8. Zeke

Chapter eight

Zeke

" W ait, wait, wait! Hold on," I said on a laugh. "Your stepdad was also your uncle?"

We were still in my hotel room with some action movie paused on the TV that I wasn't really paying attention to anyway. We had ordered room service for dinner and cuddled up on the bed. I hadn't realized how much I'd needed to just chill and make out with a very attentive and affectionate man. It was honestly one of the best days I'd had in a really long time.

"No, he was my second cousin ," Sacha said with a grin. "Our great-grandparents were siblings."

I squinted at him, trying to relate that to my own family tree. "Okay, I think I get it. Your family tree has a twisted branch though."

He chuckled and levered himself up on one elbow. After he smoothed out the down pillow, he poked at it as he named people. "So when Alek, my stepfather, died, this resort was meant to be passed down to his son. But Gavril is only six, so my mother, Elise, took over. Alek's two younger brothers, Titus and Marius, think they should be in charge."

"Why aren't they? Did your mother have more experience running a resort or something?"

Sacha shrugged as he stared at the pokes in the pillow. "It's always been passed down from father to son."

"A tradition."

"Basically."

"Puts a lot of pressure on poor Gavril."

Sacha rolled onto his back, his head covering up all of the pillow marks. "Well, if something should happen to him or he can't lead for any reason, then it would pass on to one of his uncles."

"Your second cousins."

"Right."

This was sounding more and more like royalty and heirs. Maybe it was something that had come over from Romania with them? I didn't know if Romania had royalty, but it all sounded very old world European.

"And you don't have any claim to the kingdom?" I asked.

"Not really, no. My dad was in charge but everything passed to his cousin when he died."

"Why didn't things go to you?"

"For one thing, I was sixteen at the time. And for another… Well, I didn't have the…skills to take over."

"Yeah, not at sixteen." I flopped back and stared up at the ceiling for a moment. "That's so… I'm not sure if amazing or horrible is the right word for it since you can see what your life could've been like. Do you want to be in charge? Do you mind not being the leader of all this?"

Sacha turned to face me and his cheeks turned pink. "Sometimes I wish I was. Mostly when someone's ignoring my suggestions. I do a lot around here, but I don't really have a specific title. I help where I'm needed. Not very many people are willing to listen to a guy like me."

I couldn't quite tell if he was happy about that or not. Did he blush because he was embarrassed about being directionless? It didn't feel like a topic to explore any further, especially knowing his mother's current opinion of him.

I probably shouldn't have asked this either, but I was curious. "When did your dad pass?"

"Ten years ago. He was hiking and fell off a cliff."

I sat up on my elbows and squinted at him. "And Gavril's dad passed after a skiing accident?"

"Right."

Cocking my head at him, I smirked. "You're not exactly selling a wilderness lifestyle to this city boy."

Sacha chuckled, shaking his head. "They're really rare accidents. People might break a bone or something, but they hardly ever die."

I snorted a laugh. "Now there's a tourist slogan if I ever heard one."

Even though Sacha laughed at my joke, the light in his eyes seemed to have dimmed, and I didn't want that. He'd had a rough enough day without being reminded of his father's death. I knew what it was like to never have gotten the chance to come out to my father and know how he'd really have reacted to the news. I had to assume, Sacha might be wondering about that now, too, given how it had gone with his mother just hours ago.

"It sounds like your family has been here for a really long time," I said to steer the conversation back to safer ground.

"All the way back to the 1740s," he said with a nod.

That date triggered a memory in my mind. "Oh, hey! I read about that in your family history."

His eyebrows hopped up as he blinked at me. "My what?"

"The family history in The Magic Shop? Weird place for it, by the way, and the fact that the author made you all werewolves was a little odd. Like who fictionalizes a family history?"

Sacha made a sort of wheezing noise. "Yeah, that is weird." He cleared his throat and sat up. "Um, what did you read about exactly?"

I sat up, too, sitting cross-legged in front of him. "It was… Oh, a forced exodus because of some pope. And there was a part of the family that branched off from the rest to found the town here. Come to think of it, they went pretty deep into the interior for the 1740s. I think my ancestors were still living it up in Spain somewhere back then."

He was nodding and looking a little distracted before he cleared his throat. "Have you done genealogy stuff for your family?"

I waved that away. "Oh, no, just family stories about conquistadors and the native peoples of Cuba. I could probably look into it what with all the online resources and the DNA tests nowadays, but I haven't done it."

"You could find out if you're related to any celebrities," he waggled his eyebrows, "or wanted felons."

I chuckled. "Yeah, I heard about that."

As much as I'd learned about Sacha in the last few minutes, it felt like we'd gone off the rails now. He wasn't doing anything specific or overt, but I got the feeling that he was uncomfortable. When he glanced at the TV opposite us, I concluded that we should probably put a pin in discussing family any further.

"Want to finish the movie?" I offered.

He smiled. "Yeah, let's."

Sacha turned and propped himself up against the headboard. When he held his arm out, I sat up and cuddled into his side, very glad he'd offered me the spot. Being pressed against his naked upper body was way more interesting than the car chase on the screen, though. I wasn't even aware that I was staring at his lap where his cock was hidden behind his boxers until he shifted his hips, and I realized I was petting his thigh. I looked at his profile from where I was resting on his shoulder and teased my fingers into the leg hole of his boxers, high up on his inner thigh.

He looked down and spread his legs a tiny bit wider, bumping my thigh and shifting again. I looked back down and saw that he was starting to tent his boxers. I reached in deeper and teased his sac with my fingertips. He took a shaky breath.

I chuckled quietly and got him smirking at me. "You keep watching your movie," I said and wiggled lower on the bed. "I've found something else to do."

"Oh? Something better than watching an awesome star-studded car chase through the streets of I couldn't even tell you where now that you're touching me like that?"

I laughed again and fished his cock out through the slit in his boxers. "So much better than that."

He moaned louder than the revving engines on the TV as I took his cock into my mouth. He put a hand to the back of my neck, just resting there warm and solid, and I closed my eyes. He was velvety against my lips, growing harder on my tongue. I tucked one arm around behind him to hug his waist and fondled his balls with my free hand. His fingers bit into my neck as he whined.

I took him as deep into my throat as I could and listened to him moan over and over again. The way he whispered my name and cursed sent shivers of desire through me. That sounded like praise, and I loved it just as much as the warm, salty taste of him.

Suddenly, Sacha's fingers delved into my hair at the back of my head and pulled up. I popped off of his dick and looked up, concerned. Before I could say anything, he gripped me with both hands and leaned down to kiss me. He forced my mouth open, licked inside, and I knew he was tasting himself on my tongue.

"Can I have you again?" he asked breathlessly.

I nodded. Dear god, in the face of his sudden desperate need, I would have given him anything.

Sacha manhandled me around on the bed until I was face down toward the TV. I'd put on sweatpants after our shower, and he pulled them down to hobble my ankles before he sat on my thighs. Heart pounding, I looked over my shoulder as he gloved up and slicked himself with lube. Didn't have to show him twice, apparently. He wiped the excess into my crack before leaning over me.

My position made my ass extra tight, and we moaned together as he sank into me. His knees were denting the bed on the outside of mine and he took a moment to press my legs even closer together. The pressure had me wailing into the bedding as he took advantage of that extra slick lube and pounded my ass.

He had a fist against the mattress and his other hand gripped my shoulder close to my neck. I was pinned down and held in place like a bad dog and, Jesus fuck, it felt so goddamned good to lay there and let him take me. When I could speak, all I said was yes over and over again. This was perfect. This was everything! He was making me fly.

His hips snapped against my ass, drilling me so deep, and then all of a sudden he was leaning over me. The move had him impossibly far inside me, claiming my guts, and I was on the edge of coming. His hand moved to grip my neck, his palm against my throat, lifting me onto my elbows. And then he bit me. Literally sank his teeth into the other side of my neck. I gasped in surprise and damn if that sting of pain didn't push me over the edge altogether. His hips punched into me three more times and then we were both coming, me with a yell and him with a growl against my neck.

He stopped biting me and panted into my hair, following me down as I collapsed against the bed. Fuck me, that had been intense. He'd been brutal, almost violent, and I'd had no idea I could be into something like that. But I had been. Goddamn, I'd been right there for all of it.

If he could rally in the next couple minutes, I'd let him start again.

"I bit you," he said.

"Yeah."

"Are you okay?"

I nodded because I was fine. It had hurt, I'd probably have one hell of a mark, but I'd liked it.

"I don't know what came over me," he whispered.

I huffed a laugh, very aware of the fact that he was still balls deep inside me. "It comes over you again, go for it."

"Really?"

"Fuck yes."

"Huh. Okay."

Sacha rested some of his weight against me. I moaned quietly, liking that, too. He was still inside me and clearly didn't have any plans on ending that. I couldn't help pretending that he'd knotted me like in any number of the monster romances I'd recently discovered and now read exclusively. Somebody was always getting stuck on a cock in those books. I smiled into the bedding, glad to have my turn.