“Tell me what you want, love.”
“How the fuck are you holding out on her, man?” Zane asked with a strangled groan. “She smells like good sex and bad decisions. I wanna lick her like an ice cream cone.”
I wriggled, trying to push his fingers inside me, against my clit, anywhere that would get me where I wanted to be. I could feel the gown starting to get soaked, achieving our goal, but not mine.
“Say it. Tell the kitty exactly what you want, and I’ll give it to you.”
“I…”
“C’mon, baby. Communication is gonna be important, especially in the heat of the moment. You dreamed of me like I dreamed of you, didn’t you? Tell me what I did in your mind, late at night, when I was padding past your window, listening to your little stifled moans. Tell him.”
“You…” It was so hard, as he was so distracting. I realised this was probably deliberate, but I was drowning in Jai—his scent, the feel of him beneath me, the thick lump of his cock, which he studiously kept away from me, and those damn fucking fingers. He played me like he knew me, like he’d seen every bloody thought in my mind that I’d had about him and was deliberately holding me back. “Your teeth…”
“That’s it. Tell me.”
“Your teeth were in my skin.” I felt his lips peel back, his tongue snaking out to lick my flesh. “You bit down.” I shivered when he did just that. “Not hard, just firmly. Holding me in place. Showing me, showing everyone that I was yours.”
“Mm…” he said, letting my skin go. “I like that idea.”
“Your hand slid down between my legs.”
“Sounds right. It’s where it likes to go.” I was rewarded with a couple of brisk flicks of my clit, forcing me to stop talking and just breathe. “Keep going, baby. This story is the best.”
“Your fingers are thick and long. I’ve noticed that when you weren’t looking, watch them wrap around bottles of beer or women’s arms at the pub.” He stiffened a little at that. “I could sense it, what they would feel like when you pushed them into me when I stared at them. Sometimes you caught me at it.”
“So that’s what it was? I’d get this fucking whiff of your arousal but I… Keep talking, baby.”
But I couldn’t. He was doing just that, dipping two of them inside me, just teasing little touches, but denying me the full thrust of his hand deliberately. I groaned instead, a pleading, begging thing, hoping that was enough for him, but it wasn’t. His free hand pinched my nipple hard.
“Focus. I’ll give you what you want if you tell me, Shan. Now open your eyes and see the audience you’ve got. Tell him what you want me to do to you.”
Zane’s face had changed when I did as I was told. There was something of his beast in the cast of his face, his expression. It was like his facial features had flattened down and simplified to reveal something hungry.
“Get her there,” he snarled.
“You don’t make the calls. I’ll have you on your arse so fucking fast, your head will spin.” Something clenched inside me at the feel of Jai’s alpha whip. “She’s mine, not yours. Not until she says so, and she hasn’t said so.”
Zane’s lips peeled back to reveal sharper fangs.
“I can taste her need. You’re hurting her.”
“I can’t hurt her, not anymore. There’s only her. I’ll walk away from anything and anyone for Shannon. She’s my heart made flesh.”
I couldn’t make a sound other than a strangled groan as his fingers pinched at my clit, worrying it with a cruel grip that just had my thighs splaying wide. Pulses built deep inside me, slick flowing freely, readying me for him. But instead, I put my cunt on display for another shifter to stare at like it was the crown jewels, while he stroked his cock at the same pace Jai teased me, his destroyed expression a mirror of mine.
But it wasn’t just sexual. His words hit me like body blows, smashing through any barriers I might still have had and exposing my heart, just as he did my body. Jai forced me open, to admit his fingers, his scenario, him. I was never going to be able to put myself back together after this without him as a part of it.
“I love you…” I rasped out, unable to do much more, fighting for breath.
“I love you too, baby, so fucking much. Now come for us. Come on my fucking fingers.”
He jammed several inside me, curling them up, and his other hand slapped down on my clit as I came apart.
My cries meshed with Zane’s growls, the two of us making a cacophonous sound that rang throughout the whole cage complex, but I couldn’t pay too much attention to that. Everything narrowed down to here, him, us. Waves of pleasure crashed through me, forcing me to jerk in his arms, but Jai held me close, stroking me through each one, rubbing his face on my skin, praising me with a steady stream of nonsense words only I could understand.
“Fuck…” Zane said finally, wiping his sticky hand on the sheets. “That’s the hottest thing I’ve ever seen.” He got to his feet and tucked his dick away. “But I got the message loud and clear. She’s the queen, we serve at her command.” He sketched me a short bow. “Well, I’m more than happy to be your fool. You just wiggle that pretty little finger, and I’ll be at your feet.”
He wandered off, not needing an answer. I had none to give him anyway, the shitty, grinding reality of this place crashing in now. I turned carefully in Jai’s arms, knowing I’d be looking into that same warm gaze of his when I did.
He didn’t disappoint. He pulled my sodden gown off me and then stroked my hair back from my face.
“How do we do this, Jai?” I asked, feeling exhilarated and ashamed at the same time. “We love each other, but I feel like I’m stabbing a knife into you.”
Something raw and vulnerable surfaced at that, but he took my hand and wrapped his hand around it.
“This isn’t what I would have wanted. That wasn’t my kink, and I had no intention of sharing you with any-fucking-one. None. But an animal adapts or he dies, and I’m adapting. The fucker who put us here will want to use the others to drive a wedge between us, force us apart.” He shook his head. “Nothing can do that, babe, nothing. You and me? We’re for keeps. That’s what I’m focussing on.”
Where did he get his certainty from? I wondered. I saw it, wanted it, but deep in my heart, it wasn’t there. This, before, everything that had happened? It scared me more than I cared to admit, so I snuggled down by his side and pretended that wasn’t the case.
Chapter 32
Well, this was fucking awkward.
“Hello, beautiful.”
I stood in the doorway of Kazimir’s cage, hovering. He lay across his bed, his gorgeous body on display, looking like something from a romance novel or a Playgirl centrefold. I just blinked, taking in the lazy splay of his body.
The tiger shifter was big, with only Nero approaching the same size. His chest was broad, covered with great slabs of muscles, and his biceps bulged as his fingers traced circles on the sheets. He smiled, a slow, feline thing, like he saw my inspection and liked it.
Get it together, I told myself. I walked over to the bed and sat down on the edge. This would work well, make it look like we were connecting. That amused smirk only broadened when I lay down and rolled towards him.