Chapter 33

I tugged at Arik's breeches, impatiently clawing at the laces, as I wrapped my hand around the thick base of Creed's cock. My eyes jerked up as I heard his hiss. Those wolfish eyes stared into mine, growing heavily hooded as I swivelled my hand up his thick length.

"Something you need, Princess?"

My head whipped around to stare up at Arik and he gave me that insolent smirk before his hands went to the laces. I watched as he undid the tie and eased them open.

"If we are to pursue…" I looked around me, the red haze fading for just a moment. "…whatever this is, you're going to stop using my title like it's an insult." I glanced Silas' way. "Silas calls me by my first name."

The man in question snorted, then came closer, stroking his hand through my hair.

"I'll call you whatever you want." His hand slid around my jaw, his thumb brushing over my lips and then pushing between them. He tasted salty, warm, and of roseblood. "And so will Arik if you suck his dick."

Arik's smile faded as he watched my lips close around Silas' thumb. My eyelashes fluttered as I sucked all the roseblood off it, right before it was pulled free.

"You look like you need more than a mouthful," Arik said, pulling his cock free then holding it down by the base as he moved forward. "I've got what you need."

"Jessalyn…" Creed said my name with all the reverence of a priest during a sacred rite, and that was how it felt. He smiled slightly as he noted my attention. "My Jessalyn. Beautiful girl." His brows creased as if each word hurt him to say. "My mate. My heart." He jumped when my hand slid up and down his hip, glorying in the taut muscle with not an inch of softness on him. "You're everything and I… Uh!"

Lured closer by his wolfish poetry, I licked a stripe up his aching cock and was rewarded by a heartfelt sigh as I brushed slick lips across the head.

"Yes, love, just like that." His hands were gentle as a benediction on my head. "Fuck, yes…"

He sounded like I was destroying his whole world and remaking it again with every suck, so I went back for more, then more, flicking my tongue down his length as I stretched my jaws wide to go deeper. Just as before, my enthusiasm had me jerking back with a spluttering cough. I gasped in a breath, and he reached down and stroked my face.

"You don't need… Fuck!"

Yes, I did. Whatever fire had leapt up inside me the minute I allowed Silas to apply the roseblood, it wasn't going out, even though my body was so heavy with pleasure that it was like I could barely move. But then the lessons they'd given came back to me, and I wrapped my hand around the base of his cock to stop me from going too deep. When I did, I encountered something else.

"Jessa…!"

When the base of my palm pressed into something swollen, Creed couldn't even get out my entire name. Initially I thought it was his testicles, but that impression was dispelled when he grabbed my hand and wrapped it around the lump.

"Love, please, fuck…"

He couldn't manage to tell me what he wanted or needed, or even what it was, so I cupped the mound carefully, then swivelled my hand across it, which forced his hips to buck forward.

I moved with him to avoid having his cock jammed down my throat, but he let out an animalistic growl in response and his hands slapped down on my shoulders to make sure I wasn't going anywhere. My mind raced. Because of my inexperience, I didn't even know what it was, or what he wanted. When I squeezed down, I got my answer.

Two of the others marked my skin with their seed, but in some ways, it made sense that Creed would do so internally. A hot blast of something hit the back of my throat, forcing me to swallow. I squeezed again, and there was more.

"Jessalyn…" Creed sighed. "Jessalyn… that feels… Gods, if you keep doing that, I'll…"

I was getting the hang of how it was supposed to go. Squeezing the bulb at the base allowed me to milk the seed from him. I sucked harder and harder, a hunger rising inside me to feel those claws prick my scalp, to hold me perfectly still as he unloaded everything into me. To taste him, feel him, have him right in the palm of my hand, even as I kneeled before him. That was exactly what happened. His breaths came faster and faster until his whole body flexed, testing my gag reflex, and he erupted.

"Swallow it down, there's a good girl."

The words were torn from Creed in a ragged groan, but other hands went to my head, stroking my hair, pulling it back in a ball so they could all watch my throat work as I struggled in my attempts to swallow every drop. I failed utterly and had to pull back to draw breath. More seed shot free, splashing my face, much to my astonishment.

"Gods, Creed, you trying to mark the girl or drown her?" But Roan's eyes twinkled for me, not his comrade. He jerked a kerchief free and offered it to me. "You've made a right mess of our Jessalyn."

I smile despite myself at that title… It was the one I wanted to hear more than any other, I decided, even if I hadn't been conscious of wanting to belong to them. Arik knocked Roan's hand away and smirked down at me.

"Our pack was formed in blood." He nodded to the others. "First, when we were beaten within an inch of our lives. Secondly, when we made our oaths in the packlands." He released the catch on his leather bracer, revealing a slender white scar on his wrist. "I'm fairly sure we don't want the princess shedding her blood to join us, so…"

I watched his hand stroke up and down his hard cock, the head growing redder and more swollen with each pass.

"There's nothing to say she can't join our number through other bodily fluids."

His hand went to my head, pulling me closer, then cupping my jaw as his thumb pushed my lips open. He rubbed the head of his cock through the sticky mess there, hissing at first.

"You think I've been such a prick because I don't like you or don't want you, but the problem is the exact opposite." That arrogant smile finally, finally faded, and so did the mask Arik has been wearing. Someone else stared at me. It was as if he could see all the way down to the depths of my soul, but then, in order to get that ability, he'd had to gift me the same. I wondered if anyone else had ever seen a glimpse of that kind of vulnerability. His brows twitched, as if getting ready to frown, to put up a hard, mocking facade between us. He shook his head, not looking away for a second, as he stroked my lips. "It would be so fucking easy if I could deny it. You don't want this, what it will mean." His focus shifted to Creed for a moment, then back to me. "I don't know what the fuck the gods were thinking, putting you in my path, but… if this is what you want, open that smart fucking mouth of yours, Jessalyn, and…"

His great speech was cut off as, in one fell swoop, I swallowed him as far as I could. His hands snapped around my head, as if to stop me from going any further as much as to stop himself from pulling me closer. But his thumbs stroked the joints of my jaw, silently requesting more, and I pressed forward, feeling the stretch.

"Fuck, I… Oh fuck…"

"You shut the commander up, lass, that's a feat in itself."

"Everyone take note of the events that led up to this moment. We may need to replicate it."

"Did my face look like that when she did this to me?"

"Of course it did, you idiot."

"That doesn't seem possible."

"It's the look of a man having his soul sucked out of his body is what it is."

"No…" The crack of Arik's voice had me looking up. "It's more than that." He stroked my cheek with his knuckles, his brows creasing in an expression of sweet pain I knew all too well. Somehow that was reassuring, that someone so much more worldly than me could still have his legs cut out from under him by… whatever this was. "You look so fucking beautiful on your knees." My brows jerked down and I made to pull off, but his hand clamped down on my head, then caressed the shape of it when I didn't move. "I feel like we need to get down on them most days, bow before our queen, but that will get tricky the closer we get to the capital."

Fear threatened to cut through the haze of lust.

"But no matter what happens, I won't forget the moment you went to your knees for me." His eyes held mine for several seconds, but then his cock twitched in my mouth, demanding attention. "Here it comes, lass. See if you can take it all." He and I moved together then, working to bring him to a heady peak, then prolong the pleasure when he went tumbling over. "That's it. That's my girl. Suck it all down, lass, every drop. You make me feel things I've got no business feeling…" He let out a ragged groan. "And you make me want to feel them anyway."

A slide of his hand across my head let me know my job was done. As I relaxed and sat back on my heels, a dizzying exhaustion overtook me. My vision pulsed as they hauled me to my feet, and I was like a limp doll in their hands as they pulled me closer.

"A bit lightheaded, love?" Roan asked, but Silas frowned.

"She's crashing." His fingers slid across my scalp, probing gently like a physician, not a lover. "And she's got a fucking head wound! She needs a healer…"

Whatever anyone else had to say about that, it was lost to me. One lot of men had brutalised me into unconsciousness, but these men had sent me there, drifting in a cloud of pleasure.