Chapter 8

Chapter

Eight

T he next eight weeks passed quickly for Bran. They were a voyage of discovery, not only at the dig but also where Renata was concerned. She had proven to be far more elusive than he would have liked. She was mercurial and he knew that mostly came from having been told she should never embrace being a wolf or her delight in doing so.

On their first night together, he had tempted her out into the desert. He had taught her how to shift as smoothly and easily as breathing. She'd delighted in the shimmer that surrounded them and of a feeling similar to electrical power that flowed over and through her as she transitioned. They'd taken long runs in the cold, desert nights around Masada, and he'd taught her how to howl, not just in grief but in joy and exultation.

And she had surrendered completely, embracing his love and his discipline. He'd never understood the enraptured way his friends talked about what it was like to discipline your mate compared to some other willing sub or female. The connection was so much deeper. Neither of them had made any attempt to hide their growing relationship and Renata had turned out to be every bit as possessive as he was. She was territorial to the extreme and he liked it.

Their days were spent in backbreaking labor. All the movies made it seem so easy—just dig a little with a trowel then brush away some dirt or sand and voila! a priceless artifact would be revealed. But such was not the case on the Masada dig. Work started early each morning so they could beat the worst heat of the day. Before dawn they would take the golf cart down to the communal area, pile into the vans, and head to the site.

The first day, Bran had held his tongue as most of the others, including Renata, had talked about how excited they were.

"Sweetheart, you know they call it a dig for a reason, right? I know you've done a lot of work with petroglyphs and pictographs..."

"I've spent time in the Valley of the Kings."

"At excavated sites. Just promise me you won't overdo it."

Each time they started a new search grid, the procedure was the same. First, all grass or bushes had to be stripped away from the earth, down past the roots. Next, rocks had to be painstakingly removed. At first everyone had been thrilled to find the pieces of ancient pottery that were near the surface. The problem was that most of it was meaningless because it hadn't originated at the site. It had been displaced by animals and armies moving through the area, as well as the elements, such as wind, floods, and earthquakes. The finds that mattered were buried deeper—undisturbed by time and uninfluenced by earthly forces.

The actual digging process seemed to throw the volunteers the steepest obstacle. There was no large machinery that came in to do the heavy lifting, and no pickaxes or shovels had been available. The instruments involved in a dig like this were small, often tiny in comparison to the amount of ground they had to search.

In order to be precise, the volunteers had to adhere to a precise square grid pattern, which had to be kept level as they went down layer by layer. The sides had to be straight so that artifacts could be logged correctly, and the pieces could be kept intact. It was only by looking at what had been found and where that they'd be fully able to understand the significance of the location.

That first day there had been twelve volunteers—eight men and four women. This morning, the Monday of the first full week, they were already down to eight—four of the men had left. The grueling work in the blistering sun, seven hours a day, five days a week had taken its toll quickly.

A week later, they had created their own routine. Each night when they got back to the communal area, Bran and Renata got into their golf cart and headed up to their temporary home. Once inside, they would strip their clothes off and scramble into the shower, allowing the water and steam to wash them clean.

After that they would tumble onto the bed and assuage the lust that had been building all day. Then Renata would start the pre-soak on their clothes while Bran made dinner. After the dishes were done and their clothes were washing, they'd sit in the hot tub, Renata between Bran's legs, leaning back against him while he told her about Oxford and Ravenscar, and she told him about her life in Edinburgh.

Each night Bran lifted her from the hot tub and carried her back to their bed where he spent his time making complete and thorough love to her. They were teased by everyone in the kibbutz about never being seen between sundown on Friday and sunrise on Monday morning. They stayed up in the house, spending hours lazing around, exploring each other's minds and bodies as well as practicing some limited forms of D/s. High protocol was out, but Renata took comfort in being bound and Bran couldn't wait to suspend her. She also enjoyed other forms of restraint and responded so well to discipline that he was sure she would do well strapped to a St. Andrew's cross.

She adamantly refused only three things: anal sex, being marked, and being knotted and tied. The first one was because she'd had a bad experience a few years earlier. Being marked and knotted scared the hell out of her, but only because she didn't truly understand what it was and what it meant. Perhaps he should have lied to her and not told her there would be pain, but he didn't believe their relationship could be all he believed it could without complete and total honesty.

One thing he would have to overcome was her mother's past and the things her mother and aunt had told her about the nature of wolf shifters. He had tried to point out that she didn't find him to be anything like the kind of wolf she'd been warned against, to no avail.

On the last day of the dig, the kibbutz hosted a large, celebratory meal in honor of the remaining volunteers. They were now down to seven—three men and the original four women. After too much food and too much wine, Bran and Renata walked back to their house where they engaged in extended foreplay that included taking their last midnight run in the desert. Once they returned to the house, they followed their normal pattern of a shower and a soak in the hot tub. He allowed the alpha knot to form as Renata relaxed against him. When she squirmed, he folded his arms around her and held her tight.

"No, Renata. I'm not going to breach you with it tonight, but you need to reconcile with the fact that I will."

"Why? Because you want to? Because tradition says it's okay to do things like tearing a chunk out of my neck and knotting and tying me?"

"No, sweetheart. I mean, yes, I want to do both, and I can't spend the rest of my life suppressing the knot. The pain is fleeting and then I'll give you such pleasure. You've never experienced anything better than being rocked to numerous orgasms by your mate and the intimacy of the tie is second to none."

"It's just all about you," she snarled.

Bran had come to recognize the reasons why Renata seemed to spoil for a fight sometimes. Like most of the best she-wolves he knew, she was wildly passionate and could be volatile and fractious. The one time he'd managed to get a call through to his father, James had insisted that he had to hold the line with her, and that exercising patience was not always his best bet.

"No, it isn't," Bran admitted to Renata. "But last time I checked you and I were both in this relationship. And picking a fight with me every time you feel frightened or cornered is going to stop tonight."

Renata moved away from him in the hot tub. "Says who?" she asked.

She was looking to him to hold her accountable. She needed the dominance the same way he needed her to submit.

"Says your fated mate and Dom."

"What if I say you're neither?"

Bran took a deep breath, running short on patience. "We both know differently. Back off or safeword out."

"And if I do?" she sneered.

God she was in a mood, and he knew it was his own damn fault. He should have spanked her two nights ago when they'd gone for a run, and she had managed to elude him for two hours while he frantically looked for her. Had she run into a pureblood or a human she could have been badly hurt. He'd been so grateful to have her back safely in his arms, he'd accepted her apology knowing she wasn't truly contrite.

"Never happen. You aren't a coward, and you know damn good and well that you're looking to get spanked. Back off and ask for it, and I'll go easy. Keep pushing and tomorrow's plane ride is going to be damned uncomfortable for you."

S he knew she should end it. She should collect her things and go sleep in the dormitory. They were never going to work. She might be a wolf-shifter, but that was secondary to her being a sorceress. The closer they got to going home and the more imminent the piercing of their little bubble became, the more she knew she'd never be able to keep her mother's voice at bay. Wasn't she betraying her mother and all she'd been through by submitting to this wolf? Would accepting her role as Branson's mate mean denying who she had always been? She could no more walk away from being a sorceress than she could from being a wolf-shifter. In the end, it wouldn't be Branson breaking her heart, she would be breaking her own.

Fisting her hair, he marched her into their bedroom, sat down on the edge of the bed, and tilted her over his knee. His hand caressed her body, sending shots of pure adrenaline and arousal throughout. No man had ever made her respond the way he did. Knowing this was the last time, she was already close to the edge.

She reached her arms behind her, trying to protect her ass. Renata could feel the angry alpha waves rolling off Bran. He wasn't mildly annoyed with her, he was full-on pissed and meant to tattoo her backside with his displeasure. She knew she could stop him. All she had to do was say her safeword. But at the back of her mind was the knowledge that she was going to leave him and that doing so would hurt him. Didn't he deserve to be able to discipline her a last time and to possess her completely? Renata pressed her lips together.

Bran lifted his hand from her backside and brought it down again in a short, sharp arc. She felt the pain radiate outward from the point of impact and bit her lip to keep from crying out. He repeated the same harsh smacks to her bottom, moving his hand each time to distribute the pain evenly across her ass and the backs of her thighs. He gave her an even dozen smacks. The sonofabitch meant to keep his word and make the plane ride home uncomfortable. He'd moved her up to first class so they could sit together, but she doubted that it would make sitting any more tolerable.

Besides the pain, the problem with Branson's discipline was that her body knew damn good and well he would fuck her just as hard as ever afterward. He never disciplined her without taking her roughly from behind, making her cry out as he forced her to come again and again. That meant that any spanking, even a true disciplinary one, left her an aroused and needy mess. He would spank her, allowing her need to grow.

The longer and harder he spanked, the more she writhed beneath his discipline. If she started to cry or showed contrition, she knew he'd let up. In his own way, he was fair and just. It was one of the things she admired about him—one of the things she'd come to love.

Her pussy was now pulsing in time with the rhythm of his spanks. His cock had grown harder, and it pressed against her, promising joy and pleasure that only Bran could give her. She very much doubted she'd ever allow another man's cock to breach her again. She might give some Dom in a club a blowjob, but there would be no joy in it for her, it would be a simple exchange of what each of them needed.

"You really are going to have a long trip home," he growled. "Give to me."

Her only answer was a defiant shake of her head. He lowered his hand and began to smack the inside of her thighs and as she moved her legs to try and avoid the strikes, he landed several hard swats to her pussy, making her yowl. It still ramped up her desire by leaps and bounds. She was suddenly very afraid that she was going to come just from his spanking.

As the slaps to her pussy became more deliberate and forceful, her breathing became labored, and her body began to tense in anticipation of being fucked. Bran stopped spanking and instead stroked her pussy, growling at her provocatively. She wasn't just wet, she was soaked. He gave her cunt a flurry of smacks that echoed with the wetness of her desire.

She couldn't hold back any longer. The pressure and anticipation were too great. She needed him to fuck her, needed this last time to be harder and rougher than any that had gone before.

"Bran, please. I'm sorry, Sir," she said as she began to cry.

It wasn't the pain that was causing the great wracking sobs, but the knowledge that this brief wonderful interlude of her life was coming to an end. She couldn't be what he wanted her to be, and still honor her mother and aunt and all the sorceresses who had come before. She couldn't even continue in her chosen field. It was Bran's as well. If she continued in it, she was sure he would find a way to impose his will on her. She wouldn't fool herself into thinking that he would let her go. And she knew for certain she wasn't strong enough to leave him a second time.

"About damn time," he growled as he swung her off his lap and over the edge of their bed. Her face was buried in the covers, and she kept it there to hide her tears.

The hot, hard head of his cock breached her slick, ripe sheath in one hard shove. She howled with mournful joy as he plundered her pussy. He scraped her inner walls as he thrust into her over and over again. His hips slammed into her thoroughly punished ass, only adding to the wildfire that was burning out of control.

Her breath sped up and she clawed at the bedding. Her body stiffened and? she lost any semblance of control as a response to his discipline. She cried out and writhed beneath him, reveling in her need for him. Harder and harder he slammed into her until finally he ground himself against her, holding her still as he gave a final ferocious thrust. She howled in ecstasy. Her pussy spasmed as it clamped down hard, contracting all up and down his length and he pumped his seed deep inside her.

Branson collapsed on top of her.

"You behave yourself tomorrow. When we get back to England, we're going home to Ravenscar for a week or two and get this settled between us."

Maybe he was right. Maybe she'd been spoiling for a fight. But he was wrong about the reason why. He thought she feared his claiming her and knotting her for the first time. Nothing could be further from the truth. She feared betraying her mother. But more than that, she feared having to tell Branson the one truth she'd kept hidden from him.

She wasn't just a she-wolf, she was a sorceress.