Page 15 of Hunted Ink

All of the questions that had been boring their way through me piled up on my tongue, and even though I could debate how smart it was to voice them to someone I barely knew, he was also the only person I could ask. Besides, I… trusted him. So I took a deep breath and let the most obvious one out. “Am I really a wolf?” I immediately had the urge to hide, to cover up every vulnerability I had, but with my hands tied, I was fully exposed to him.

When his grin split his serious expression in half, I was grateful I got to witness it. He simply bloomed right before my eyes. “Yes, but you’re not only a wolf. You’re an Alpha.” Before I could argue that obviously I was an alpha, he clarified, “With a capital A. You were born to be a leader. Other shifters will naturally gravitate toward you, defer to you.”

“I wouldn’t know about that. I live with humans.”

He gave me a strange look. “Don’t be too sure about that.” He leaned in and buried his nose against my neck, the brush of his touch across my skin sending a traitorous ripple of desire straight to my balls. When he pulled back, his blue eyes had gone gray, glowing almost silver in the evening light. “I’m picking up another wolf, a bear, some sort of feline, and something not local. Jackal maybe?”

“Are you serious?”

“Yeah. I’ve been doing a little digging into the Divine Order, and it seems that they have a habit of indoctrinating shifters to do their dirty work. I wouldn’t be surprised if most of the members aren’t human. You didn’t know? Haven’t suspected anything was wrong?” He was watching me closely, no doubt wondering how I would take the news.

“No, but… I know it’s not normal, what we’re doing. I’ve been… resisting.” Questions were still bouncing around in my head. Like about the nightmares I had sometimes, of fire and smoke and screaming, about how I came to be with the Order when I obviously wasn’t born there. They were important questions that needed answers, but the more time I spent in Kedi’s presence, the harder it was to focus. My attention had drifted to a new priority.

I was beginning to understand the meaning of the word mate.

Kedi was just standing in front of me, not doing anything special, but his skin had taken on an amber glow as the sun began its descent toward the horizon, and he was… Fuck, he was ethereal. With his scent addling my senses, close enough to touch but with my hands tied, it only made the urge stronger, impossible to resist. I strained at the rope around my wrists, but it was no use. Kedi knew his way around a knot.

Fuck. And if that didn’t conjure a far more lascivious image in my head, I didn’t know what would.

I tried to keep my thoughts off my face, but the way Kedi stiffened, sniffing the air, he had to have some clue about the gutter where I suddenly found myself waist-deep in sexy filth. My gaze was drawn down his neck, then lower still, following the lines of his tattoos until I stopped dead at the silver hoop pierced through one of his nipples. My mouth flooded with saliva as I imagined pulling it into my mouth. Would the metal be cold against my tongue? Or as heated as his skin.

As surprising as it had been to be knocked out cold, then to find myself tied to a chair, what was even more surprising? That I found it so damn hot to be restrained by him.

When I was hunting, stillness was easy. It became a part of me, like breathing. But now, my body did not want to be still. I was filled with a frantic wanting that was driving me mad! And yet… bound and forced to sit here, it was the hardest thing I’d ever had to do. And I burned.

Chapter 11

Kedi

The air was ripe with the scent of Conroy’s— Apollo’s—pheromones. His eyes roamed down my body, and I had to stop myself from preening under his attentive gaze. He stopped at my nipple piercing, and his tongue darted out, wetting his lower lip, as though he was suddenly famished, and my body responded so quickly that I got lightheaded when all blood rushed south.

Wait, no! This wasn’t the time to be sexy! I’d hit the poor guy on the head, gagged him, and tied him to a chair! I was holding him hostage, this was not the kind of environment that people found alluring in the least. What I should’ve been doing was untying the ropes and letting him go. I was sure he wasn’t a threat to me now. There was no other reason to keep him restrained. Right?

But then I caught a twitch of movement, drawing my attention to his crotch, and I found him hard and tenting those ridiculous baggy jeans. Did he… like being tied up?

“Huh… Here I was feeling guilty for mistreating you, but it’s looking more like a reward for good behavior now. Who knew,” I drawled.

His cheeks heated with a rosy blush beneath his light beard, and he averted his eyes like he couldn’t bear to look at me. I reached down and took his jaw in my hand, the scruff rasping over my palm as I tipped his chin up until he met my gaze. “You don’t need to be embarrassed. I’ll never judge you for what makes you feel good.”

He huffed out a laugh. “I didn’t know this would feel good.”

“Neither did I, but I’m not complaining,” I admitted with a smirk, but it was hard to deny the heady desire that clouded my thoughts and made me harder than I’d ever been in my life. Maybe it was just that we were both exploring these power dynamics for the first time, but I didn’t think that was the only reason it felt so damn good. “You feel it too, don’t you? Like we’re made for each other.”

I felt his Adam’s apple bob against my hand as he debated what answer to give. “I feel like I know you, like I’ve always known you. Your voice, your eyes, your scent. I feel like I can’t breathe without knowing how you taste.”

“And you know what that means? What we are to each other?” I wasn’t sure what to think. He’d clearly felt the urge to track me down, but if he’d been raised by the Order, who knew what he’d been taught about shifters besides how to kill them.

“Mate,” he whispered at last, his pupils blown wide.

My wolf instinctively reached out for his, whining, but it was like searching blindly for something in a pitch-black room. I could feel his wolf somewhere beneath the surface, buried deep inside him. Anger flared when I debated what the Order could’ve done to keep his beast not just leashed but muffled like it was.

“Do you want me to untie you, Apollo?” I asked, my voice dropping an octave into a sexy purr. Using that name felt like a betrayal to everything we’d gone through, but when he responded to me with a shudder, I decided pressing the issue could wait. We had time—I refused to believe otherwise.

He shook his head as much as he could in my grip. “No… please don’t.”

I needed to be closer to him. Finding him was one thing, but every fiber of my being wanted to claim him as mine. I brought one leg over his thighs and straddled him, and when I lowered myself to sit in his lap, there was no hiding that the attraction was mutual.

His breath stuttered as I gave a testing roll of my hips, just the barest hint of friction between us. “What are you going to do to me?” He sounded so eager to be at my mercy.