ever want someone, something, like me.
“Look at me,” he rasps. “Posey, I want you to look at me.”
I close my eyes, turning my head to the side. He growls and leans down to nip the side of my neck. I gasp, but it quickly turns to a guttural, whimpering moan I can’t stop fast enough.
He licks the spot where he just bit me and smiles against my skin. “If you think I haven’t spent two weeks imaging all the ways I want to fuck you,” he says slowly, darkly, “you’d be so wrong.” He grabs the inside of my right thigh, forcing me to spread my legs and bend my knee, and he sinks between my legs until our hips are flush. “It’s all I want. It’s all I think about. But you’re in heat, and you’re out of your fucking mind if you think I’d take advantage of you–”
“I need you. Please, I want it to be you. I want to know–”
“Don’t tempt me,” he growls in warning, and I turn to look at him, at the darkness in his eyes, like it’s taking all of his strength not to tear the clothes from my body and bend me to his will right here, right now.
I lace my fingers in his hair and lift my head just enough to bite him on the jaw.
And the prince of Veiled Valley, my older brother’s best friend, decides to check another thing off my list.