"Please," I whisper as his lips tease my jaw.
"Grovel before your king," he commands, and I fall to the floor with a cry as pain shocks through my knees. He offers me no comfort. "I said 'grovel'."
He plants his shoe firmly on my shoulder and exerts steady pressure, until my burning skin meets the freezing marble. Then he strolls in a circle around me, every second of silence building my anticipation. What will he tell me to do next? What will he make me do next?
And when, oh please, when will he make me do it? I can't bear the wait, can't stand the way the stone warms as it leeches the heat from my body.
He kneels behind me and grips my hips, pulling them back, sliding my upper body along the floor with painful resistance. He grinds against me, still fully clothed, and I know my juices are smearing across the front of his trousers. He's so hard and so big, and I'm totally at his mercy. Only a zipper and his self-control stand between us.
He jerks a fistful of my hair and I let out a moan as he pulls my head back.
"Do you submit to my will?" he asks, his other hand cupping my hot, aching center from behind.
"For the good of the pack," I breathe.
"For your own good," he growls, and then he's biting my neck and I hear his zipper opening, his belt buckle clattering on the floor and it's going to happen, oh God it's happening, and he brushes against my aching core and—
My own cry of release wakes me, and I blink up through the darkness at the canopy over my bed. I kick off the blankets to free my sweaty body.
What the hell was that? And why did my brain have the nerve to wake me up?
Well, technically my pussy woke me up. I remember that happening only one other time in my life. And my brain probably had to snap me out of it this time, since I don't have any reference for how the rest of that dream would go.
I spent five years in the human world, but I have no idea if humans and werewolves can conceive together. It wasn't someone anyone talked about, especially in my family, where my sex talk was, "you don't have to worry about it until you have a mate, stop asking questions." Sure, there was sex ed at our high school, but that was all about the mechanics, and certainly no one addressed interspecies sex. As a result, my personal policy during those five years away was "take no chances."
Maybe I should have. I wouldn't be having horny dreams about our pack leader now.
Liar. I hate to admit it to myself, but I've never been so immediately and intensely attracted to anyone. Sure, there've been people I met and thought, "They're cute," but no one has made the air around me feel ticklish.
And of course, the first person to inspire that feeling just has to be the king and a political enemy to a majority of the pack. I don't even know how he seized the throne in the first place. Considering the fact that neither of my parents would even look at me in the car on the way home, I shouldn't ask more questions about it. At least, not from them.
I just danced with our new king, from a foreign court. After I disappeared for five years, to the home city of the pack that's currently taking over mine.
Tonight, Nathan Frost ruined my life.
If there's anyone I can question relentlessly about the political nightmare of the past five years, it's my best friends. Hannah, Ryan, and I have been a matching set of three since kindergarten. We still are, even though Ryan and Hannah are mated now.
Despite having been apart for so long, going to their house is like all of us getting together after school. Sure, there was fully immature squeeing over each other when I arrived, but we quickly fell into our old ways, like I didn't break contact with them for five years.
Except for the "my best friends are in a mating bond" thing. "How did that happen, anyway?"
"It was him, or marriage to Dave Byron," Hannah says with a gagging noise.
I echo her disgust with, "Gross."
"Be nice," Ryan admonishes her. "It's not his fault his parents never told him no and gave him every damn thing he wanted."
Hannah ignores him. "Ever look at someone and just know, deep in your soul, that they were an ugly baby? That's Dave Byron."
We're clustered around the huge island in their enormous kitchen. Hannah's copper curls glint gold under the sophisticated pendant lights hanging at asymmetrical lengths above us. Five years and a baby later, she still looks like a teenager, with her dewy pale skin and freckles. Her wardrobe is more sophisticated now—she used to show up for first period in her pajamas.