Chapter 11: Feral

Chapter 11

Feral

By the time Drew came to bed I’d passed out cold, but I woke up sometime later, too late for nighttime but far too early for morning. The very faintest gleam of pale dawn crept around the edges of the blinds.

And Drew lay beside me on his back, a few inches from where I’d curled up on my side around a pillow, with the blankets and his boxers pulled down to his thighs and his hand working his rigid cock.

He turned his head a little the second I opened my eyes, somehow knowing I’d woken almost before I did.

“Ash, go back to sleep,” he panted. “Fuck. Don’t move, okay? Don’t move. Let me finish. If I can finish, maybe I won’t…”

Of course, he didn’t finish his sentence, trailing off into harsh, rasping breaths. Hopefully he masturbated better than he communicated.

A few hours of sleep had left me surprisingly clear-headed, so I had it together enough to lie still like he’d told me to until I got my brain around what the hell was going on. His big hand moving mesmerizingly up and down that thick, gleaming cock made it hard to stay clear-headed, but I could do it.

I could, dammit.

Even though he chose that moment to squeeze just under the head, making it look even fatter and more perfectly mouthwatering.

God. I closed my eyes for a second, swallowing hard. Okay. I’d jerked him off that morning. I’d let him fuck my mouth a few hours ago, after which he’d been hard again and presumably gone to get off in the shower.

And now he couldn’t even wait until morning.

He hadn’t left the bed, either. He’d never done that before, stayed next to me while he brought himself off.

The bed bounced gently with the motion of his hand.

I could picture it, and I wanted…

No, I couldn’t resist. My eyes opened, and I reached out and wrapped my hand around his cock right below his.

Drew arched up into my grip, crying out sharply, and when he looked at me his eyes glowed so brightly I had to blink.

“Don’t,” he ground out. “Don’t, Ash, I can’t, I can’t stop. I tried to leave the bed, but—when I tried to go away from you, I almost. Fuck. Don’t touch me!”

But he didn’t push me away.

Because he couldn’t, any more than he could leave the bed and put distance between us.

Sweat gleamed on his face and bare chest and stuck his hair to his temples. Even in the dim light filtering through the blinds I could see the flush on his skin, hectic on his cheekbones and pink all the way down his neck.

His cock looked ready to explode, and it throbbed in my hand. Every line of his body thrummed with frantic tension.

I squeezed his cock, running my hand down to the base, and he groaned again, sounding like I’d stabbed him, his hand moving faster and faster above mine.

No restraint at all.

He’d gotten worse, much worse, either because what I’d done had exacerbated the effects of the experimentation or because he’d been on an exponential curve to begin with and he’d finally hit the near-vertical slope.

My mind and my heart both raced frantically, terror for Drew taking me over and sending me reeling. What the hell did I do? I couldn’t just—I’d already tried—if I called—no, no shaman, and no more hand jobs, and—

He hadn’t knotted.

That thought rang clear as a bell amidst the panicked chaos in my head.

Drew hadn’t knotted, and from what I’d read about alphas, that was the most noticeable sexual difference between them and other shifters.

That and the possessive, dominant need to claim a mate, but I’d figured that part out on my own.

I let go of his cock and sat up, pulling my T-shirt over my head. Drew froze, even his hand almost stilling, only massaging the base of his cock.

“What are you doing?” It came out a growl—a threatening one.

But it didn’t faze me. Fuck it. What could he threaten me with, a good time? Because at this point, I was pretty sure he needed to lose control completely. And now, unlike last time it’d almost happened, I didn’t feel any fear or anger—not of or at him, anyway. My fright was all for him, not about him.

“Do you have lube somewhere?” Because I might be ready to let him use me however he wanted, but I didn’t want to bleed, either.

I tugged at the string of my pajama pants and shoved them down over my hips along with my own boxers, baring myself to the knees.

Drew’s gaze traveled down over my chest and belly, lingering on my limp cock. “No,” he said in a tone of total finality, even as he licked his lips and panted. “No, I’m not doing that.”

Well, I’d heard that before, hadn’t I?

“Yeah, we are.” One knee and then the other, I lifted up my legs and worked the pants down, over and off. Leaving the bed, going out of his reach, might provoke him too much. “You need to knot me, Drew.”

A bead of moisture slipped out of the head of his cock, gleaming there like a jewel. Even if I bent and licked it off, I wouldn’t taste anything.

But that didn’t matter. This wouldn’t be for me, it’d be for him. I’d be—whatever he needed me to be.

I swung a leg over and straddled his hips, leaning down and bracing myself on his shoulders. He had such smooth, hot skin, damp with sweat, the muscles rigid. Broad shoulders...what would he look like, if our positions were reversed? Braced over me and driving inside my body?

“No,” he said again, but this time he didn’t even sound certain, let alone look it. He didn’t meet my eyes, his roving up and down, all over me, like he couldn’t figure out what he wanted to stare at the most. “I’d hurt you.”

“You can’t hurt me.”

Finally he looked right at me. “I can hurt you. You just won’t be able to feel it. And that’s even worse, somehow.” The words came in little hitches, and a trickle of sweat made its way down his temple.

Drew was about to crack, I knew it. He simply had to do it without injuring me too much, and without destroying himself in the process.

Leaning down, I nuzzled the side of his face. “I want you to use me again,” I whispered into his skin, and traced his jaw with my tongue. His shiver could’ve been my shiver, and his big body between my thighs made me feel like I was poised at the top of a cliff, about to go tumbling down. “Like your toy. I’ll be so tight and hot for you, Drew. You can fuck me, come inside me, knot me, do anything you want to me—”

Drew’s hands landed on my waist, and I cut off with a squeak as he flipped me like a pancake, landing on top, his cock pressing between my legs. His eyes glowed like stars.

“Don’t fucking move,” he snarled, and let go of me with one hand, the other still pinning my hip. He reared up and lunged to the side, tearing the drawer out of the nightstand and slamming it down on the top, pens and a book and odds and ends going flying as he rummaged through the contents.

His cock bobbed in front of me, full and thick, flushed deep red at the head, his heavy balls hanging down below. I hadn’t touched those yet. It shocked me to realize how much I wanted to: to weigh them in my palm, roll them in my fingers. Get the alpha werewolf by the balls? God, I’d gone insane.

Drew let out a triumphant sound and leaned back down over me, a bottle in his hand.

Lube. To fuck me. To make me all slippery for his cock…the click of the top opening startled me out of my fugue.

He let go of me to pour enough lube into his hand to get everything in the room all slippery, it looked like, but once he wrapped his slick hand around his cock—yeah, okay, he had a lot of ground to cover. Wet and shiny, he looked twice as big. I swallowed down the lump in my throat. It wouldn’t hurt, but it still…I’d feel the pressure of that, wouldn’t I? I’d know how deeply he penetrated me. At least I’d have that.

Drew reached down between my legs, his fingers finding my hole unerringly. One pressed inside, the calluses rough, the rest of his skin smooth. Hot. Forcing my muscles to yield, but it didn’t feel like more than that. Had I ever done this before, had another man work me open, make me moan? Had I liked it? Or had I slid my fingers inside a woman, getting her wet, making her moan? Or maybe another guy?

“Look at me, Ash,” Drew said, very low. “Fucking look at me. You’re with me. Not whoever the fuck you’re—fuck, you can’t remember. It doesn’t matter if you can remember,” he snarled, sounding completely unhinged. “I’m fucking you. Not someone else.”

I glanced up through my lashes. His eyes had gone wild, and a hint of fang showed behind his curled lip. Feral. He looked feral, almost not human at all despite his mostly-human features.

Like he’d been in the prison, when he’d taken me in his arms and told me I’d be all right, that he was getting me out of there.

A feral Drew didn’t frighten me. My arms went up almost of their own accord, my hands wrapping around his upper arms, and I pulled my knees up and back, bracing my feet on his thighs.

Drew sucked in a breath, his fangs dropping all the way, and he shoved two fingers into me hard and fast.

“You’re fucking me,” I said softly. “Only you.”

He let out a sound I hadn’t known a sort-of-human throat could produce and pulled his fingers out of me, spreading his hand over the inner curve of my ass to hold it open as he positioned his cock.

The view was as spectacular as I’d thought it would be: Drew’s dark head bent down so that he could watch as he pushed inside me, his broad shoulders, muscles rounded and hard, the lines of his collarbones, the expanse of his chest with its scattering of dark hair, the ridges of his abdomen and the jut of his hipbones…all of it. Masculine and powerful, and all for me.

His first thrust into me felt like he’d rearranged me, altered me to fit him, but it didn’t hurt—obviously. I thought it probably would have, though.

I also thought I might not have cared. Even if it made me bite my lip to keep from screaming, I didn’t think I’d have minded. Drew lifted his head and gazed down at me, his eyes shining with something so much greater than simple alpha magic—not so simple, of course, to a plain old human like me. But even the most spectacular display of pyrotechnic magic couldn’t have been as spellbinding as the expression on Drew’s face while he watched me open myself to him.

“Ash.” He swallowed hard. “Ash, gods.”

He pulled back a little, the friction of it so strange and new: not painful, not pleasurable, but a sensation deep inside where you usually didn’t feel anything at all unless something had gone horribly wrong.

And then he pushed back in, my lungs stuttering from the pressure. Deeper and deeper, and his breath came in labored bursts. Mine hitched and heaved my chest. My body reacted to his cock in me even if I couldn’t feel it consciously, prickles of sweat forming on my skin and my heart pounding.

I lay beneath him, shoved up the bed with every pounding motion of his hips, sheets rustling, the bed thumping and creaking.

I couldn’t look at anything but Drew, lost in the pleasure he took from my passive body, eyes glowing and glazed with lust and need. My fingers dug into his bulging biceps, as if I wanted to…pull him closer, push him away, control him somehow, but control was a lost cause.

Drew groaned, his head hanging down, and pounded me into jelly. I rode the waves of it like a tiny boat at the mercy of a thrashing sea, jolting up and down, biting my lip to keep my teeth from clacking together.

And then the pressure built and built, my hole stretching past what a human body should be able to take.

His knot. Drew’s knot, it had to be, shoving me wide open and forcing its way inside.

I let out a startled yelp as he came deep inside me, an odd rush of wetness and warmth held inside me by his cock.

Drew stilled, shuddered, and collapsed, his weight crushing me into the mattress and his face buried against the side of my head. His hot breath fanned over my ear and made me shiver.

Without any aches and pains—or the aftershocks of orgasm, presuming I would’ve had one from all of that—the other associated sensations came into sharp focus. Had I ever splayed my legs out like this before? It seemed unnatural to have my hips spread like this, my thighs pinned like the wings of a butterfly.

Of course, the unnaturally large knotted cock speared into me and stuck there might have something to do with it. I wriggled a little, trying to ease the pressure.

Drew groaned and thrust deeper, the pressure ratcheting up a notch instead.

Christ. Did people do this for fun? Not that the extreme fullness didn’t offer a certain sense of satisfaction, as if my body had been used to its limits, without anything more to give.

The subtle tremors that ran through Drew as we both settled down again made it clear he’d had fun, anyway. Or something fun-adjacent. Relief, if nothing else. I allowed myself to touch him, releasing the death-grip I still had on his upper arms and stroking my fingers over his shoulders, tracing the powerful muscles there, and then moving to his back. More muscles. More smooth skin. Like a sensory feast for someone who could be aroused by it.

Drew nuzzled into my neck, and a wave of tenderness welled up, washing away some of the regret and bitterness. I’d been a good sex toy, I was pretty sure. Exactly what the alpha ordered. Maybe he’d want to do it again? Let me hold him like this, bask in the heat of him, savor the weight of his body pressing me down and keeping me grounded.

“How do you feel?” I dared to whisper, praying the answer wouldn’t be something incoherently wolfish.

Drew lifted his head. His eyes shone clear—of any confusion, at least. But something like regret lurked in their depths. My heart sank straight down through the bed.

Obviously it had worked. And equally obviously, he wished it hadn’t happened at all.

“Physically, never better. Mentally? Like pond scum.” His mouth tightened, and he lifted up a bit, propping himself on his elbows to either side of my shoulders. Glancing down, I could see his groin flush against mine, the place where he’d buried himself in me. And above that, the whole expanse of his torso. Someone ought to sculpt him, or something.

“Ash, Christ, I have my knot in you!” That startled me into looking up again. His eyes blazed down at me. I wanted to trace the furrow between his dark brows, smooth it out with my finger. My hands had dropped down on the bed when he moved. I was too lazy to lift them again. Did his come have Valium in it, or something? I’d felt like this after he fucked my mouth too. “And you can’t—I know you didn’t enjoy that. Aren’t enjoying this. Why would you let me do this to you? And no more bullshit about me not being able to hurt you.”

“I’ve already told you,” I snapped—or tried to. I still couldn’t get a full breath, what with how fucking full I was. “You needed this. Didn’t you? Don’t you feel more in control now?”

“Yeah, because I lost control!” He seemed to be perfectly capable of snapping, the bastard. “Because I fucking brutalized you! And for some fucked-up reason, that makes me feel better,” he spat, like the word tasted foul. His face twisted, jaw set as hard as granite. “I feel better than I have in months. And I fucking hate myself for it. You must hate me, underneath the pity. Or the obligation. And I don’t know which one is worse.”

Brutalized me? I shifted my lower body a little, feeling the tug of his knot on my hole. That…I didn’t mind it, even though I knew it ought to have been more. Intense, or…simply more.

“Fuck,” Drew gasped, and rolled his hips, pushing deeper. “Don’t do that. It’s—my knot’s never going down if you keep squeezing me. And you’ll hurt yourself—injure yourself, I mean. If you pull too hard without realizing.”

“Sorry.” I wasn’t. “Drew, don’t change the subject. Pity? Obligation? Haven’t we been over this?” My slurring voice matched the molasses-trickle of my thoughts, and I had to interrupt myself to yawn, my jaw stretching nearly as stupendously as my ass. God, my limbs had gone so heavy. I could sleep for a week. “I don’t pity you. It’s not obligation. It’s—I seriously don’t mind being your sex toy, okay?”

Drew went absolutely still.

Except for his knot, which—grew even more, pressing me inexorably open. I fought the urge to squirm. He’d said not to do that.

He gazed down at me, eyes ablaze. “Don’t say that. Don’t—I shouldn’t want that. I shouldn’t—I’m hard again,” he said, desperation in his tone. “I can’t pull out now without ripping you apart. I probably won’t be able to pull out until I come again.”

I’d had it with this conversation. Sleep. Nothing could stop me, not even Drew’s meltdown, or his knot in my ass. My eyes started to drift shut. “Then fuck me while I’m sleeping,” I mumbled. “It won’t bother me. ’M all yours.”

Anything else he might have said faded away along with consciousness.

So heavy.

I slept.