Power Trio

Nick eagerly taps the outside of Dee's hip and she loosens her grip, just a little. “I subm—” He doesn’t get the words out before she laces her fingers into his hair and plants herself on his face.

The fabric of her dress is blocking him from his mission. So rip it off, his frenzied brain supplies, and no, he can’t, it’s such a beautiful dress, but his hands are already seizing around one of its high slits and with a velvety sound he rents a long tear along its midriff. She snarls and is she angry? No—she shreds it the rest of the way off, bouncing free from its tight cling like she’s emerging from a glittering cocoon.

Her body is silhouetted by the bonfire blaze, every lush curve and exquisite line of muscle. His hands reassert themselves at her wide hips and drag her back down against his lips. She’s shorn herself bare; her stubble scratches against his eager mouth. Her pussy is hot and slick with desire, so ready for his tongue that it twitches as he traces her firm adductor tendon to the edge of her vulva. Her breath is shallow. Her fingers knead his scalp. She could drown him in her, she’s won him, but she’s letting him take his time.

From the day they met, his packmistress has cared for him, patiently and generously. He knows exactly how to thank her. He strokes his tongue along her quivering slit, kisses the firm little bundle of nerves at its crest and relishes the gasp he draws from her. Then he pushes his tongue inside. Her thighs tremble and give out, and her full, heart-shaped ass flattens softly onto his chest. He buckles his hands across her thighs and devours her.

She yelps and braces herself on her elbows, her breasts hanging full and ripe above him as he savors his conqueror. He rakes his nails down her back, pulls her further on top of him, and she rolls and thrusts. “Bonfires of heaven. How are you so fucking good at this?”

He slaps her ass playfully and shows her what his tiny-tusked Earthling mouth can do. She rides him with abandon, crushing him so tight that all he can snatch are little breaths of air between the thrusts of her hips. He doesn’t give a fuck. If he dies, he dies.

She convulses and moans. He hums in satisfaction. He’s got her close.

But before he can make her come apart, she raises herself on her knees, depriving him of that divine weight. Her fingers wrap around his vest. Wait, wait, this is a loaner, his civil brain protests, and he shoulders his way out of it before she can destroy it. The snaps on his breeches pop percussively as she shucks them from him.

She pulls him into the forest like a cave woman hauling a kill, the flames of the bonfire dimming through the leaves. He wriggles out of his briefs as she yanks him up against a tree and lands in his lap, her rhino-rider muscles standing out on her abdomen as she mounts him. She pulls his head up so he’s in a sitting position, face buried in the cushioning kiln of her chest. He braces his back against the tree as she drags her hips against him, huffing hot breath past his face. His palms trace the fullness of her back, the shallow grooves of her scars across it.

“Mate,” she says. He never learned the word, but its meaning has been carved into his soul since his birth.

Her hands fumble with his cock. He repositions himself, feels the trembling kiss of her pussy against his length. Her palm nestles against his neck and tilts his face tenderly upward into a textured lick across his cheek. “Say you are mine. I’ll fuck you all night. Just say it.”

His touch smushes briefly into the giving green cushion of her flesh before pressing against her unyielding muscle. His blood is boiling his brain. “I’m yours.”

Inch by agonizing inch, she lowers onto him, the night’s chill giving way to tight, sticky warmth as the head of his cock parts her. A rivulet of her wet heat drips down his shaft. And still the slow, quaking descent until with a final shared groan she’s swallowed him to the base. Her stomach flexes as she draws herself deliberately up. Before he can protest or encourage her out of her slow pace, she slams back down, her ass shoving his thighs open, and suddenly she’s pumping with such intensity and passion that the boughs of the tree shake, her hair tickling his face, her whining gasps getting breathier and higher.

She’s working him like he’s a fine instrument, pulling and clenching and grinding. “So big,” she purrs. The hard-forged strength of her core has made her tight as a fist. “So warm.” Her coffee-colored eyes widen. “Mate.” Her breath hitches. She cups his chin and pulls his face close. Her cheeks glisten with tears of awe. “My mate.”

He groans against her, hands fastening to her rocking hips for purchase, her iron-and-velvet body stealing his mind away.

She pants air back into her lungs and whispers to him, in low, musical packtongue. “I will tend your hearth as you tend mine.” All he can do is keep a frantic hold as she pounds her broad hips against his, taking him as deep as he can go, twisting and gyrating with artful lust. “I claim you now.”

And he feels it happen. She claims him and it spreads through him like liquid gold. How does he even know what she’s saying? He only knows half of these words. Her scent is engulfing his brain. Changing something chemical and fundamental inside him.

He sinks his fingertips into the globes of her ass, the rock-hard muscle under her voluptuousness flexing as she grinds him into the earth. The same primal frenzy that threw them at each other now lifts his hand and brings it down in a ringing slap on her cheek; her ample body quakes and tightens under his palm. Her hips jerk with the impact; her voice breaks as she continues her hypnotic oath. “And now I give myself to you.”

Her heavy breasts bounce as she takes him, tender and strong and hot. “I keep and am kept.” The words are chiseling themselves into his brain like a commandment from the Almighty. What is this?

She wraps her forearms around his head and shoves him into the sweat-slick shelter of her cleavage. He’s losing definition. A hand rakes through hair. A tongue laps along skin. He can’t keep track of whose anymore. His mind is dissolving into slag and pouring into a Dee-shaped mold. A nipple brushes his mouth and he catches it with his teeth, sucks it desperately. “I will raise my axe against your foes.” Her voice quivers with emotion and need. “I will open my palm to your friends.”

A sweet pinching force gathers urgently at the pit of his abdomen. A world-shattering orgasm is building up inside him. Dee must feel it coming, because she wraps her thighs around his waist and pushes off from the tree, and now he’s laying atop her, trapped completely in the soft might of her limbs. “And you will never be without my strength again.” He’s on top, but he’s being squeezed so tight and hilted so deep into her that he can only thrust an inch at a time, her pussy gripping against his cock like even that pittance of distance is too much. “In this life or the next.”

Her pelvis rolls like a belly dancer’s and her insides crush and pulse, and it’s perfect, blissful torture. “By all the bonfires of heaven I swear it.” Her voice is so near that her tusk is rubbing his cheek. He gasps into her thunderous heart.

“Show your mistress how strong you are.” She loosens her calves’ grip on him just enough, and he’s finally free to thrust as hard as he craves to. “Let it out in me. All of it.”

He tenses, hesitates. “It’s safe, love,” she whispers. “The drink made it safe. Let go. Come with me.”

He takes over, planting his knees on the cold ground and jackhammering into her. “You’re mine.” She scratches at his back as her body ripples hypnotically in time with him. Her eyes are huge and wet as they lock with his, full of lust and wonder. “I’m yours.” Her nails slide across his skin. “Nick! I’m yours!”

He’s felt nothing close to this, not with anyone. He’s giving her something he can’t take back, and she’s keeping it forever, and as his orgasm stretches past its breaking point, her chocolate eyes screw shut and her lip wobbles open and her body tightens and twitches. She tilts her head up, the cords of her neck taut against her skin, and unleashes a treble, piping scream into the night, jolting as she comes, crushing herself against him. He howls her name to the Mother moon as he explodes into her torrid body. She’s wringing him dry, milking his melting soul from him. He can’t stop bucking his hips as he fills her, again and again, until she’s overflowing, weeping his name, and they are one.

He holds Dee as she whimpers and shakes in the blurry bliss they share, and every plan he was making, every contingency for leaving the pack, every scheme he was halfway hatching, is blown to pieces. What was he thinking? Jesus, he wants to laugh at his own idiocy. Why would he choose Legendary over his pack? Why would he choose anything over this woman?

The New Laytham conman died in the snowdrift. It took him this long to see it. He’s healthier and stronger and worthier, and he has a chance at a real life, with friends, real friends, not just people who owe him a favor. And he is holding the reason in his arms and smelling the sweetness of her breath.

He will never part from Dee. He sees that, sees it with crystal clarity. He will stay in the Old World. He will be the man she thinks he is, loving and true and strong. The thought of breaking her trust brings bile to his throat.

Their stomachs press together, rising and falling with their heaving breaths.

“It worked,” she sighs. “Oh, Nick. It fucking worked.”

His mind is dripping back into his skull, bit by bit. “What worked?”

“The rite.” She caresses his face. “I’m yours. You’re mine.”

She kisses him and his freshly reconstituted brain explodes again. He almost faints, the sensation is so overwhelming. She utters a high, shivery sigh. She is his. Beautiful, steadfast Dee is his.

A contented keening sounds in her throat. She nuzzles him like a lioness, and when they touch, he sees stars. “Nick,” she sings gently. “Nicky Nicky Nick. Fucking hell. I never even imagined it would feel like this.”

“What what feels like? Dee. What’s—” Just her fingers on his cheek are making him feel so good he’s dizzy. “What the fuck just happened to us?”

“We imprinted,” she says. “We’re mates. You’re feeling it too, right?”

“We what?”

“We’re mates, Nicky. Bonded mates.” Her brows gather. “This is what you asked for.”

“It was?”

“You didn’t know?” Panic crosses her face.

“Is it gonna wear off?”

“We’re mates, Nick. The fires of Heaven have forged us together.” Her voice grows distraught. “It doesn’t fucking wear off.” The recognition that he’s distressing her hits him like a freight train.

“Good. No, Dee. It’s good. I don’t want it to.” He clings to her. “I feel it. I feel it harder than I’ve ever—I didn’t know. But this is—” His throat seizes. He’s giddy with joy. The most beautiful woman in the world is naked in his arms. He’s touching her. He gets to touch her any time he wants. His mate. “This is amazing.”

She bites her lip. “What’s it like?”

“Like I was born underground, and I just felt the sun on my skin for the first time.” He cups her face, and the downy deformation of her cheek as she pushes it against his hand brings mist to the edges of his eyes. “Like I was born deaf, and I just heard music.” He feels the gathering tear loosen and cut down his face. “I think I fucking love you, Dee.”

“Nick.” Dee falls onto him, thumps him onto his back, and every sliver of skin that touches him sends seismic shocks through him. Her lips latch onto his neck and it’s like she’s kissing every nerve in his body simultaneously. She trails her mouth up to his, makes out with him until they’re both running out of air, then stabs a finger onto his chest. “I love you. Don’t scare me like that again, dummy.”

“Never.” His hands roam her body, this new territory he will spend the rest of his existence exploring, the firm peaks of muscle and the luscious valleys of softness. “Never again,” he says, and the sweat on her skin tastes so good it pulls a noise out of his throat. Just from the taste of her. There’s a freckle on her left breast where it curves into her cleavage. He memorizes it. There’s a scar flowing across her thigh like a graceful river. He runs his shaking fingerpad along it. He wants to go back in time and scream at himself. How could he come so close to hurting her? What monstrousness would he have done if he hadn’t made this perfect mistake?

They return to her yurt, hands held, whispering and giggling. They lie naked beneath their furs, clinging to each other, unwilling to part even an inch further than they must.

Dee rubs her nose against his. “You’re still a junior packmember, y’know. Mated packlords can get so gooey and gross about it. That can’t be me. I’m gonna have to keep being a hardass on you.”

“I’m gonna have to keep being extremely dope, then.”

“Says the guy who ain’t even skinned a stag yet.” She snorts. “You’re so cocky, man.”

“You love it.”

“I do. I love it so much, Nicholas Voraag.” She nuzzles him. “You’re skinning our next catch, though.”

“You sure we can’t just order takeout?”

“I’ll show you. We’ll do it together. It just peels right off after the first couple cuts if you pull right.”

“Okay. I mean if I have to learn then might as well rip the band aid off.” Nick settles in to the soft warmth of his mate and her bed. “It’s very Old World orc, bringing up flaying as pillow talk.”

She giggles. “Our pillows are flayed, bud. You’re lying on a 12-point buck. You’re an Old World orc now.”

Tell him this a month ago, and he’d bolt for the hills. Tonight he kisses the bridge of her nose and says, “That’s right.”

No more phones. No more social media, no more rideshare or food delivery or nine-to-fives. Just Nick and Dee and their vast new life.

She lays her face on his chest and inhales. A full-body shiver runs down her, curls her toes. She groans exultantly and squirms against him. He feels her arousal, and as her thigh smushes across his waist, she feels his and beams. Her tusks twinkle in the lamplight. “You’re hard for me again.”

“I’m here to serve my packmistress.”

She caresses his length, up to his aching head. “Round two, Nicky? Then maybe round three?”

A bolt of shame through him. “My name’s not Nick. I lied when we met.”

“No, you didn’t.” She kisses his chest. “The mate I love is named Nick, and he’s brave and bright and good. Do you want back what you were?”

“I don’t. I don’t want any of it.”

“Then leave it on Earth.” Her eyes, dark with sleepy lust, bore into him. “Be Nicholas of Pack Voraag. Keep me by your side forever. Tell me your secrets and I’ll keep them. Tell me your dreams and I’ll fight for them. Fuck me every day until we die and follow me into Heaven’s bonfire and fuck me there. Fuck me to sleep tonight.”

He rumbles packtongue into her ear. “By your command.” He rolls onto his back and pulls her on top of him. She squeaks and laughs and clutches his flexing tricep.

He buries his face in her hair and inhales the smell of his magnificent future. He enters her slow and sensuous, and her feathery moan is the sweetest song ever sung. Out of all the cold corners of this vast and uncaring universe, Dee is here, with him, around him, her heavy breast in his palm and her gentle tongue in his mouth, and no incantation in any dimension could come close to this miracle.