Jory Strong: Dakotah's Reading

She groaned and rose higher in the tub, rubbed her nipple back and forth across his lips. Taunting him by not allowing him to latch on and feast despite his growls of frustration.

He retaliated by filling her channel with his cock, by securing her so she couldn’t fuck herself on him as his fingers went to her clit, stroking, teasing, making her sheath fist and unfist around a thick, pulsing shaft that remained stationary.

Dakotah relented, stilled, brought him to her breast and held him there as he suckled, the pull of his mouth sending ice-hot shards of need straight to her engorged knob so that it strained against his fingers, jerked under his caress. So that she whispered, “Please.”

He took control then. Shifting, plundering her body with his cock as his fangs sank into her breast. Dark urges filling him, whispering for him to take her to the edge of human death, to the point where her heart stuttered in warning. But he resisted, wanting more than a single fuck in the tub before finishing what they had started.

And so he fed, holding her tightly to him, their thrashing sending water cascading over the edge of the tub. Her scream of release echoing off the walls of the bathroom. His own muffled against her flesh.

Domino rose from the tub, his mouth still pressed to her breast, his cock still embedded in her cunt. The strength he’d gained from his alien ancestors allowed him to take her to the bedroom, to settle them both on the thick pile of rugs in front of the fireplace.

Only then did he lift his head, sealing the puncture marks above her nipple with his tongue before kissing up her body, stopping when his mouth was above hers, his eyes locked with hers. There wasn’t much time left before they’d have to leave. Fane or Cable or both of them would arrive shortly to escort them to the place where the challenge would be met and answered in death.

Victor Hale’s death.

Domino didn’t doubt for an instant that Dakotah’s enemy would die tonight.

He understood her need to be present. And was reconciled to it.

It was his own reluctance to make the third exchange without ensuring himself that she understood what it meant that surprised him.

The Heat and Hunger, the alien stamp of his ancestors, had no conscience when it came to the taking of a kadine. Even the wolf felt nothing beyond the rightness of its claim to Dakotah’s wolf as its mate.

But the man needed more.

Domino brushed his lips against Dakotah’s, groaning when the movement slid his cock deeper into her body and her slick muscles clamped down on him, tightened as though afraid he would try to leave.

Dakotah could feel his hesitation, his uncertainty and if she’d been in doubt as to where her future lay, then his delay, his desire that she accept him without the thrall of pheromones or the instinct of the wolf, would have allayed her fears. His concern was a wedge driven into a heart that had been locked shut, forcing it open, so the love held there for the future could finally be freed.

“We’ll have to leave soon,” he said, but made no attempt to escape from her body or her arms.

“Then we’ll have to hurry and finish what we started.”

He settled more heavily on her. “There’ll be pain.”

“I assumed there would be.”

“My death would trigger your own.”

She laughed. “What happened to your assertion that taking on Victor Hale would hardly be a fight at all?”

Domino growled, a playful sound echoing the joy cascading through him, flooding him with happiness before The Heat and The Hunger moved in, asserting its claim.

With a groan he pulled from her body and flipped her to her stomach. His hands and mouth, the sharp nip of his teeth driving her to her elbows and knees, positioning her so that her nipples pressed against the heavy fiber of the carpet. Her thighs spread, exposing wet pubic hair and folds pulled back to reveal a rosy cleft, flushed and parted, seeping with desire. He traced the glistening skin with his tongue, rubbed over her erect clit, tortured them both with the brush of fangs against the flesh of her inner thigh.

She whimpered, a nearly wolf-like sound that made his cock jerk and leak. That made him taste her arousal again, growl with frustration. The urge to lick and suck, to bathe his face in her need warring with the necessity of finishing what they’d started.

He lingered between her thighs as long as he could. Until his cock was flexing, bobbing, smearing liquid heat on his abdomen. Until his balls burned and ached. Then he mounted her in a smooth motion, shoved all the way into her in one thrust, stopping only when his testicles were pressed tightly to her body, trapped between her hot mound and his muscled thighs.

There was no thought beyond that point. There was only The Hunger and The Heat. Driving him to slash his wrist and press it to her mouth. To pierce her shoulder with his fangs and feed. To fuck. Endless moments of dark ecstasy. Of sharing so profound that life and death blended into exquisite release.

Followed by pain so searing that it seemed to last an eternity. A physical pain for Dakotah. An agony of the heart and soul, the mind for Domino, who could only hold her, his strength keeping her from hurting herself as her cells attacked one another, savagely and forever altering what she was, turning her into something not human or wolf, or completely alien, but the perfect blending of the three.

She was panting, exhausted, shaking by the time it was over. But it was the sight of her tears that very nearly undid Domino. “It’s over now,” he whispered, kissing her, nuzzling her as a wolf comforts its mate. Absorbing her tears, sharing them. Baring his throat and pressing it to her mouth. A promise. A show of trust.

Take my blood, Dakotah , he said, the command so clear that for a moment she thought he’d spoken it out loud. But when he repeated the words in her mind, she knew she hadn’t imagined them. And then he shifted, spearing his fingers through her hair, controlling the range of her movement as he rubbed his neck against her mouth.

In an instant the pain and trauma of the transformation was forgotten. Her sole reality became the beat of his pulse against her lips. She cried out, arched as her canine teeth elongated into fangs.

She burned.

With Heat. With Hunger.

A scorching wave that made her struggle wildly in his arms until it passed. Then he once again offered his throat. This time as his penis slid into her channel in a gentle homecoming.

Now, Dakotah.

And she bit. Fed as they made love. Both of them gaining strength from the intimacy of their joining. The sacredness of the mixing and sharing of blood.

When it was done they lay together, limbs entangled. Two still joined into one. Content. Until the first tendril of doubt, the first tug of a heartstring, the first brush of mind against mind. A tentative exploration. Domino wanting to know what she felt for him, why she’d made the second and third exchanges—even though he knew he should accept her gift without question. Domino seeing glimpses of her past. Of the men. Of the things she’d been forced to do and endure.

She jerked as though he’d slapped her and tried to close her mind. He tightened his grip on her, rolled so she was trapped underneath him, captured by his body and his eyes. “I will kill all of them,” he said, letting her feel the extent of his rage at what had been done to her, his desire for revenge and retribution. Letting her feel too his awe at her courage, her endurance, her intelligence. His amazement that she’d survived where few would have, grown stronger where others would have been broken and crushed.

That she’d been willing to trust and give herself to him nearly reduced him to tears, and he allowed her to feel that as well, though he repeated his comment, not holding back his lethal nature, what he was capable of. “I will kill all of them.”