Chapter 25

Twenty-Five

WESLEY

My cock ached, hard and desperate to be touched. Someone kissed along my throat, touch light and fleeting. I groaned, shoving my hips into them, the need racing through my veins like fire. I blinked open my eyes to see the Autumn king in his sculpted physical perfection leaning over me, hand gliding over my cock.

“Stop,” I demanded. The pulsing waves of magic familiar and inescapable. Desire pooled over my skin drawing a gasp of need from my lips as my hips ground against him seeking friction.

He gripped my chin and pressed his lips to mine. I thought to break away but the desperate heat made me open to him. His kiss dove deep, exploring my lips with brutal, yet delicious precision. He nipped my lower lip as he drew away.

“I can show you endless pleasure,” he growled.

“The desire isn’t mine,” I ground out, angry at my body’s betrayal.

“Yet you cursed the Summer child with the same heat,” he accused.

I’d once tried to seduce Sebastian in a dream pond with a sculpted form most men who loved men would fall for, but he’d ripped himself away. The idea of it made me sick, but I was following orders. He’d awakened to his mate, and been able to fill the heat in a much better way than I ever had.

“Zephyr demanded it, forced my hand. And it was only a dream,” not real like this, only as I stared past him the space around us lacked clarity. This too was a dream. “No,” I said. “Let me go.”

“I’ve waited a long time, mate,” he said, leaning back but continuing to stroke me with a firm and skilled hand. “Loved many to ensure I’d be ready for you.”

“Didn’t need to know that,” I huffed.

The Summer king’s mate had threatened me for daring to touch his love. At the time, explaining would have meant admitting betrayal in two ways. Playing both sides coming to a head. But Zephyr enhanced the dream, wrapped Sebastian in sexual desire for a glamoured version of me, thinking perhaps like would be drawn to like. When Sebastian rejected me, forcing the unnatural desire, a sort of incubus draw from others to me, to return, it had no outlet other than Zephyr’s brutality. Thankfully I’d blacked out partway through, the beast too rough for the tiny fae form he loathed.

“Please don’t,” I begged. “If you care at all that I am your mate, you won’t force me.”

He frowned, but his touch eased away. “You are my mate. You do not desire me?”

“I don’t know anything about you,” I said.

“Human minds…” he growled and stood, his human male perfection shifting from man to wolf, the shadows sliding over his skin as if suctioned to him. That couldn’t be good.

“Yes, us thinking folks are super complicated.” I sighed at the absence of his touch, though my body pulsed with the fire of desire. “Can you undo the need?”

B ut he slipped into the shadows, and I blinked to focus on his departure, only to open my eyes to Finn holding me, his fingers tickling one of my antler nubs. I gasped, the lust raging forward in a terribly familiar way. A disturbing heat ached in my groin, fire pouring down my spine and into the betraying bit of flesh desperate for touch. That couldn’t be. Only the fae form experienced a real heat.

“You’re so tiny and cute,” Finn remarked, seeing my eyes open.

I gasped, yanking myself out of his arms, though my body demanded his touch. The hoodie reached my knees, hiding my engorged cock, but baring the not quite human legs of my fawn form. I lifted my hands, staring in horror at the thick tan fuzz covering the backs. “No, no, no,” I chanted, trying to will myself to my human or even Stag forms.

“What’s wrong?” Finn asked. He stood, towering easily a half foot over me now.

I took a step back though everything in me wanted to throw myself at him and beg him to cool the heat.

“I’m not going to hurt you, Wesley,” Finn said, his expression sad. He leaned against the tree, hands out as if to show he wouldn’t press the issue.

“But I could hurt you,” I said.

“Yep,” Finn said. “Your Stag antlers are scary.”

“I mean right now.” A wave of need pulsed through me, part desperation to be touched, part hunger to create. This form had one use, and one use only. A fulfilled heat brought life to the forest as I cast off earthen magic each time I came. The fawn’s curse gifted by my elemental sire.

“Wesley?”

I dropped to my knees and wrapped the hoodie around me as if it could shield me from everything my body demanded. Finn leapt to tug me into his arms as if I’d fallen.

“No,” I whispered. His touch added an icy blast to chill the desperate heat, temporarily clearing my head.

“No what?” Finn asked. “You’re not hurt? I can’t help? Tell me what’s wrong?”

“Look at me! This is my fae form. Weak, useless, the only purpose of it is to be fucked and create magic to grow things.”

Finn blinked, his expression changing a few times as he processed my words, but he held firm.

“Run away,” I told him. Would the pheromones of my heat turn whatever half-human mortal thing he was into the beast of desperation like Zephyr and every other of my lovers in the past had been? “Before the heat catches you.”

“Heat?”

I gripped the hoodie, tugging it up, showing the backward bend of my knees, and my feet more hooves than feet. “I’m an animal, can’t you tell?”

“Is this because I touched your antlers?”

“No. Yes. Maybe. I think the Autumn king triggered it. He tried before by the creek.” This time the heat was too far aroused to be shoved back. Maybe I was overdue, or maybe he’d hoped for a way to claim me as his mate.

“What can I do to help?” Finn asked.

I wanted to demand he fuck me, but that wasn’t fair. “Run away.” I curled up in a ball, the pain of need ripping through every vein as it rolled through my blood.

“Will it go away if I leave?”

“No.” An unserved heat could last for days, and nothing I could do alone would fulfill the demand of my body and the magic’s desperation to grow.

“Then I’m not leaving.” He folded his arms across his chest.

Stubborn man. “I can’t promise I won’t rape you!” I shouted at him, trying to make him afraid. He might claim he played both sides of the field, but screwing the pretty little fawn boy was a whole other ballgame. The longer the heat lasted, the more frantic for relief I would become, and my mind already clouded with the demand for release.

He stared at me for a moment, then unfolded his arms and lifted his hoodie up off his chest over his head and tossed it aside.

“What are you doing?” I demanded.

“Can’t rape the willing,” he said as he shoved down his sweatpants, baring his body and his hard cock. “If this is what helps…”

“You’re not willing. It’s the pheromones making you feel this way. You don’t want me.” No one did. I was a tool to be used.

He spread the pants and top out beneath him and sat down at the base of the tree, legs splayed to show me how interested he was. The fact that he wasn’t jumping me, forcing me onto my stomach to shove himself inside, confused me. “I’m willing, but it’s your choice.”

“I have no choice!” He couldn’t understand what the heat meant. The pain, the desire, the relief and how amazing it actually felt when I finally came, no matter how much I bleed from whomever used me.

“You do,” Finn said. “I can’t stop this thing from happening to you. I’m sorry if I caused it. But I’m not afraid of you, and I want you to have the choice.” He remained at the base of the tree, rooted and waiting, his dick hard and leaking. He didn’t touch it. I could imagine what it felt like inside. Thick and long, breaching me, slamming into me, filling me with his spend which would erupt from me in waves of magic.

I cried and rolled on the ground, rubbing myself in the grass as if it would help. It didn’t. My ass ached for the stretch and the slamming glide of a cock tunneling into me. I rolled over to glare at him. Why wasn’t he coming unglued at the pheromones and magic allure? He sat against the tree, shoulders tense, cock standing straight up, his eyes half lidded as he panted, hands gripped on his knees.

Control. I’d never met a male of any species with that level of control.

“You can’t be real,” I whispered.

“One hundred percent real,” Finn said. “But it’s your choice. I am here. Willing.” He let out a long stuttering breath. “Hornier than I’ve ever felt in my life. Holy shit, but yeah, one hundred percent real.”