ASHER
Mena’s giggle is the best sound I have ever heard, only second to her moan. She’s laughing at my stories of Aidan and Ian’s antics, the brothers are always good for comedic relief, and their stories were needed after Mena explained why she couldn’t tell me more about herself. I started asking about her, about who Mena was apart from her captivity, and she couldn’t tell me. Her answer when I pressed broke my heart wide open, and I can’t fathom a life lived in such secrecy.
“I don’t know who I am, Ash,” she’d said, “Every memory I have has been a lie. Every single day was ‘don’t run, don’t yell, don’t make waves.’ I never had an honest reaction to anything before my capture. Every thought filtered through three layers of my parent’s rhetoric and the usual response was ‘don’t speak and don’t blink.’ I don’t even know what my favorite color is or what I like to do for fun.”
I was speechless for a moment before I told her a story about how Aidan wanted to learn how to crochet and didn’t want Ian to know so he tried learning it on YouTube in secret. He ended up getting his fingers trapped in the yarn and Ian had to cut him out of it and then Ian taught him how to do it right. She giggled from start to finish, peppering me with questions about what YouTube, computers and internet were. Then I told another about how Ian bet Aidan he could out drink him at a TGI Fridays in Denver. Somehow the bartender got roped into it, and she drank them both under the table, and they almost got arrested for drunk and disorderly.
“How’d they get out of it?” she asks, as she leans toward me practically out of her seat. Her legs are trapped between mine, her bare knees rasping against the flannel of my pajama pants. Mena’s willowy limbs have filled out some in such a short time. Her cheekbones have lost some of their sharpness, her joints less prominent. Her skin is rosy, flushed with laughter and good food, and I give into the temptation of her smooth skin and run my fingertips up her thighs.
“Ash?” she calls, but I can’t take my eyes off my tan hands against her creamy skin. The tails of my blue flannel shirt cover the tops of her thighs, and I know there isn’t a stitch underneath the soft cotton, and the thought of her bare skin rubbing against the fabric of my shirt makes me want to bite her.
Just a little.
Just a little nibble, maybe on the soft skin of her long neck, or maybe on the dark, dusky pink of her nipples. Maybe on the milky skin on the inside of her knee.
The thought of biting her reminds me that I completed our bond and didn’t tell her what I was doing or what it means. I didn’t tell her that my bite tied her life to mine just as John’s is tied to Olivia’s. I didn’t tell her that my bite made her my wife. Made it so I could feel her heartbeat in my chest, feel her breaths in my lungs. I made it so if she ran I could find her anywhere. I should feel guilty, but I don’t. What I did goes against everything I’ve been taught and every bit of advice John gave me. But I don’t give a shit. I felt it. She was holding a piece of herself back like she was staying with me for a little while and then she was going to go off on her own.
And I just couldn’t let her go. But I have to tell her.
“I did something that is most likely going to piss you off,” I say keeping my eyes on my hands on her thighs.
“How do you know it’s going to make me angry?” she asks as she rubs her hands over mine.
“Because I should have asked you first. I should have told you what it meant before I did it,” I admit.
“Okay,” she says evenly. “What did you do?”
“I-I bit you,” I say finally meeting her eyes, reaching to the open neckline of the shirt she’s wearing to expose the already healed scar of my teeth marks on the meat of her shoulder. “I cemented the bond. I-I mated you, tied you to me. I knew. I knew what I was doing when I did it. I knew I should have asked you, explained what it meant, but—” I pause, and I can’t say any more.
“You were afraid I would say no?” she asks, tilting her head to the side, her eyes unreadable, and a cold finger of dread slices through me.
“I didn’t want you to run and me not be able to find you. I didn’t want to spend another day without you as my wife. I didn’t—” I break off.
“And there is no going back, is there? You made the biggest decision of my life for me, just like every single person has done my entire existence,” she chastises, and I feel the guilt now. I didn’t feel it before, and just like I vowed not to, I put her in a cage.
“I’m sorry I didn’t ask, but I’m not sorry I did it,” I admit. “I just… I just didn’t want you to leave,” I confess and pray – just pray – she doesn’t leave my sorry ass.
“You should have asked. I would have said yes. Even though you are going to die soon. Even if I only got a few weeks of being your wife, I still would have said yes,” she says haltingly, her eyes filling.
“Only a few weeks? Do you know something I don’t?” I ask, cupping her face in my palms, rubbing the tears away with the pads of my thumbs.
“The King is dying, Ash. That hasn’t escaped your attention,” she hisses, all pretense of calmness gone. Her eyes are flashing amber, but she holds onto her Aegis for now.
“And he released me from my post before I ever came to you, Mena. I would never have tied myself to you if I knew I was going to die. That would make me the worst kind of man. I would never sentence you to death just so I didn’t die alone,” I murmur, hating that she would think that of me, but knowing I deserve it for my highhandedness.
“You’re not dying?” she asks, her body vibrating with either anxiety or fear or relief, and I can’t believe she has been with me for this long without asking. Then it dawns on me. She thought I was going to die, and she still would have said yes.
“No, Princess. I’m not dying,” I murmur against her lips and then kiss her for all I’m worth, cupping her ass in my palms and pulling her onto my lap. She doesn’t hesitate to kiss me back, her tongue meeting mine in a not-so-gentle glide. Her teeth nip at my bottom lip as she rasps her fingers in my close-cropped hair. I almost wish it were longer so I could feel her pull it. She’s shivering still, but I know it is her need for me making her vibrate. I fucking love it, and I love her, and if I were to die in the next five minutes, she needs to know how I feel.
“I love you, Mena. I wouldn’t have done it if I didn’t love you. I just want you to stay, please just stay with me,” I whisper, my voice clogged with worry and fear and love for this woman.
“I love you, Ash, and I’ll stay with you,” she returns, looking me right in the eye as she gives me the best gift I’ve ever received.
I couldn’t stop kissing her if I wanted to – which I don’t. I don’t ever want to stop kissing her. I band one arm under her ass and the other around her back and hoist her tighter to me before standing from my barstool in search of a flat surface – any flat surface. The bar is too tall, but the dining room table… now, that’ll do just fine.
I set her down on the dark walnut wood, loving that my bride is sitting her bare ass on a table I hand-carved. I pluck open the buttons of her shirt – my shirt – watching as each inch of her skin is exposed. I spread the fabric, revealing Mena’s beautiful body, her natural curves finally filling out now that she is properly fed. I rasp my hands up her thighs, circle her waist and ribs in my palms, and then thumb her taut nipples. Her shiver brings a feral growl from my lips, and I pull the shirt off her shoulders, loving the look of my mark on her. I tug the shirt from her arms, and then she’s done. With a ghost of a shy smile across her lips, she reaches in, and my cock is no longer trapped in my pajama bottoms. It is free and in her warm hand, and she’s stroking me like she knows my dick belongs to her.
I suppose it does.
I kiss her, stroking my tongue into her mouth, meeting hers before nipping her lips and moving down her neck over that lightning of a scar, over the crown of her shoulder. Tasting her mouth, her skin, moving to her nipples and her belly, gently pressing her so her back meets the cool, smooth wood. Her ragged pants just spur me on as I pull her ass to the edge of the table, notch my dick at her weeping pussy and slowly drive in to the root. My pants are still half on my ass, but all I care about is the soaking wet warmth on my dick and her pleading moans. She scrabbles for a hold on the edge of the table for a moment before abandoning it to sit up, gripping my chin and moving it out of her way to kiss and lick and bite with those perfect blunt teeth on my neck and shoulder.
I pick her up and turn us, pressing her to the closest wall, ramming into her hard enough to knock the painting or frame or whatever-the-fuck off the wall. The sharp crack of the glass breaking only barely filters into my consciousness before I’m pulled under again, lost in her moans and warmth and touch. I wanted to go slow, take my time, but I feel unbidden and unleashed, fucking up into her, stealing her breath.
She moans into my ear, “Please, God, please don’t stop. Don’t ever stop,” and it is my undoing. I reach between us, bowing my back just a little to make room for my hand; I thumb her clit with firm pressing circles. Her pussy squeezes, tight enough to almost hurt, and then she’s screaming my name.
Before I come, I do what I should have done the first time we made love.
“Mena, I want you to be my wife, my mate, my life. Do you accept me as yours?” I growl my question into her ear, making her shiver in aftershocks.
“Yes,” she whispers, and that is all I need to hear. My fangs lengthen just a bit before I strike, piercing her fragile flesh with my cutting teeth as I come unbidden of any guilt, harder than I ever have in my life.
She’s mine. All mine, I think as a smile stretches across my face. I am – for the first time in my life – at peace.