Chapter Forty

Havermouth, Present Time

Despite falling asleep furious with Cameron, Aislen woke thoroughly entangled, her face pressed into his chest and with his arms around her. She had one arm around him, and the other against his heart. She lay with her eyes closed, breathing in the scent of his skin, basking in the warmth of their embrace.

She felt him stir and press his face into her hair, breathing her in, but he stayed still. His thoughts were contented. (Finally, things were going right for them… Heath had been right, this would work… They would make her see… Then, they would finally, finally live their lives as they were meant to do…)

His cock was hard and his desire for her turned the tide of his thoughts. He wanted to kiss her awake and make lazy love in a sleep-warm bed. He wanted her to reach for him, and look at him the way he had seen her look at Rhett, as if she felt for him the same way… There was a pain to that thought that twisted in Aislen’s heart.

She pressed her lips to his skin as she stroked her hand down his side, following the v of muscle over his hip to his cock, and closing her hand around him as she lifted her face to him, and met his mouth with hers. His hand cupped her cheek, the palm warm against her skin and his fingers buried in her hair as he kissed her, his emotions and passion becoming enmeshed.

“Sit up,” she whispered to him, and he pushed himself up the bed to rest his back against the bed head, his eyes still sleepy and his russet curls ruffled, his jaw shaded with stubble. He had the Celtic knotted triangle on his chest about the same position as her own. The tattoo was fresh, a few days older than her own by her limited judgement.

She knelt over his legs and dragged her tongue over his cock. He moaned, lifting his face to the ceiling, relaxing back against the headrest, giving himself over to her and the pleasure of her mouth on him. She remembered the old tricks that he preferred, as if it had only been yesterday that she’d last given him a head job, the way he liked her tongue to press the head of his cock up against the roof of her mouth.

“Oh fuck,” he groaned, the calloused palm of his hand scraping against her skin as he rested one hand on her back, not holding or forcing her, but seeking further connection with her, wanting to feel the smooth silk of her, memory and reality merging in an aching emotional wound within him that she felt as if it were her own.

She lifted her mouth off his cock and kissed her way up his chest and neck. His eyes opened as she straddled his lap, his cock nudging against her new piercing. “Rhett said…” He said softly reaching to the bedside table where he had put the condoms the night before after she had thrown them at the wall. He tore open the package, pinching the tip of the condom before rolling it down over him.

She watched in fascination. They had never used them five years before, and she had not been sexually active since. Whilst, in theory, she knew how to use them, she hadn’t used one in practice or seen one in use. She explored the texture of it over him, finding the way it trapped him within its thin plastic sheath erotic.

(So beautiful…) He cupped her cheek, and she looked up in surprise. She had known that he’d desired her, and found her attractive, but the wistfulness and admiration behind that thought… She had never thought of herself as beautiful, but through his thoughts, seeing herself through his eyes… Cameron found her very beautiful.

Her heart melted and she stroked her fingers through his hair, lifting his face to hers so that their eyes met and held as she took him into her. See me, he had thought the last time they had fucked on her single bed in her father’s house, and so she looked at him now, searching his bright blue eyes as his cock penetrated, stretching her around him, the feel of the condom within her foreign and exciting.

His eyelids were heavy as the pleasure of her tight warmth washed over him, passing through him like a current. He stroked both his hands down the lean length of her back (So soft…) before leaning forward to taste the point of her shoulder, tracing the line of her shoulder to her neck, his tongue flickering against her skin, lapping the sweet salt from her.

She cradled the back of his head, pressing kisses to his curls, as she rocked her hips, exploring the sensation of his cock within her.

He cupped her breast, lifting it to his bowed head so that he could suck on its nipple, and she moaned, arching her rib cage to improve his access. She rested a palm on his chest, feeling the rise and fall of his breath, and her other hand reached between them, avoiding the new piercing through the hood of her clit to rub below it, pushing her body towards orgasm.

He released her breast, throwing his head back against the bed head, the blue of his eyes trapped between his generously thick and dark eyelashes, as his eyes narrowed with pleasure, his jaw slackening as he watched her arch over him, her hair spilling back, and the column of her throat exposed as she neared release.

His hands closed on to her hips, and he thrusted up into her with a grunted groan, seeking to time his climax with hers, and then moaning as she came, heating and pulsing around him, slickening his last few thrusts, before he came into the condom.

She folded forward over him, burying her face into his neck, and wrapping her arms around his shoulders. “This doesn’t mean that I’m not still angry with you,” she told him. “Or that I’m not going to escape and fuck you three up.”

He pressed a kiss to the arch of neck exposed to him and ran his palms up and down her back. “I’ll keep that in mind,” he murmured, but his thoughts were not concerned. (She would come around… Heath was right… She was already beginning to soften to him, despite her words…)

Her stomach rumbled, letting them both know that she hadn’t eaten since the toast she’d had the morning of her father’s funeral two days before.

“I’ll make us some breakfast,” he chuckled. (Heath would allow it, as she’d made progress… She’d voluntarily fucked him… Except it hadn’t been fucking, really, it had been making love…) His thoughts were tender, and he kissed her neck again. “You would be starving by now.”

“Famished,” she agreed and lifted her head to look down at him. She traced over the straight lines of his eyebrows, and around over his high cheekbones, trailing her nails through his stubble, before leaning forwards and kissing him.

It was cruel, she admitted to herself, that her ability to hear snatches of his thoughts gave her the tools to manipulate him. And worrying that his thoughts weren’t wrong… Her heart wanted to soften towards him. However, no matter how she felt, the sting of her tattoos and the piercings through her nipples and clit were a reminder that the Triquetra had abducted and violated her.

“Feed me,” she smiled at him as she leaned back. “I’ll shower whilst I wait.”

“Alright,” he agreed. “I won’t be long. Leave the bathroom door open and unlocked.”

She lifted off him and sat in the mess of sheets and bedding watching whilst he went to the chest of drawers and pulled out a pair of track-suit pants. He rang someone on his phone. “Yeah, hi,” he said pinning the phone between his ear and shoulder whilst he pulled them on. “Unlock the door. Thanks."

By the time he crossed the room to the door, Heath had unlocked it. She met Heath’s cool grey gaze as Cameron slipped out and tried not to look too invested in being left alone. Heath closed and locked the door behind Cameron, evidently deciding that it was safe to leave her.

She scrambled off the bed immediately, going to the same drawer that Cameron had gotten his tracksuit pants out of, pulling on a pair and pulling the ties tightly, before finding a plain grey t-shirt. As she struggled into it, she went to the windows, tugging back the curtains to try to open them, discovering that Heath’s confidence was supported in that the windows had been locked shut.

“Fuck,” she ground out, her breath and heart beat frantic with panic as she searched the room for the means of escape. In the bathroom, she stood in the bath and managed to open the window. It was high and narrow, but she managed to pry the flyscreen out of place, breaking several of her nails in the process.

She stood on the lip of the bath and managed to wriggle her upper body through the window into the fresh air of outside. She searched for a handhold, a ledge, or anything to give her the grip to lift herself through.

Heath’s sigh from the bathroom door was heavy. “Just what do you think you will achieve other than an injury in this effort, Aislen?” He asked, crossing the bathroom, and taking her by the waist, lifting her down easily and setting her onto the bathroom mat.

“It is impossible to escape,” he told her over his shoulder as he replaced the flyscreen and closed the window. “We are werewolves. Even were you able to get out through that window, which I highly doubt, as we all tried it before, deciding that we didn’t need to lock it as it was next to impossible, you would not escape us. The moment that we discovered you were missing, we would simply shift and hunt you down like the prey that you are.”

Heath walked back over to her and lifted the t-shirt up and over her head before she could react. “Tracksuit pants too,” he tugged them down. “You earn the right to food and clothing through good behaviour and lose privileges for bad. Come on,” he wrapped his fingers around her upper arm and propelled her out of the room and down the hallway, past Cameron who watched her with sad eyes, towards Rhett’s room.

“Oh god, no,” she put the brakes on, fighting away, gripping doorways and furniture in an effort to fight him. She was shrieking by the time he wrestled her into Rhett’s room.

“Do you want to be tied to the bed?” Heath shook her. “No? Then shut up and be sensible before you hurt yourself.”

“Please,” she was crying. “No more.”

“You have all the power over what happens to you, Aislen,” Heath smoothed her hair back from her face, his expression intent. (Just… bend a little…) “You choose how you behave towards us. You know what we’re after, what we want and need from you. You just need to put away your stubborn pride and be honest with yourself that you want us too.”

“I do,” she sobbed out. “I do want you. Please…”

“You’re just saying that,” he said with an insight that mimicked her gift. “Because you know what is coming. Now, you have a choice, Aislen,” he turned her to face into the room, and she could see that there was a solid chair set next to the bed, and Rhett stood, his chin to his chest and his hair obscuring his face, with his kit set up on a table and the light positioned.

“You are torturing him,” Heath breathed into her ear. “If you care for him at all, you will go quietly and sit in that chair and stay peaceful throughout the day. Your good behaviour will make it easier on him, and in return we will make the day more pleasant on you. I am making a roast chicken salad for lunch, for example, with avocado, just the way you like it.

“Or you can be tied face-down on the bed, and spend another day hungry. It is,” his hands on her shoulders, “your choice.”