AURORA
Ares wasn’t on pack grounds.
I checked the training field, the forest, and even the town.
Desperate to ensure he was okay, I hurried through the forest and toward the lake, where I’d met him that midsummer night. Taking my secret path around the mountain and through a cave, lugging around my pregnant-ass belly, I walked into the clearing right before the sparkling lagoon and found him sitting on a patch of grass, tossing rocks into the lake and tugging on the ends of his hair so hard that I thought he’d rip them out of his head.
A harsh wind whipped through the forest, sending tree branches scraping against one another and rustling wildly above us. I sucked in a breath and walked toward him, watching his shirt ripple against his broad frame.
“Ares,” I whispered, crouching down behind him and wrapping my arms around his shoulders. “Ares, tell me you’re okay.”
Ares stared out at the lake, slumped his shoulders forward, and sighed. “I knew that this was coming, but I couldn’t fucking admit it to myself. I have tried everything to make her happy and healthy. Nothing has worked.”
Instead of telling him that everything was fine—because I knew it wasn’t—I crawled into his arms and brushed some of his thick brown hair out of his face. “You know that I’ll be here with you until the very end,” I said, staring into those big brown eyes that made me warm in all the right places, “through everything.”
He rested his hands on my waist and curled his fingers into my skin. “I know.”
And while he acted like everything was okay, his cruel expression told me that this was killing him on the inside. But the god of war would never, ever admit such a thing aloud, especially not when Mars was gone and he thought he had to be strong twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.
“You remember this place, don’t you?” he asked me.
“Of course I do,” I said, wanting to tease him to see his fiery eyes again. I hated seeing all this hopelessness inside of them recently. A war had been stirring in his head, one that even I didn’t know I could stop. So, I crawled my fingers up his chest and smirked. “I used to meet Tony here all the time.”
He growled against my mouth and sucked my bottom lip between his teeth. “Don’t play with me like that, Kitten.”
“Or what?” I asked, wiggling out of his lap.
Grasping my hips and holding me down to him, he made me straddle his waist. “You’re not going anywhere.”
“And what are you going to do if I end up slipping away?”
Releasing his hold on me, he smirked, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “Try it. See what happens,” he dared.
I stared at him for a few moments, lips curling into a smile, and sprinted away from him. I didn’t even make it past the lake before Ares wrapped his rough hand around my throat from behind and pushed me against the nearest tree.
He growled into my ear, “I’d chase you to the ends of the earth, Kitten, just to have you.”
There was that unruly alpha, who didn’t take anyone’s shit, that I had fallen in love with.
He turned me around, so I was looking at him, and he maneuvered himself between my legs, burying his face into the crook of my neck and drawing his tongue against his mark. I relaxed against the coarse bark and let out a soft moan, feeling his fingers slip between my legs.
Dipping my fingers underneath his white V-neck, I ran my fingers down his thick abdomen, then his V-line, and grabbed his belt, undoing it and thrusting my hand into his pants. My pussy clenched even harder when I grasped his cock in my hand, stroking it slowly.
“Goddess, Ares,” I whispered.
Ares didn’t talk about his feelings—ever. He worked through things physically.
I had seen it more than once—with the hounds and with me in bed. If Ares wasn’t going to talk to me about what hurt him, then the least I could do was help him relieve his stress a bit, right? I couldn’t let him suffer endlessly like this.
He rubbed his fingers against my shorts and laid his canines against my neck again, biting down slightly. “I’m going to take you here like I should’ve done the first night I met you,” he said, slipping a finger into my panties and down my folds.
Wanting him to relax, I pulled off his pants and knelt in the middle of the forest.
The sunrays glowed from behind him, creating dark shadows on his sculpted face. In the pit of darkness, two hungry golden eyes gazed down upon me. He grasped my chin and roughly stroked my jaw.
“Last time, you kept me up all night in the forest, touching my aching pussy,” I said, wrapping my hand around the base of his cock and staring up at him through my lashes. I dipped my head and let my tongue glide over his balls, sucking one into my mouth while I stroked his cock. “This time … it’s my turn.”
He stiffened and laced a hand in my hair. “Take them both, Kitten.”
I sucked his other ball in my mouth at the same time, my tongue lapping against them. He tugged me even closer to him and grunted, resting one hand against the tree bark behind me, his canines growing in his mouth.
“Look at me, Aurora.”
Staring up into his golden eyes, I worked my way up his cock, licking and sucking on his shaft and tasting every bit of him. When I reached his head, I swirled my tongue around it and sucked it into my mouth, bobbing my head. I thrust a hand between my legs and slowly teased my clit with my fingers, rubbing it in small and tortuous circles.
“Face-fuck me until you come,” I murmured against him. “Please.”
“No.” Ares curled his lips into a smile and drew a finger down the column of my throat. “I want you to show me how you choke on my cock all by yourself, Kitten. I want to see those eyes fill with tears and spit rolling down your chin because you love it so fucking much.”
My pussy clenched. I closed my lips around him and took him until his cock slammed against the back of my throat and my mouth was packed with his shaft. I wrapped one of my hands around my neck and squeezed tightly, feeling him inside me.
When he groaned from the pressure, I bobbed my head back and forth on him for as long, as quickly, and as hard as I could, making sure he reached midway down my throat every time and giving it a good squeeze when he did.
“Fuck, Kitten.” He curled his fingers into my hair. “Come all over your fingers for me.”
I thrust a finger inside of me, in and out and in and out at the same pace I face-fucked myself with his enormous cock, and parted my lips, moaning on him when I came. Almost immediately, his cum shot against the back of my throat and slid down it.
Not expecting it, I gagged on his dick and went to pull away, yet he pulled me closer to his hips. Spit dripped from my mouth. Tears formed in my eyes. I swallowed his cum and slowly pulled my head back.
When he moved back, I doubled over on the ground, posted my hands on the grass, and gasped for air. Ares knelt down beside me, grabbed my juice-covered fingers, and stuck them into his mouth.
“Let’s get home,” he finally said, picking me up and setting me on my feet.
And while those eyes had turned godly only a few moments ago, they were back to being filled with nothing but sorrow.