Filed to story: My Kidnapper Is the Wolf King
Callum grins and shakes his head as he goes back to his soup. Jack was trying to get Callum to fight him a few weeks ago, to learn how Callum fought. I suppose his implication is that if he can beat Ryan, he can beat Callum. Callum doesn’t seem threatened by the blatant challenge.
“Aren’t lobsters saltwater creatures?” says Arran suddenly, spoon paused halfway to his mouth.
“What? No! No, they’re not!” says Elsie, looking at me, alarmed. “Those were freshwater lobsters. They’ll be fine.”
“I’m sure they’ll live long and happy lives.” Blake takes a sip of wine. “And soon, Lowfell will be overrun with lobsters. There will be shellfish all over the island, and I’ll be known as the oddball alpha who lives in a castle among his crustaceans.”
Alfie squeals with delight, clapping his hands together, and Jack pretends he has lobster claws on the other side of the table. A smile spreads across my face as Callum laughs beside me. If I didn’t know better, I’d think he was starting to enjoy his time at Lowfell, and the company within its walls.
Strangely, I am, too. I think about what Lochlan said, about Blake collecting broken birds. There’s Elsie, abused by her father, and little Alfie, who barely escaped his. Arran sits with a beaker of water, when everyone else has wine. And Jack, whose history I don’t know, but whom I catch with a dark look in his eyes every so often.
There’s a peace here that I didn’t find at Madadh-allaidh, and that I certainly never knew back home. Blake may be an alpha, but he doesn’t seem to take the role particularly seriously when the other alphas are not watching.
Yet as laughter spreads around the table, and Elsie pinches Alfie’s side with fake lobster claws, I can’t help but feel like this is the calm before the storm. Tomorrow night is the full moon. After that, if we manage to knock James off his throne, we will all be enemies once more.
Blake catches my eye across the table, as if he knows what I’m thinking.
I avert my gaze, and have a mouthful of soup.
The corner of my mouth twitches. Callum is right.
It tastes horrible.
Chapter Twenty-Four
The next evening, as the sun descends behind the mountains, Callum and I walk away from the castle walls. My fingers are laced with his.
The energy in Lowfell has been charged all day. As the hours raced by, tension built within me. It’s not just fear that makes my skin hum. I feel as if something is awakening within me. Something that longs for release.
To my dismay, Callum left for a few hours, so I was alone with my thoughts all afternoon. I was unable to concentrate, unable to do anything but pace up and down our chambers and prevent myself from searching Lowfell for someone to pick a fight with-preferably Blake. Or Callum, because I didn’t want to be left alone.
Now, I keep my emotions and my restlessness close and my head raised as we pass other Wolves gathering by the bank of the loch. Someone is playing bagpipes, Ryan is sitting on the bank with Jack, and the two pass a flask between them. A few
Wolves in yellow tartan build a bonfire-assisted by Arran. To them, this is a night of celebration.
I hope the cold wind masks the sound of my racing pulse, and the scent of my fear. I grip Callum’s hand more tightly than necessary, and he runs his thumb along my knuckles as the rain-drenched grass squelches beneath our boots.
Lochlan beckons us over, but Callum merely waves in acknowledgement and tugs me into the woodland. We walk in silence for a while, and pass the crumbling chapel. He leads me to a clearing. I halt.
A soft laugh escapes my lips and mists in front of my face. Warmth spreads through me, and some of my tension dissipates. “This is what you were doing today.”
He stands beside me and curls his arms around my waist, resting his chin on my head. “Do you like it?”
Candles of varying sizes flicker at the edges of the clearing, about fifty in total, sheltered from the wind by the tall trees. A small campfire crackles in the center, a pile of rugs and furs beside it. The air smells like evergreen and woodsmoke.
I smile. “I like it very much. Thank you.”
I walk toward the middle of the clearing, and Callum follows. I glance upward. There is a gap in the evergreen canopy, and the darkening sky strains through. My heart beats faster, and I release a shaky breath. It won’t be long.
“Took me a while to find and light the candles.” Callum grins. “Ryan helped. He moaned about Becky the entire time, which made it take even longer.”
Callum tugs me down onto the rugs with him. He maneuvers behind me, raises his knees on either side of my body, and pulls my back toward his chest-tucking me safely into his arms. I melt against him.
Finally, I draw the courage to ask. “Does it hurt?”
“It’s a good feeling. A release. I swear it.”
I bite my bottom lip. My entire body is going to break and change, so I can’t believe that to be true. There is a part of me that wonders if I should have asked Blake, because I know he would not lie to protect my feelings.
Callum sweeps my hair over my shoulder, and dips his mouth to the back of my neck. Shivers tremble through me as he drags his teeth across the sensitive skin there. “Do you want me to show you?”
“How. . .?”
He brushes his knuckles over my inner thigh, and the restlessness that has been humming beneath my skin all day crescendos. Slowly, deliberately, he pulls up my skirt, and skims his hand up my bare skin.
He brings his lips to my ear. “Do you want me to show you?” His tone is darker, lower.
My breath hitches. “Yes.”
He skims his knuckles over my underwear, and I gasp. “Surely it doesn’t feel like that.”
“I’ve not finished yet,” he whispers, amusement in his tone.
“Show me.”
He slides his hand into my underwear, and slowly drags a finger between my thighs. I whimper and arch into him. A low growl vibrates against my back at the slickness he finds there.
He coats my bud with it, rubbing a torturous tight circle over the sensitive bundle of nerves. “How does this feel?” he murmurs.
All sensible thought leaves me. All rational fear. I’m just need, and desire, and the heat that builds with each expert stroke of his fingers. “I. . . good. It feels good,” I gasp.
I grip his wrist and move my hips. I want him to move faster. Harder. To fill me with his fingers and ease this desperate throbbing ache. He keeps his pace tortuously slow and gentle. A feral moan escapes my lips, and my teeth tingle like they want to sink into something.
His dark chuckle fills my ear. “How about now? How does it feel now, Princess?”
“Frustrating,” I growl.
He brings his other hand to my breast over the fabric of my dress, and runs his thumb over my peaked nipple, causing another jolt of pleasure, of frustration, to surge through me. He dips his head, and sucks the sensitive spot behind my ear.
“And now?”
“Please,” is all I can murmur.
“This is what it is to be a wolf.” He slides his finger down my slickness, and gently circles my entrance. An embarrassing moan scrapes against my throat. “To have something building inside you.” He slides his finger into me, and I groan as he fills me. “To feel wild. Feral. Animal.” He slides back out, then in, and sweat beads on my skin. “To always be on the edge of something.” I arch my back, whimpering. “Never able to release.”
“Please,” I whisper.
“Until the night of the full moon.” He nips my earlobe with his teeth. “Spread your legs.”
I allow my thighs to fall open. He slides one finger in, and then the other, stretching me and filling me with delicious pressure. My moan echoes around the clearing, and he makes a low, satisfied sound in his throat. Finally, he gives me what I want. He pumps his hand faster. My head lolls back against his shoulder, and I move my hips against him.
“Fuck, you’re so beautiful.” He moves his other hand to my throat, and tilts back my head so I’m forced to look at him. I barely notice the wolf in his eyes, or the flush of his cheeks, or the hardness that presses against my lower back through his kilt. “This is what it feels like to shift.”
He curls his fingers against my inner wall, hitting that spot deep within me, and it pushes me over the edge. My release crashes through me, more forceful than it ever has before. I writhe against him as the feeling is finally freed. Until, finally, whimpering, moaning, sweating, I still in his arms.
I blink, and everything comes back into focus: the clearing, the crackling fire, the trees swaying in the darkening sky. Callum. His green eyes are bright in the darkness.
I huff a laugh. “I don’t believe you. It can’t feel like that.”
His grin widens. “Perhaps not quite. But it’s a release. A good feeling.”
He slides his fingers out of me, and I shift against him, tilting my head back against his chest to look at his face. When he holds up his hand, his gaze is drawn to the way his fingers glisten in the firelight. His expression darkens, and heat floods my face. Without warning, he puts them into his mouth and sucks, his eyes shutting for a moment as relief seems to flood through him.
“Callum!”
He opens his eyes, pulls out his fingers, and grins. “What? A wolf thing. I told you, we have an oral fixation. Fuck. I cannot wait until tomorrow morning. I am going to devour you.”