Hollingsworth thought he could drive me out of my mind with his tricks. He was only partly right. By pushing my heat into overdrive, he’d pushed everything else to its limits as well.
That same ability to reach out to other minds was there, but in a completely different form. More, more, more. He’d lit a fire inside me with my heat, one that destroyed my mind and made me nothing but instinct, and my power provided the fuel for it to turn into a burning conflagration. The sound of the shifters’ groans was music to my ears as they were hit with me.
Each and every one of them—Kazimir, Zane, Nero, Caleb, and even Gaden—could feel the ache inside me, waiting to be filled. Clothes were shredded, and feet moved quickly as they stalked over to the cage, ringing the bed. Jai snarled his anger at their interference, but that soon fell away as I bucked my hips forward.
“More, Jai…” I said gently, what was left of my conscious mind trying to soften the blow. He wanted to be enough, but deep down, I knew he wouldn’t. This must be why Nan always warned me away from the shifters, I thought dimly, tears streaming from my eyes as I heard Jai’s ragged groan. I felt the pinch, then the burn as his knot forced me open, while strange fingers snaked their way down to stroke my clit, my hair, my face. Fingers that plucked at my nipples, pulled my thighs wider.
“Fuck, Shan…” Jai panted. “This wasn’t…”
I knew what he was going to say. We’d been robbed of the ability to do this in his house or mine, surrounded by the memories of our families, hearing only the sound of the breeze in the trees, the patter of rain as it happened, rather than the grunt of rabid shifters. I looked up at him, at my love. That hadn’t been taken from me yet. My body jerked and twisted at the feel of so many men’s hands on me, but right now, it was him I was focussed on.
“I love you, Jai,” I said, hoping against hope that that would be enough. “Make me your mate.”
Oxygen was forced from me as he shoved the rest of him in, my lungs sucking it back in again as my body rippled, rebelled at this great lump that had been jammed inside it, and ultimately, grabbed on tight to. My cunt snapped down around him, gripping him, ominous ripples milking his knot, his eyes gone wide from shock.
“Oh fuck… Oh fuck…”
And there he was, my beautiful boy, just the same as it’d been under the gum tree all those years ago. Mine now, totally and utterly. I held onto him greedily, feeling the spurts of his cum with each flex, but this wasn’t orgasm for him or me. I was swimming in a sea of blissful sensation, but slightly frightened because I could feel more to come. He jerked spasmodically, helping things along a bit, that sharp ache inside me transmuting with every thrust. Instead, it was replaced by this great bloom of ecstasy, each stroke feeling like what I used to call an orgasm, driving me towards this.
I saw the pain in his eyes when they stared into mine, when they saw where everyone else was touching me, and I was sorry for that. He was my heart, but I knew now how we were getting out of here. I nodded to him, seeing his fangs lengthen, a wild look come into his eyes.
“I love you, Shan. I’ll always love you.”
His tears hit my skin before his teeth did, both of them burrowing in, digging into my flesh as I came apart, screaming.
It’s a strange thing, realising you’ve grown up in a cage. Not in this literal cage we were in right now, the other one I’d lived in my whole life. Everything Nan had taught me, her rules and her strictures, ones she didn’t follow, they were burned away first. And when they went, so went my conceptualisations of my gift. I didn’t have ‘the touch’ with animals, I was a fucking psychic and a powerful one at that. I could feel all of them, not just the shifters. If I stretched, I could feel the violent little fantasies of all those little men in the institute, playing their vicious little games. Stuart’s head jerked up from the dissected animal corpse he was working on, as if he caught a whiff of me. But my mind was jerked back, to the melancholy slither of Jai from me. I rolled towards him, for a moment just able to lie there, feel him and kiss his lips.
But not for long. I could spear my mind into another’s, I realised, but it left me open to the rest. I could feel the five shifters around me, catching me up in a terrible lust-filled feedback loop, where my heat infected the men around me and they sent back their hot desire, all of us passing it back and forth, over and over and over.
“More, Jai,” I said, sadly.
“This is just what he’s done to you. He’s poisoned you, all of them. Made you—” I stopped his words with my mouth, just pressing them there until I felt the half choked back sob in his chest.
“I’m going to get us out of here,” I said, nodding when he balked at that. “But I need more to do it.” I looked over my shoulder, at the men ringed there, at the one at my back, reaching for me and ready to pull me away. “I’m sorry.”
I got up from the bed and felt the men follow me, padding across the floor with soft feet into their arms. I felt the zing of power each time a hand landed on my skin, when teeth went to my neck, when lips meandered across my flesh. I looked up as they swarmed, seeking the cameras I knew to be there and arrowing in with senses I’d never had before, able to pinpoint where they were and follow them up to the control room where the fuckers watched, stroking their pathetic little dicks. I saw them, and I smiled.
Chapter 35
They crowded into me, their touches glancing, just brushes at this point, but that wouldn’t last long. They looked at me with animal eyes, staring with the hunger of a predator, and I just laughed. I wasn’t Little Red Riding Hood. I knew how to keep the men right where I wanted them.
The ache inside me had been stroked, sated for moments only, but now, feeling all these strange hands upon me, it roared back to life. I felt the spill of Jai’s seed dripping down my thighs. Then I reached for more.
“You’re not done,” Zane said, his brows knotting for a second before his eyes blazed yellow. I ran my hand across the hard chest of the jaguar shifter, the other men fanning out now that I’d made a choice. I marvelled for a moment at the feel of strange flesh, dipping in and breathing in his scent of sandalwood and musky amber. His teeth snapped down, trying to catch a bite of me.
“You need more. You need me.” He caught me easily, because I wanted to be. His fingers tightened around my arms, yanking me to him. His mouth hovered, wanting to touch mine but stopping himself.
“I do, but this will have consequences.”
“If by consequences you mean slamming my fucking rock-hard dick into you, then sign me up.”
“It’ll be more than that. You know that. Deep down, you know.”
The yellow faltered, bleeding to dark as he searched my face. It thrummed inside him, what I meant, but he seemed to need confirmation.
“You’ll be free, you’ll get the fuck out of here, but you’ll be swapping one cage for another. You’ll be mine, just mine,” I said.
His stare wavered, darting around, and a delicious smelling fear tangled with his wild scent. But it didn’t stop him. I knew it wouldn’t. His lips found mine, drawn like a magnet, my heat beating down and stirring his. His mouth was brutal, forcing my lips open as his tongue thrust in, and my arms went around him belatedly, catching in that long silken hair. I swallowed his choked back sobs, his pain and desperation. I swallowed the sharp edge of pleasure-pain from actually feeling something after so long that stirred inside him as his tongue caught mine.