Pretty Poison (4 page)

Noah’s toes curled into the sheets beneath him as his gaze drank in stretches of smooth skin and thick springy curls that carpeted the alpha. He wanted to twine the dark hair in his fingers, trace the contours of those bare shoulders with his tongue. When the shifter’s hands dropped to his fly, Noah trembled.

He didn’t say anything and neither did Noah. Wade simply unzipped and stepped out of his pants, kicking them aside as he stalked to the bed. Rather than circling the mattress, he crawled sinuously over the footboard. Arousal streaked through Noah at Wade’s prowl, calling to his wolf. He hovered above Noah, whose breath locked in his lungs. The shifter nudged Noah’s thighs apart. He settled between them, pressing groin to groin. Noah shuddered at Wade’s long, hard cock rubbing his.

The shifter flashed a feral smile.

If this was all Noah would ever have, he didn’t want their sex to hurt. “I’m a virgin,” he said.

“You’re perfect,” Wade said on a growl, head lowering.

Their first kiss wasn’t gentle. His mouth covered Noah’s, tongue stabbing inside. Noah moaned, opening to welcome him. Bracing his weight on one elbow, Wade threaded his fingers into Noah’s hair, fisting it. “Too short,” he muttered, palming Noah’s scalp to drag him closer. To deepen the kiss. Hungrier. More carnal. Noah slid his arms around Wade’s chest, fingertips digging into the warm skin of his back. He arched, fighting to bring the silken heat of the shifter flush against him.

Wade ate his mouth, one greedy gulp after another that sent Noah’s senses flying. He wanted everything. He loved the slide of the shifter’s tongue, the weight of those hips on his, Wade’s smell, and his taste—coppery blood, a hint of bourbon, and cinnamon. When Wade tore his mouth away, Noah cried out in protest, and then moaned as talented lips descended to his throat.

“Wade,” the shifter said, kisses skating down his chest. “My name is Wade.”

Noah’s father had insisted that he, his brothers, and his sister Lydia knew their enemy. “I know.”

“Good.” Wade found Noah’s nipple, and Noah lost his mind.

The relentless sucking pressure on the pebbled nub built inside him, first as a flickering flame, then an inferno. Noah squirmed, panting as Wade lapped at his pec. Noah’s nails scraped a trail from Wade’s shoulders to his nape, digging into the wild tumble of dark hair there to just hang on.

The snick of a bottle opening drowned out Noah’s gasping groans. He thrust his hips up, blindly seeking Wade’s when the alpha lifted up.

“Shh, little wolf,” Wade murmured, kneeing Noah’s thighs wider. He folded Noah’s legs up toward his chest. Slick fingers separated his ass cheeks. “Relax. Let me in.”

Time stopped when Wade worked the first finger inside him.

Noah stiffened at the sensation and the foreignness of that probing touch, but Wade returned to tormenting his nipples, distracting him. That felt good, mesmerizing, and the finger in his ass didn’t hurt. It wasn’t uncomfortable. Just different. New. Noah soon lost himself in the giddy pleasure streaking from his nipples to his balls, forgetting the strangeness of that finger fucking and stretching his hole. He gasped when the second finger went in, but it was bearable. Surprising. Only a faint burn.

Both fingers brushed something inside him that lit Noah up, tearing a gasp from his throat.

“There it is,” Wade said against his wet nipple and thrust inside to stroke Noah again.

Noah’s body was no longer his own, and he barely had the presence of mind to care. Pleasure ruled him, from the lips on his pec, to the fingers in his ass. Drunk on desire, he yielded to the stirring of his wolf and sucked in panting breaths, releasing them in pleading whimpers. Every thrust into his body made him feel emptier. Hollowed.

The wolf rousing inside Noah wanted. Urgently wanted.

Wade rose up, withdrawing from Noah’s ass to grope for the bottle of lube. Eyelids heavy, Noah watched him slick his hard cock. “Ready to take me?” the alpha asked.

He pulled Wade down to him, the greedy sounds he made into the shifter’s mouth his answer. Wade kissed him hungrily, lapping at Noah’s tongue as the head of Wade’s cock pushed between Noah’s ass cheeks. The pressure built until the tip popped inside.

Pain! White-hot. Noah jerked, muscles clenching at the invasion, but Wade didn’t pull back, only swallowing his hurt gasp. He waited, body covering Noah’s, slick with sweat, warm. Heavy. Like a blanket restraining Noah and forcing him to be still, to accept. Wade pumped his hips, edging a little deeper, and that was better. The sensations sank into him as slowly as his lover did, not as much focused on his tightly stretched ring. Impaled, Noah moaned into Wade’s kiss while his body learned the girth and length of Wade’s dick by careful degrees. The sense of fullness intensified. Wade’s trembling matched Noah’s. Every breath he took was Wade’s, the air perfumed with the musk of shared arousal.

Noah’s inexperience hadn’t stopped Wade, but he’d nonetheless heeded that warning, opening Noah up glacially slow...until the sting didn’t matter anymore. Noah couldn’t think, could only feel. Wade’s lube-slick grasp of his hip. The silk of the bedclothes against his shoulder blades. The stretch of Wade’s dick in his ass. All of it dizzied him and taunted the spiraling want. He needed Wade fully seated inside him and the horrible empty ache satisfied.

“Shh,” Wade whispered again, finally sliding home, his balls pushing into Noah’s crack. “I’ll give you what you need. Just breathe.”

Breathe?

Who cared for breathing when Wade dropped down to suck voraciously on Noah’s neck, when his hips reared back and then shoved his cock so far inside Noah that he saw stars? The tingle in his ass intensified, better than Wade’s fingers. Pleasure dumbfounded Noah, wrung broken moans from him. Wade fucking him, taking him, burned him up. Wade’s thrusts set off explosions inside Noah that swept him away, laid him bare, both destroyed and delighted him. Desperate for more, Noah bucked his hips to meet Wade’s next stroke and this time, Wade’s groan mingled with Noah’s. “That’s it, little wolf. Dance with me.”

The pump of Wade’s dick into Noah redoubled, the slaps of their joining flesh breaking a quiet disrupted only by their husky moans. Chaos ruled Noah, inside his head, within his body. Consumed by pleasure, wanton and feral with it, he yanked Wade’s hair and urgently writhed on Wade’s dick.

“More,” Noah said, his voice shockingly low, almost a snarl. If Wade fucking him hadn’t driven him out of his mind, Noah would’ve been horrified by his bald demand—of an alpha!—but Wade only laughed.

“Such fire in a package so small.” Wade licked a meandering line to the hollow of Noah’s throat despite Noah’s urgent tugging and the clumsy crash of his ass lunging to meet Wade’s. “But does the little wolf have teeth?”

As though Noah’s yanks and twisting hardly mattered, Wade palmed Noah’s scalp and shoved Noah’s lips to his sweaty shoulder. Fear jolted through Noah when his mouth instantly watered, his gums smarting as his wolf’s teeth pushed through, his canines sharpening. He tried to jerk away, but there was no escaping the palm forcing him forward, nor the reckless abandon of Wade’s dick spearing into his ass.

“Bite me,” Wade said, claws scraping Noah’s scalp as he, too, gave into his beast. “Mate with me.”

The power and ferocity of their sex refused anything less, but the surging needs within Noah scared him. Mark the alpha? Taste his blood and take it into his body as readily as his ass swallowed Wade’s dick? He moaned in faint protest, even as he rocked his ass into Wade’s thrusts. The points of his incisors pricked the hot skin of Wade’s shoulder.

“Bite!”

Whining at the harsh command, Noah opened his mouth wider and clamped down, sinking his teeth into Wade’s flesh. He choked on the splash of blood, ears ringing with Wade’s grunt while the cadence of maddening thrusts into Noah quickened. His alpha’s blood spattered his tongue, scalding hot and salty copper. Noah lapped at the inexpertly inflicted wound, but could only sample frustratingly stingy tastes. He fastened his lips around the injury instead and sucked, shuddering in untamed glee when Wade’s flesh yielded up Noah’s prize in the spurt of rich blood that filled his mouth.

Wade groaned through clenched teeth, fucking Noah harder, faster, pushing Noah ever closer to the precipice.

“More, more, more,” Noah shouted when Wade ripped him from the feast of the alpha’s blood. Enthralling crimson trickled from the collection of pinpricks Noah had made. Wade yanked Noah’s head to the side, exposing Noah’s throat.

He hadn’t the air in his lungs to scream when Wade struck. His spine bowed in agony at teeth stabbing into the crook of his neck and shoulder. Pain—and shock—devoured him as ruthlessly as Wade’s bite tore muscle and skin, but strangely, that hurt was all it took. This was the nebulous “more” that Noah, in his ignorance, had pleaded for. Wade delivered it, fully and sweetly. The orgasm gathering at the base of Noah’s spine streaked straight to his balls and up his dick. Vision graying, Noah came in pulsing bursts that painted their writhing bellies, mixing with sex sweat and the musk of their joining. Lost in the tumult, Noah cried out as pleasure wasted him and wrung him dry.

When there was nothing left of Noah but quivering, gluey muscle and the surreal spin of his thoughts, Wade released the wound. He lifted up, hips wildly thrusting. Reeling from the satisfaction Wade had given him, Noah couldn’t resist him. He pumped his hips, muscles clenching around Wade’s dick, Noah’s stunned stare taking in the bright red smeared across Wade’s chin and the spark of victory in the alpha’s dark eyes.

Wade pried Noah’s clumsy fingers from his hair, and taking both wrists in his hand, he pushed them into the mattress, restraining and controlling Noah effortlessly. Noah didn’t fight him. Why? Here was where he belonged, stretched out for the pleasure of his alpha, welcoming Wade into his body. He surrendered and he gave that which his alpha craved most—his submission.

“More,” he begged, tilting his jaw to the side to bare the throbbing bite and lifting his sore yet tingling ass in wanton appeal.

Ignoring the proffered taste, Wade tipped his head back, lashes shuttering his eyes as his cock hardened to steel inside Noah. Wade’s pace stuttered. Noah shuddered and shook as Wade’s dick jerked within Noah’s body, and he shot warm cum that showered Noah’s guts. Frightened at the overwhelming sensations, Noah stiffened. He pulled against Wade’s grip on his wrists, but collapsed in quick defeat when Wade’s claws pierced his skin and at the threatening but gratified growl that worked from Wade’s throat. The cock buried in Noah’s ass jetted, filling him with burst after burst of the alpha’s cum.

When he finished, Wade looked down at Noah, a flicker of shifter red in his eyes as he released Noah’s wrists, lifting his hands away slowly. Heart drumming against his ribcage, Noah didn’t move, only panted, splayed before the alpha like a sacrifice. Which Noah supposed he was—the conquered prize. He nevertheless winced when Wade settled back on his heels, his softening dick easing from Noah’s hole. It stung, his ring crudely stretched by the wild fucking, the size and shape of Wade’s dick still imprinted in muscle and tissues deep inside Noah. Staring, Wade dipped a finger to scoop up a smear of cum from Noah’s quivering belly and lifted his treat to lips swollen from their kisses and wet with Noah’s blood. When Wade swallowed, he reached his other hand to his dick, stripping semen from it as well. He pushed his fingers forward to Noah’s lips. “Open.”

Heartbeat yet roaring in his ears, Noah obeyed.

He wasn’t surprised at the sour, gamey taste of the alpha’s cum. Wade was a shifter, after all. While Noah’s nutrition regime consisted of a proper balance of vegetables and fruits along with protein, Wade’s diet would be composed mainly of meat. As alpha, his wolf was strongest. He’d need—and consume—prey animals often. The bitter flavor of a predator wasn’t shocking.

How much Noah liked the alpha’s taste staggered him, though. He shivered, licking and sucking on Wade’s finger as the delicious flavor on his tongue intoxicated him all over again. Wade’s smile widened at Noah’s disappointed sigh when he pulled his finger from Noah’s eager mouth.

“I’ll wake you later. You’ll have as much of me then as you please,” Wade said.

Struggling to catch his breath, Noah stared at him. “You mated me,” he said in dazed wonder. Not the partial mating Noah had anticipated, but a true mating of exchanged bites and a sharing of each other’s unique flavor.

“I was owed a mate.” Wade rose and doused the desk lamp. He returned to the bed and with a gentle hand at Noah’s hip, turned him on his side. “A mate is what I took.”

Noah gulped, choking down newly reemerging panic. “I thought—”

“That I would ruin you for bedding by other wolves? That I would make you ache for me forever?” Wade crawled behind Noah, hands dropping to shift Noah’s right leg forward. “Punishing an innocent won’t right the wrongs. Whatever your father may have told you, I’m not as cruel as that. We aren’t.”

Floored, Noah obediently positioned his sweetly throbbing body as the alpha wanted and fought to make sense of this. He’d been prepared to be despoiled. Since Noah couldn’t fathom any wolf accepting one as damaged as he was, even for a single coupling, he’d believed he would die a virgin, and upon waking in the alpha’s bed, he had anticipated their sex once he’d resolved himself to the claiming. He’d wanted to know what it felt like to be fucked and sated, just once, before he died. Who better to give him that than the furious and vengeful alpha?

The alpha who was perhaps not as cruel and vindictive as he’d believed. The man who, despite everything, was now his mate.

Noah felt the certainty that the mating could never be undone in his bones. It baffled him. Terrified him, when weariness of his captivity as well as the forced shift and surrendering to Wade weighed him down. He couldn’t think. He wasn’t sure he’d ever puzzle his way through the fact of the alpha claiming him as his mate. Staggering possibilities spun out before Noah, both horrible and precious.

“Later. Think of it later,” Wade said. Apparently content with Noah’s right leg slightly bent and his hip rolled forward to fully expose his ass, Wade pressed behind him and stroked Noah’s calf, the mesmerizing caress wandering up and past Noah’s destroyed knee to his thigh. Softly. Tenderly. “Tonight is for this. For us.”