15

Thalia

 

 

Thalia let out a soft shriek when someone grabbed her hand. She didn’t fret, her She-Wolf knew it was Mikkel, but she still cried out when she felt herself being hefted into the air and grunted when, even though he was more careful now, he heaved her onto his shoulder.

“Theo, I need a moment with Thalia.”

Hanging down, so she was facing Theo’s back, Thalia rolled her eyes when Theo laughed. “I can see that.”

Twisting up, she grumbled, “You could have just asked me.”

“There are times to ask, and there are times to do.”

When he turned around, she found herself facing Theo’s smirking face. She glowered at him. “Aren’t you supposed to be my wingman?”

Mikkel groaned. “That was the best you could do?”

“With my head upside down? Yeah. That pun was the best I could do.” She blew out a breath and grimaced when her hair flopped over her face. “There are nicer ways to carry me that won’t make my head ache.”

He froze in place. Literally. With one foot tilted back in a pause that went on for an inordinate length of time, she cleared her throat. “I don’t have a headache now.” Her voice was small and loaded with regret—she’d only been ribbing him.

Mikkel was careful as he lifted her off his shoulder and carefully lowered her to the ground. They’d barely walked down the corridor, and with his shifting his hold on her, she saw Theo was still standing there, watching them.

She wasn’t sure why, but she didn’t mind it.

She couldn’t say she understood her third mate. How could she process everything he’d just told her in the bare moments that had passed since their conversation? Truth was, she couldn’t. He’d told her several lifetimes’ worth of information, quantities that bewildered and boggled equally. But as she looked over at him, she wasn’t anxious anymore.

Her subconscious had been right to feel fear.

He was a messenger. The bringer of bad news. Unfortunately for him, he was also tied to her in ways they’d never been able to calculate. It was time to stop shooting the messenger, though, and to get on with things.

The Goddess had granted her an angel and a human for a mate, as well as a wounded Lyken.

Considering she wasn’t exactly hot-shit mate material, she figured their foursome would gain in strength when they were bound. And she’d just knocked Mikkel’s target off by a mile.

When she was standing, he stunned her by reaching over and cupping her face. Having never been held so intimately by him before, she found herself flushing and, for once in her life, discovered it wasn’t easy to look him in the eye.

“Are you okay?” he asked, and the tenderness in his voice made her heart flutter.

“I-I’m fine. I don’t know why I said that. I was only joking.”

“We can’t joke about your health.”

“No. I wish I hadn’t said anything now,” she said on a sigh, then realizing what she was doing—toeing her damn shoe into the ground like a nervous kindergartner facing the principal—she forced herself to catch his eye. “What’s going on Mikkel?”

“I’m ripping off the Band-Aid.”

Her mouth dropped open. “You’re equating the mate bond to a Band-Aid?”

“Maybe.” He narrowed his gaze at her. “Is that a bad thing?”

She scowled at him. “Well, it’s not the most romantic thing I’ve heard this year.”

“You want romance, talk to the fairy down there. Or Rafe. He’s got that Latino thing working for him. I don’t do soft words and flowers.”

That had her huffing as she stacked her hands on her hips. “Well, lucky me,” she retorted sarcastically, then she let out a squeal when, suddenly, his hands reached for her waist. She found herself dragged against his body, her breasts pressed tightly against his shirt-covered pecs.

“Yeah, lucky you. I won’t kiss you and whisper sweet nothings into your ear,” he told her gruffly, making her jump when he leaned down and pressed his mouth to said ear. “I’ll fuck you and show you you’re mine. You’ll never doubt it. You’ll feel me in you, and when I look at you, you’ll know what I’m thinking before the thought crosses my mind because what we’ll have won’t be romance. It will be raw, visceral. Intense.”

Her tongue felt too thick for her mouth. “W-What? How do you know that?”

“I’ve seen the mate bond, remember?” His lips tightened for the barest of milliseconds. “I know how it works. But it will be different for us. You won’t lead me around by my cock, and I’ll give you your head. We’re going to be equals, you and I. Equals. Do you hear me?

You’re going to fuck me back, and I’m going to love it. You’re going to be free with me, Thalia. Free in ways you won’t be with Rafe or Theo.

Remember what you did to Liam?”

He stunned her by throwing their dick of a brother-in-law’s name into the conversation. “W-Which thing?” she asked hoarsely, hearing her heartbeat in her ear at his rough words.

His lips curved. “The earlobe thing.”

She blinked. “Oh. That.”

“Yeah. That.” His grin turned wolfish—how apt was that? “You think that freaked me out?”

Thalia swallowed, and staring at him closely, studied his face. His skin was golden from the rays he’d caught. The marks on his skin where his gear had covered it in the heat of the Middle East were dissipating as a result, and the flinty blue of his eyes seemed even harder.

His mouth was firmed in a masculine pout, and his nostrils were flared like he was scenting her.

Everything about him screamed aggressor.

Everything.

And her She-Wolf just about purred.

She blew out a shaky breath as she felt the bitch cease her infernal pacing. Her restlessness calming in the face of his strength.

“No,” she whispered. “I don’t think that freaked you out.”

He nodded. “You have that right. Do you think it freaked Rafe out?”

“Yes.”

Rafe would never understand her need for violence. But that wasn’t a bad thing. She didn’t want to be violent. She wanted peace more, and he gave her that. He gave her that by just breathing.

Just being with him made her feel like she could take that first gulp of air after being submerged in icy cold water for hours on end.

But she knew what Mikkel was saying. Knew it like she knew her face in the mirror.

He drew his lips along her jaw. “I’m like you, Thalia. We’re alike. We need that in our lives.”

“I-I don’t want to need it,” she admitted, her words raw as she fought the tears pricking her eyes.

“You think I do? But it’s who we are, and together, we’re going to embrace it.”

She shook her head. “You’re not ready for me to claim you.”

“Because you know the inner workings of my mind? I think that kiss out there said it all, don’t you?” She heard the tension in his voice, saw it in the rigid set of his shoulders and the firm line of his lips.

“Maybe. But you’ve been fighting it.”

“I have,” he admitted with no qualms. “I had a lot to work out. A lot to think about.”

“And you’ve just miraculously cleared it up?” she scoffed, jerking back from him, she put distance between them. The distance made her She-Wolf howl, and she flinched as the noise ricocheted around her skull.

“No. I’m still screwed over this, Thalia. I didn’t want a mate. I didn’t. Mates are complicated and they . …” She saw him make fists with his hands, and he beat the air, slicing them down. Once. “They get hurt, and you hurt for them. You hurt for them like you don’t hurt for yourself.” His bottom lip worked, flexing like he was trying to contain a wobble. “You’re going to bring me to my knees, and I have to accept that.”

She frowned at him but started to lower her arms. “Why would I bring you to your knees?”

“Because you’re Alpha. Because you’re my woman, and that’s what women do.”

“I don’t want you on your knees. Haven’t you seen that with Rafe? Haven’t you seen that the last thing I want is to be your Alpha?” Rage flushed through her at the thought that this might be the issue between them.

Dominance.

The last thing she wanted to hold over her mates.

She didn’t want their submission.

She wanted their fire. Only that would melt the ice at her core. Only their heat would bring her to life after the deep-freeze she’d endured for so long.

But he was shaking his head this time. “No, you have it wrong. I don’t mean that way. I mean. . . .” He tapped his chest. “You’re going to fuck me up, Thalia, and I’m going to have to accept it.”

“You don’t think you’re going to fuck me up? You think this is a one way thing?” She could feel her nostrils flare in outrage. “You’ve hurt me, Mikkel. You’ve hurt me by denying us. Who’s on their knees? Me or you, here?

“You can walk away, leave me, and I can’t do a damn thing about it. My heart, my fucking soul, is tied to you in ways I can’t even begin to explain, and you think I’m in control?” She released a cold laugh.

The growl he emitted might as well have come from a Lyken—her She-Wolf responded to it as though it was. Her ears flattened, and the only reason she didn’t snarl was because it was her mate. Her male.

“I’m fucking this up.”

“Yeah, you are,” she snapped. “Why do you have to fight something that’s as easy as breathing?”

“Because it’s not as easy as that for me!” he roared, and the sudden volume of his rage made her ears ache.

She studied him, wanting to see deep beneath the surface where his struggle truly lay. And she wasn’t talking a surface where his likes and dislikes came into play. But where his real problems were.

She took into consideration the little she knew of him, the respect her grandfather had for him, and the fact that the Goddess–who seemed to have more of a say in her life than most–wanted her to be with this arrogant, obnoxious male.

Though it went against her better judgment, she held out her hand.

He stared at it like she was handing him a cobra. “What are you doing?”

“Extending the hand of peace.”

He scowled. “Why would you do something like that?”

Irritation flushed through her. Talk about damned if she did, and damned if she didn’t!

Before he could say another word to piss her off, she dropped her hand and stalked ahead of him. Her raging heartrate slowed when she didn’t hear his footsteps following her, then he let out another growl. “Where are you going?”

Rage?

Yeah, she could deal with that, but that lost look on his face?

No.

Just no.

Mikkel was too arrogant for that.

He was in control of his world, and she’d brought an unknown, a variable, into the mix. She needed to even the playing field if she was to end the night claimed.

And she fully intended on that happening.

He said he knew what he wanted . . . well, he was about to get it.

She was fast. Always had been. And she made it to her suite in record time. She felt him behind her, though, and slammed the door in his face with mere seconds to spare.

Another growl, another curse that had her She-Wolf jerking with excitement.

She wasn’t halfway to the bed before the door slammed back against the wall. But she was ready. Thalia spun on her heel the second she heard the boom, and before he could say a damn thing, before he could spoil it or further confuse him or her, she launched herself at him.

His eyes blanked in surprise, but he caught her. She’d never doubted he would. His hands came up to cup her ass and support her in place.

“You want me?” she barked. “Fucking take me. Stop messing us around. Claim what’s yours.”

His pupils bloomed at that. The dark-navy irises swallowed up by the Stygian depths, and then they were on the mattress, and suddenly, nothing else mattered.

He pulled his weight off of her chest to tear at her blouse. Buttons flew everywhere as they snapped and popped, spinning into space. But he ignored them before the last one even fell and went to work on her bra. He tore at that, too, with a strength that felt superhuman but one that spoke of him being at his wit’s end.

Shoving her legs aside, he stood back and grabbed the cuffs of her pants and pulled them down before tossing them on the ground. Within seconds, she was covered in nothing more than her panties, and the feelings that flooded her as his navy eyes scanned her? She’d never felt so powerful.

Throat tightening, she reached up to cup her breasts. Rafe’s instruction had taught her how to respect her body, how to give it what it needed, but more importantly, to know what it wanted and how to respond to it appropriately.

She’d been a virgin in his, or technically, at the side of his bed.

She’d been untried, untested. The only sex she’d seen had been in her visions, and most nights hadn’t been spent touching herself . . . she’d been in her wolf skin. Fearful about what she’d see and avoiding it at all costs.

Now, because of Rafe, she understood that look in Mikkel’s eyes and knew he was on fire for her. Knew that he wanted her, like she wanted him.

More than anything, she understood that.

While tears pricked her eyes at the wonder of the moment, she fought them back.

She didn’t want tender or sensitive. She wanted him. She wanted everything he had to give, and he hadn’t been wrong. Mikkel wasn’t tender and he wasn’t sensitive. He was kind and he was caring, but he was gruff and obstinate and arrogant.

She wanted the real him.

Lifting her legs as he threw off his shirt, she made to curl them around his hips to drag him close. She reveled in his laughter as he flung back his head, then the teasing glint that set her nerves alight as he crawled onto the bed. When he covered her, his hands on either side of her arms, he murmured, “Someone wants me.”

Thalia narrowed her eyes. “Jackass.”

He grinned. “Are those sweet nothings I hear?”

She hated that her eyes were sparkling with mirth, but the truth was, they were. How could he make her feel this way–so exasperated and so overwhelmed that she wanted nothing more than for them to connect in the purest, deepest way two human beings could connect?

Licking her lips, she whispered, “I don’t have to do sweet when I’m with you.”

Interest flared, he tilted his head to the side. “Oh?”

“Yeah. ‘Oh’. I can be raw with you, can’t I, Mikkel?” She hadn’t meant to sound coy, but it came out that way, and he responded to it like any predator would a prey’s lowering of its defenses.

He stared at her, let his gaze wash over her supine form, and then he stunned the hell out of her by dropping his head, and with their eyes connected because she tilted upward to watch him, he grabbed her left nipple between his teeth and bit. It was careful, but it was a definite pinch.

Nostrils flaring, she growled, “Oh, let the games begin.”

And so it began.

 

** **

Mikkel

 

When Mikkel found himself flat on his back, to say he was surprised was an understatement. But he went with it, rolling with the punches he wanted her to throw.

He’d talked her into this. Made her see that he didn’t want her to be anything other than herself with him, and there was so much depth to this woman, so many levels that Rafe couldn’t explore because he was intrinsically and inherently good. He healed, he soothed. Mikkel didn’t doubt that Rafe was half beast, and it would undoubtedly manifest in ways that would leave Thalia sore . . . but that wasn’t what Mikkel would bring to Thalia’s life.

He could understand violence. He could understand the need to fight fire with fire.

Mikkel could be the salve to the burns that Thalia endured on her way to exploring this fucked-up prophecy she was a part of. That, he corrected, he was a part of, too.

When her hands worked his fly open and she delved into the opening, his eyes flared wide after she ducked down and swiped her tongue over the crown of his shaft. He let out a hiss then curved up to watch her. She gathered her hair back in one hand, while, with the other, she held him straight and licked him like a goddamn sucker.

Grunting as that small, pouty mouth covered him, he felt his body grow rigid as she explored with a leisurely caress that drove him wild. When she just carried on, not sucking, not stroking, just fucking teasing, he snarled, “Take your panties off.”

She peeked up at him while swirling her tongue around his glans. The coyness took him aback.

And made him burn.

“Take them off, Thalia, and sit that pretty pussy on my face.”

That got him a reaction. She stopped the goddamn licking. “I might have an ugly pussy.”

For a second, he gaped at her, then he shook his head. “Don’t care if it’s the bride of Frankenstein’s version of a cunt, it’s mine. And it will taste like fucking manna. Give it to me,” he commanded.

She wrinkled her nose. “I don’t want sweet nothings, but can you not compare my bits to a monster?”

He laughed. “Rough with the smooth, babe. Now stop procrastinating. I want to taste you.”

A low guttural sound came from low in her throat. “You might have made my bones melt.”

Mikkel snickered. “Good to know. Now move.”

She wriggled on the covers, somehow managing to lower the bikini-cut panties off without leaving the bed. When she was bare, he didn’t have to encourage her again. She crawled toward him, her tits jiggling in a way that made him want to fuck them.

When she neared his head, she hesitated, but he didn’t let her. He grabbed her, reaching around to settle her in a good position, then urged her to lower herself. She did so, slowly. Not to tease but because, he felt sure, this was the first time she’d ridden a man’s tongue.

She shuddered when he connected with her, his lips coming to purse around her clit, so he could suck hard on it. When a whimper followed, he continued taunting her as she’d taunted him. He felt her thighs clamp about his head, and he loved it. Loved that slowly, if surely, she began to let go.

Her hands came to his belly, and he felt her nails dig into his muscles. He wished to fuck he was naked but all the important parts were bare. That was all that mattered.

Her body was a strange mixture of tense and relaxed. Just as he’d work her into a state of tension, she’d sag over him, her nails clawing into him that little bit harder.

With a groan, she whispered, “I want to suck your cock. May I?”

So polite!

He grinned and slurped up her juices as an answer. She whimpered, but he felt the lapping of his shaft once more, and then she began to taste him properly.

The minute her mouth was on him, he wanted to shoot his load, and he held back only by the grace of God.

He felt her climax twice before he thought about moving her. And only then, it was because she was a shaking, shuddering mess, and he feared for his cock—the next one, she might bite down. Hard. She wasn’t even sucking him anymore, just kept him in the tight clasp of her mouth. He wasn’t sure if that was punishment or a gift because he was as on edge as if she’d given him the best BJ ever.

She tasted like fire and ice combined.

Yeah. Impossible, but that was how it was. She was like whiskey, made his veins burn, but she slid down like ice, cooling him and prepping him for more.

She’d climaxed with ease, he was pleased to note. Her releases weren’t too short, and her clit was very sensitive.

He intended on taking full advantage of that at a later date.

Deciding the best way to encourage her to move was to suck down on her clit hard after flicking through her folds and tugging them into his mouth, he was satisfied when, with a shriek, she lifted off him and flung herself onto the covers. All the while, she garbled, “No more, no more. Too sensitive, sensitive, sensitive.”

He grinned and wiped his hand over his jaw. She watched him with wide eyes.

“That’s me.”

“That’s you,” he told her easily. With the fingers he’d used to wipe off, he sucked them into his mouth. “You taste mighty fine, Thalia.”

She grunted. “You do, too.”

“I’ll come in your mouth another day. Today, I want in that tight little pussy.” He reached for her and settled himself between her thighs, satisfied he’d tongue-fucked the sass out of her. For the moment. “Someday soon, I’m gonna turn you over, pull your asscheeks apart, and fuck you from behind. You’re gonna have to bite down on the comforter because that’s deep and hard, but I want you every which way I can get you.”

Thalia moaned. “I want you to have me every which way you want.”

“That’s what I like to hear.” He grabbed his cock and pressed it to the slick folds of her pussy. She was sopping wet, and he knew he’d probably outdone himself in the foreplay department. He knew it made him a prick, but before, foreplay hadn’t exactly been fun. But that? That was a different kettle of fish.

One day, he fully intended on engaging in a proper 69, with her actually sucking his cock rather than her just whimpering as he skewered her on his tongue. Not that he’d minded . . . any chance he’d get, he’d have the taste of her on his lips. Just the thought had him clenching his jaw as he tapped her clit with the flat of his cock.

“Oh, gods,” she moaned, her arms flailing overhead as her head turned from side to side.

She was so bare to him at that moment, so open and exposed that Mikkel knew he’d tumbled down the slippery slope. There was no avoiding it. The sudden rightness was as overwhelming as the need to fill her. He rocked his hips, sliding through her juices for exquisite seconds, then, she made him laugh. She did as she had earlier, slipped her calves around his hips and dragged him to her.

“Don’t tease me,” she growled.

“As if I’d dare,” he mocked, and arching his pelvis, he pushed into her.

The keening noise she made would be with him until the day he died. He knew that like he knew nothing else at that moment. She’d fill him in ways no other ever could, in ways he’d want no other in his life.

This was why he’d been scared. Why he’d avoided her and the bond. She was everything.

Every. Fucking. Thing.

Terror and relief ricocheted inside him, tearing him into pieces he wasn’t sure he’d ever recuperate from. She damaged him even as she rebuilt him, and he hadn’t even thrust in and out of her yet.

When he opened his eyes, he realized he was hovering over her, his hands either side of her head, his forearms straining as he held himself up.

She was looking up at him, their gazes clashing, and in those icy-blue depths, he felt his heart stop and immediately restart. It was intense and it was insane, but he knew, he fucking knew, that his heart suddenly paced with hers.

Too far gone to be freaked out, he dipped his head and pressed his lips to hers. She acquiesced, ceding to him as she let him taste her, and slowly, he thrust into her. Sawing his cock in and out of her in a way that had both of them shuddering even as they tasted one another.

The intensity of the moment was enough to stir the embers of terror, but something in her soothed him. And when she wrapped her arms around him, then tightened her legs, he felt safe.

Safe.

Wanting to shake his head at the notion, but knowing that would separate them, he maintained the kiss. As he paced the thrust of his hips, he carried the motion on with his tongue.

Only when she began to rock her pelvis, when her nails began to scrape down his spine, and her breathing upped its pace, did he move harder. Faster. Deeper.

Sweat slicked between them, gluing them, binding them in a way he’d never forget. With every hard thrust, he made sure to rock up, so he could provide some friction to her clit. It wasn’t perfect, but then, it didn’t seem like it had to be. She clung to him, small mewling sounds escaping her; panicked noises that stroked his ego, that told him how close she was. How close he’d brought her to the edge.

And then, he felt her explode.

She cascaded beneath him, alternating between clutching and releasing in a way that made his cock feel sure it was somewhere between heaven and hell. Even as she pulled her mouth free from his and she cried out, louder than ever, her cunt milked him. It drew his seed out, urged it free.

Something in her tempted something in him, and as he pressed his forehead to hers, feeling the veins in his throat bulge with the strain, he groaned his own release. As his seed, for the first time in his life, fell into an unprotected pussy, he didn’t even have it in him to freak out.

No, that came when she struck.

He’d known, at the back of his mind, it was coming, but he winced nonetheless as her teeth clamped onto his throat. He felt the pricks of the fangs push into his flesh and felt blood pool from the wound. He let out a hiss, but he didn’t feel fear. He’d known how Lykens claimed their human mates, and had known this would be a part of their first time together.

He closed his eyes as he let out another longer hiss, and then, his eyes flared wide as she pulled down with her tongue, sucked, and like that, he was orgasming again. This time, it was closer to agony than it was to pleasure, and as the ecstasy of the bite and the delight she gave him rushed through his body, Mikkel just didn’t have it in him to prop himself up.

He slumped onto her and immediately tumbled into sleep.