Crucible of Fate (15 page)

I almost came.

When he shoved me forward, my groin forced to the wall as he rubbed against my crease, grinding, pushing, I demanded that he get on the bed and put his ass in the air.

“No, that’s not what my mate needs.”

The restraints Yuri had hammered into the wall were freed from where they were hooked behind a curtain on the left and another on the right. He had put the bolts into the wall himself, secured heavy silver chains to them, and finished them with thick manacles. He had then covered the shackles from any prying eyes that might ever enter our private rooms. The benign swath of silk that draped over the shackles was dark midnight blue.

He unhooked the first and I heard it, the scrape of metal over stone as he moved it, and then the restraint enclosed my wrist. It stung, as silver always did when it hit werepanther skin. As the change in us was chemical, biological, the shift caused all of us to be born allergic to that particular metal. Normally it was avoided, but Yuri had asked for both the chains and cuffs to be forged from silver for that specific reason. He wanted to make sure I couldn’t get free.

I shuddered as my arms stretched wide, the second shackle locking to my right wrist.

“What does the kitty need?”

“Fuck you!” I yelled, fighting and twisting. I tried to bite him, but I had no range of motion, held fast, only able to use my head, hips, and legs. My chest was wedged against the hard, sharp stone wall.

I snarled when he laughed at me, squirmed when his hands went to my belt and trouser stays. My slacks pooled around my ankles, covering my dress shoes, seconds later.

“If you struggle, you’ll hurt yourself, so stay still,” he ordered, warm breath caressing my ear before he put his open mouth between my shoulder blades.

He took his time, licking, nibbling, sucking, then finally kissing down my spine until he reached the small of my back, and he dragged my briefs down. My hard, dripping cock bounced free, brushing the wall painfully even as I felt him bite down into my right ass cheek.

“Oh, please,” I begged, my voice not my own, the whine, the crack, not normal.

Rough hands spread me, opened me wide, and then he dipped in his tongue to taste me, sliding over my puckered hole before pushing inside.

“Yuri!” I yelled, pushing back into his face, wanting him deeper.

He devoured my ass, nibbled and suckled, relaxing my muscles, making everything wet and open and wanting.

I was panting, lips parted, writhing against the wall as he discarded my underwear, shoes, and socks, all of it shoved to the side so I stood chained and naked.

“What do you need?”

But I couldn’t say—it would make me weak and I couldn’t be, could never be. “Let me go.”

He left me, and I was in agony that he had taken me at my word as I stood there and yanked and tugged on the restraints, causing them to cut into my wrists.

“Stop,” he ordered, and then he put his hand over my cock, stroking, jacking me off, but shielding tender flesh from sharp edges even as he screwed two lubed fingers deep inside my rectum.

“Yuri!” I howled in anger and pain and bliss.

There was no gentle, because I wasn’t having it. I didn’t want it, didn’t need it, wouldn’t have appreciated it even if it had been offered. Instead there was stinging heat as he withdrew his fingers, only to quickly slather my hole before he grasped my hips and pushed his enormous mushroom head against my entrance.

“Beg.”

I tried to push back, to lift up, to gain any kind of leverage at all.

“Domin.”

This was part of it, the control I had to release.

“Beg,” he ordered again.

I was shivering. My entire body had broken out into a cold sweat, and I could feel him inching in, stretching slowly, my muscles fighting so hard, the pain searing through me, my cock so hard it hurt, drooling precome as he wrapped his hand tight around my balls, making sure there was no release for me, just pressure and ache.

“Yuri.”

“Yuri what?”

“Please, my mate, please, Yuri, fuck me, take me. I belong to you.”

“Yes,” he said and thrust hard and deep, breaching me and burying himself to the balls in one violent thrust.

I roared his name, and he pulled out only to plunge back inside, harder, faster, hammering into me, setting a rhythm that was driving and rough, without a hint of tenderness.

Letting my head loll back when he fisted his hand there in my hair, the force painful, I whimpered with happiness.

Everything stopped, everything fell away, and all there was, was the pistoning of his hips pounding my ass, the slide, and the fullness. The pinch subsided, going from sharp, scorching pain to dull ache to tensing, quivering throbbing desire. I could only stretch my fingers along the wall and grip, feel my feet leave the floor from the thrusts, and simply let every whine, moan, and cry flow from my throat.

He stretched his hand over my head and then my right hand was free.

“Grab your cock; I want to see you come on the wall.”

“Don’t stop,” I pleaded, because I was so filled, so stretched, and yet there was still more I needed to have stripped away.

He gripped my chest with one hand, the other bruising my hip as he took me and used me and burned the knowledge of who I was and what I was to him first into my body and then into my brain.

“You’re nothing but mine,” he snarled, and the sound so dark and fierce it brought the first jolt of release. “If all else is taken, that remains. Always.”

I could feel the hard ball of cold and terror start to break apart in my chest. Even if I failed, even if I was no longer semel-aten, he would always be mine. He could never be lost.

“Did you hear me?”

My balls tightened, my muscles locked, and my breath caught in my chest.

“Did you hear me?” he roared.

“Yes,” I rasped as my vision went white.

“Yes, who?”

“Yes, my mate,” I barely got out.

He drove hard and deep, and the teeth in my shoulder made me gasp. As the orgasm wrung me out, I screamed his name.

He purred mine softly in my ear.

I clamped down around the thick pole impaling me, and his low rumbling purr brought an answering whimper before he convulsed within me and flooded my ass with liquid heat.

“There’s my sweet man,” he soothed, and I felt hot tears on my cheeks.

He bucked forward as my muscles milked his length, and I was so tight inside that as we stood there, molded together, semen dripped wet and thick between us. It felt decadent and intimate, and I shuddered with aftershocks and contractions.

He wrapped his brawny arms around me, plastered his massive chest to my back, and kissed up the side of my neck so slowly, so gently, that I went boneless in his arms.

“There, yes, lean on me so I can unlock your wrist.”

I gave him my weight, and he reached up and released me. No longer tethered to the wall, I would have slumped to the floor had he not held me up.

“Domin!”

The muffled yell brought my attention from my memories to the present and to Jin, who I had not noticed standing out on the balcony.

“Stop moaning and go to sleep. You will have your mate soon, and I suggest you unburden your heart and tell him everything that you think he doesn’t know already.”

I scowled.

“Silence heals nothing, fixes nothing, and unlocks nothing. Just because you don’t say something doesn’t make it any less true.”

“Do you speak from experience?”

“My semel knows I love him and I know he loves me. Yuri might know the same, you even declared it once in Mongolia, and I know because I was there. But after this, you have to make him understand his place.”

“You realize you’re the last person in the world who should be giving me this lecture.”

He exhaled slowly. “I do see the irony.”

“Logan is going to kill us both, you know—you for going, and me for asking you.”

“I suspect so, yes.”

“He’ll never let you leave his side again.”

“And there is comfort in knowing that, as there will be for Yuri. It is a great thing to be needed by another.”

Yes, it was.

Chapter 8

I
T
WAS
what a prince did.

“We both know that I won’t be the maahes of this tribe once Jin leaves,” Crane argued. “I’m leaving with him.”

“I know that.” I said, before I made sure to darken my face to a scowl. “But until that time, Crane Adams, you are the maahes of this tribe, and you must remain here and lead.”

“I can’t do that.”

“You can,” I asserted, “and you will.”

He was wrong to expect support from his best friend. Jin only cackled instead of helping him out.

“Are you insane?” He was incredulous.

“Just quit bitching,” Jin said with a yawn.

I tried the logical route to put him at ease. “Mikhail will be here to answer—”

Mikhail spoke up. “I’m going with you.”

I watched Samani’s eyes go big and round behind him.

“No.” I shook my head. “You will stay here and take care of the tribe and advise Crane while I’m gone.”

He took a breath as he gestured at Jin. “And you will take the reah of the tribe of Mafdet with you without his sheseru or a dozen or so—”

“You’re kidding, right?” Jin half yelled. “Nothing and no one’s gonna hurt me, Mikhail. Crane’s in charge of the first tribe. Could you just stay here and give him some goddamn backup?”

Mikhail’s dark cobalt gaze was a glower.

Even in the midst of chaos that morning, I found the both of them so endearing. Mikhail was trying to do his duty to everyone, and Jin was just being Jin, clearing his own path.

“Logan’s going to kill you all,” Crane said impassively.

“Probably,” I agreed.

Jin waggled his eyebrows.

J
IN
had killed the priest on a Monday; it had taken me the night and all the next day to recover from my injuries. Kabore was still worried, but our physician, Thema Pakhom, said she would let me travel only if I did nothing to exert myself.

“You must be careful, Domin. You haven’t healed fully yet, and none of us want to lose you to something as banal as internal bleeding.”

I had watched her eyes soften like they did whenever I was around. Apparently more people in my home liked me than I was aware of. So even though I was still weak, we left late Wednesday night to drive ten hours, planning to arrive in Ipis the following morning.

“You’re still sore?” Jin was checking as we sat in the back of the monstrous black Hummer.

“The rest of us do not all heal as fast as you, nekhene cat,” I grumbled.

“Or as fast as the semel-netjer, apparently.”

I growled at him, and he laughed, which was such a nice sound I let my irritation go and used his shoulder for a pillow.

“Sit by me,” Koren offered, but Jin’s fingers threading though my hair felt too good to move away from. And Yuri would not mind me showing up smelling like Jin.

We took twelve men with us, since Taj, with his sixty, was already there. We had heard from him, but the news was odd. He had been allowed into the city of Ipis, but not into the home of the semel. Without me there, they did not have to, by law, grant him entrance, and so they did not.

He had seen Yuri behind a gate and reported him in good health, though he had seen bruises on his face and his left arm was bandaged from wrist to bicep. But the smirk had been his. When Taj had yelled that I was on my way, he had brightened. I wanted Taj to put Yuri on the phone, but he was not allowed to. It was a mistake, the one this semel was making, keeping me from my mate, and he would know that soon enough.

“I
S
THAT
grass?”

“Yes,” Kabore responded, yawning as we arrived at ten the following morning. “Ipis sits over an underground lake; the whole area is lush with plant life.”

It was stunning. Sobek was dry, almost everywhere I’d been in Egypt was, but this was gorgeous and brought the classic image of an oasis to mind. When we reached the town itself, we parked close to an outdoor café and got out, my khatyu filing out silently behind me. Instantly there was a contingent of men there to greet us, and I wasn’t surprised. They had to have seen us coming for hours; there was only one two-lane road there and back from Sobek. I had spoken to Taj, and he had asked if I wanted him to leave his position outside the semel’s home to come greet us. I ordered him to stay; I would be there soon enough.

“Sah’eed nahharkoo.”

A man stood in front of twenty men, even though every second more and more people gathered behind them in the square.

I couldn’t speak the language, and I wasn’t in the mood to try and stumble through it. “I am the semel-aten, Domin Thorne. I need to speak to Hakkan Tarek, the semel of the tribe of Feran.”

Everyone went to their knees.

“Who is Hakkan Tarek?” I demanded of the crowd.

No one said a word.

Jin cleared his throat behind me.

“What?” I asked, glaring over my shoulder at him.

He mouthed words.

“What?”