Savage Satisfaction (15 page)

“I want to have sex with you. The way we did the first time.
That was almost as good as flying.”

There were no more words. She bent, hands on his shoulders,
and brought their lips together. She tasted like the night, spicy and dark. Her
hair smelled like the wind.

“You smell of alcohol,” she whispered against his lips.

Since this was a dream, William could speak the truth. “I
got drunk so I could forget you were gone. My heart was breaking and it hurt.”

She leaned up. “I still don’t understand why it is you love
me.”

“Can love ever really be defined by reasons?” William was
rather pleased with that. He was a veritable poet.

They kissed again, lips sliding wetly, and then Mirela broke
the kiss, only to press her nipple into his mouth. He liked her aggression, her
control.

Her fingers roamed over his chest and arms, stroking,
pressing. She grabbed his wrists and moved his hands to her ass and she knelt
above him. William kneaded the globes of her bottom.

He skimmed one hand between them, wiggling it down to her
sex. She was wet. William slid his fingers over her clit, listening to her, watching
her to be sure he was in the right place.

She was thrusting against his hand, moaning and whimpering,
kneading and pinching the nipple that wasn’t in his mouth.

William took his fingers from her to grab her hips. She sat
up, her nipple popping from his mouth. She brushed her hair back over her
shoulder, her breasts and belly pearl-like in the starlight.

Together they positioned her hips, his cock. William knew it
was a dream, if only for the fact that his cock was hard and ready, totally
unimpaired by the rampaging amounts of gin.

She braced her palms on his belly as the tip of his cock
found the center of her. Holding her hair up off the back of her neck with one
hand, she rode him, her face tipped up, her breasts bouncing. William sat up,
bracing himself with one hand. He put his hand on her back, kissed the soft
skin between her breasts.

“I love you. I love you,” he whispered.

Her hands were in his hair, gripping him as his movements
grew jerky. “Protect me, don’t hurt me,” she gasped out.

“Never, never again,” he promised.

Mirela pressed her face into his hair, body coiled and tight
as the orgasm rocked her. William wrapped his arms around her, holding her
through it all.

When she was done she climbed off him. He hadn’t come but he
didn’t care. He wanted to please her more than he wanted anything else.

She went to the window and looked over her shoulder. Then
his dream Mirela smiled, climbed onto the sill and jumped.

Christoffer found that self-hatred was the emotion that kept
on giving. After a night of tossing and turning on the cot, he woke to find
that he didn’t feel any better about himself.

He’d locked himself in one of the cages, as his Alpha asked,
but he hadn’t locked the building door, and the gale-force winds of last night
had popped it open. He was glad. He wouldn’t want to be stuck in here without
any way of knowing how much time had passed.

Until William put words to his actions, Christoffer had been
in happy denial. He loved William, and clearly love didn’t bring out the best
in him. Despite what he knew about Mirela’s feelings, he’d said nothing to
William. A lie of omission.

He hated that his Alpha was angry with him, but he hated
himself more.

Mirela didn’t deserve what either of them had done to her,
but she especially didn’t deserve the betrayal he’d dealt her. It was not her
fault William loved her, and not her fault William’s love was so dysfunctional.
Christoffer was painfully aware that Mirela had trusted him far more than she’d
trusted William, but while William’s actions caused her pain, Christoffer had
let it happen. If he’d have said something there was no doubt William would
have stopped.

Hadn’t she made it clear she would have denied William sex
if Christoffer wanted her to? Hadn’t she been his friend, his lover?

There was an ache in his chest separate from the knot of
guilt in his belly. Every time he thought about returning to the house and
finding her chamber empty he wanted to throw up.

She was annoying, socially clueless, unskilled in bed. She was
a good listener, loyal and beautiful.

“I’m such a moron,” Christoffer said.

“Not as much of a moron as I.”

Christoffer jumped to his feet at the sound of William’s
voice. The Lord of Eahrington stood in the open door, his shadow stretched
before him.

“I closed that door last night,” Christoffer said. “The wind
blew it open.”

“I believe you.” William picked the cell key up from where
Christoffer had thrown it. “And I knew you’d be here. I’m sorry for what I said
last night. I do trust you.”

William unlocked the cell and pushed the door open.

“My lord?”

“You must be hungry. Come have breakfast.” William shook his
head. “Let me try that again. Would you like to have breakfast with me?”

“Yeah, I’d like that.”

Christoffer followed William out into the early morning
light, chuckling at William’s hiss of pain. “Hungover?”

“Not as bad as expected,” William said, squinting at the
ground.

The housekeeper was in the kitchen. She’d laid breakfast on
the table and was now cooking dinner, which she’d put in the fridge for William
to heat up later.

“Kim, this is Christoffer. His father is an important
business associate of mine. Christoffer is going to be living here.”

“Very well, my lord,” she said, looking up briefly from the
cottage pie she was making to smile at Christoffer.

A ball of pleasure filled Christoffer at William’s words. It
almost pushed away the guilt. Almost.

They tucked into a full English breakfast of bacon,
sausages, toast, beans and tomatoes.

“This needs to cook for forty-five minutes, gas-mark five,”
Kim said. “Shall I wait for it? There’s some laundry.”

“No, thank you, Kim,” William said. “We’ll take it out.”

“Very good. I’ll be seeing you tomorrow, my lord.”

“Good day, Kim.”

The housekeeper left. Christoffer waited until he heard
tires on gravel to say, “How are we going to get Mirela back?”

William sat back, wiping his mouth delicately. “We’re not.”

“Come on. She needs to be here, with us.”

William crossed his arms. “That’s an odd thing for you to
say.”

“I should have told you what was going on, and I shouldn’t
have let my jealousy stop me from helping her, but I was caring for her. I made
sure she was okay because I like her too. She should be here with us.”

William shook his head. “It’s not safe. I don’t trust myself
not to treat her the way I did before. Even knowing how much I hurt her, the
memory of her wearing the jesses and the hood arouses me.”

“So you’ve got a fetish. Who doesn’t? The thing is, now we
all know what’s going on, we know who loves who and so we’ll watch out for each
other.”

“She doesn’t love me.” William stared at the tabletop. When
Christoffer didn’t respond, he looked up. “She loves you? Well, that’s
brilliant.”

“No,” Christoffer rushed out, scared to destroy the
understanding they seemed to be reaching. “She doesn’t love me, but she…likes
me, as a friend. And, er, I might as well tell you now that we would fool
around after her baths.”

“You had sex with her?” There were storm clouds gathering in
William’s eyes.

“No, just oral. Sixty-nine. Kid stuff really.”

William sighed. “I’m not angry.”

“Er, really?”

“No. I’m as surprised as you but I’m not angry. The idea of
you two together seems…right.”

“The idea of the three of us together seems more right,”
Christoffer said.

“That was…very erotic.”

“I don’t mean just for sex. The three of us…in a
relationship.”

“Relationships are between two people.”

“That rule only applies with humans,” Christoffer said,
making it up as he went along.

“Oh really?” William cocked a brow.

“We’re going to live with you for the rest of our lives,
right? Why shouldn’t we all have sex and love each other and all that?”

“This is the manor house of the Lord of Eahrington, not some
hippie commune,” William scoffed.

“Try to not be such a snobby Brit for one second and think
about it. I was scared that if you had her you wouldn’t want anything to do
with me anymore. No more sex, no more watching cricket, no more time in the
library doing nothing. That’s what I was scared to lose. But it doesn’t have to
be that way, does it?” Christoffer dropped to one knee beside William’s chair.

“I don’t want to lose you either.” He tucked Christoffer’s
hair behind his ear. It was the most tender and loving gesture William had ever
performed toward Christoffer, and if the wolf hadn’t already been in love that
would have done it.

“I don’t want to lose you,” William repeated. “And what you
describe feels…right, though completely inappropriate and beyond the pale.”

“But you can see it, can’t you? All of us, together?”

“I can. But you forget one very important thing.”

“What?”

“Mirela’s gone. She hates me.” William looked away from
Christoffer out the kitchen window, his eyes scanning the cloud-studded sky.
“She’s gone.”

“No, I’m not.”

As entrances went, it was perfect. When Christoffer later
learned she’d been standing there listening to them, he’d been floored that
she’d finally managed to say the right thing at the right time.

Christoffer and William both rose to their feet. Christoffer
smiled in relief. She met his grin with a smile of her own. William looked as
though he saw a ghost.

Mirela tipped her head to the side. “Why do you look so
shocked?”

“You came back.”

“Where else would I go? This is my home.”

“I dreamed of you.” William sounded like a love-struck
teenager. Christoffer rolled his eyes. Mirela saw it and the corner of her lip
twitched.

“You dreamed of me before or after we had sex?”

“That was real?”

She blinked. “Of course.”

“You don’t remember having sex with her last night?”
Christoffer tried and failed not to smile. “You
were
drunk.”

“I thought it was a dream.” William frowned.

“It was good sex,” Mirela said to Christoffer. “Though
William did not come and his cock was squishy toward the end.”

William was blushing now. “I was drunk,” he said
defensively.

Christoffer hung on the side of the table as he laughed.
“Squishy? Hahaha.”

“Hateful creatures, both of you,” William said, but he was
smiling.

Mirela made her way over to the table, picking at the last
of the bacon. William took her hand and kissed the center of her palm. Mirela
looked away from her bacon, face gone soft and dreamy.

Jealousy, a terrible green dragon, reared its head in
Christoffer, but William took his hand, lacing their fingers together so that
Christoffer was a part of the moment.

Mirela broke the silent moment by saying, “I saw two foxes
at the edge of the forest.

Christoffer snorted. “Small game. Are you saying you just
looked at them instead of catching them?”

She narrowed her eyes. “I could have if I wanted.”

“Liar.”

“Dog-face.”

“Dog-face?” Christoffer yelped. Now it was William who
braced himself on the table and laughed.

Mirela smirked and bit a sausage in half.

“I think,” William said as his laughter died, “that it’s
time to test my Hunting Pair.”

* * * * *

The Lord of Eahrington rode out, falcon on his wrist, wolf
at his side.

The barbarian inside him was savagely satisfied. He was
finally the lord he’d been born to be, master of beasts too dangerous for other
men to tame, guardian of an old and sacred secret.

On his wrist, the falcon—for he found it hard to think of
the powerful bird as Mirela—rode with her head held high.

The wolf padded along beside them, far enough to keep the
horse from spooking.

He took them away from the deer park and stables, following
the edge of the forest. Soon the manicured grass of the manor house grounds
gave way to field. William stopped here.

He wanted to be able to see the falcon and wolf in action,
and the meadow with its thigh-high grass and open sky would provide him the
opportunity.

“Bring me a fox,” he told them. The wolf’s head jerked, the
falcon lifted her wings.

“Go!” he shouted, and the wolf was off. William could see
the dark fur of his back amid the green of the grasses, but then the wolf
melted into the scenery and was gone. William twisted in his saddle, lowering
his wrist, then flung his arm into the air, pushing the falcon into the sky.
Her wings beat, lifting her quickly and seemingly effortlessly into the sky.

William watched his falcon circle. He settled himself into
the saddle, prepared to watch and enjoy, but he’d underestimated their skill.
There was a flurry of motion in the grass ahead and to the right and then a
high-pitched scream. He saw the wolf’s shoulders rise above the grass.

The falcon dipped into a corkscrew dive, disappearing into
the grass only to lift again, a fox clenched in her claws.

The fox, no larger than a cat, screamed and squealed. The
falcon’s beak parted and she let out a short cry. A howl responded.

The falcon dropped the fox, which fell into the waiting jaws
of the wolf.

Less than two minutes had passed.

They were utterly savage. William had expected them to balk
at being asked to catch a fox. People were horrifically sentimental about
foxes, though they were overpopulated dreadful pests.

They had not balked. They had, with beautiful savagery and
human intelligence, caught the foxes and, when the falcon needed assistance the
wolf was there. That was the power of the Hunting Pair—animal savagery and
human intelligence.

William swung off his gelding, not bothering to tie up the
reins. He wouldn’t have cared if the beast had run away. He was watching the
falcon, flying low over the grass. She circled around him, then came to rest
heavily on his wrist. The wolf, two very dead foxes dangling from his mouth,
emerged from the grass.

He laid the foxes at William feet.

“You are beautiful,” he told his Hunting Pair. “I have never
seen anything so amazing.”

Though he said nothing, the wolf began to change from animal
to human and the falcon jumped from his wrist to do the same.

Christoffer and Mirela, naked, sweaty and panting, rose to stand.
There was wildness in their eyes, so much so that for a moment William was
afraid.

They reached for him, Mirela grabbing his face to savage him
with a kiss, Christoffer ripping his shirt open.

At last.

Mirela nipped William’s lower lip and dug her fingertips
into his hair. The high of flying thrummed in her veins. The ground felt odd
beneath her feet, as if a part of her hadn’t come out of the sky yet.

It had been glorious to fly from William’s arm. Flying for
him was so much more satisfying than simply cruising the sky on her own.

Mirela finally felt as though she was living the life she’d
been meant to, fulfilling her duty.

The wolf was pressed against her, his hands on William’s
chest. He smelled like the earth, an alluring and foreign scent.

Mirela nipped William one last time, then trailed her lips
down William’s throat to his chest, which Christoffer had bared. There were
hands, three of them, on her waist. Someone took her nipple between his
fingers, rolling and pinching it. Mirela pressed her forehead into William’s
chest and moaned in pleasure.

She was bent at the waist, her hands digging into William’s
hips. Christoffer was kissing William. The men stopped kissing. Christoffer
looked down and said, “Well, this calls for a spanking.”

There was a sharp crack and Mirela jumped as Christoffer’s
hand landed on her ass. He rubbed his palm over the smarting cheek. “Liked
that, didn’t you?” he asked.

She didn’t respond.

William cupped her head, drawing her to stand straight. “Did
you like that?”

“Yes,” she said, swallowing a knot of fear. She couldn’t lie
to him but she wanted to.

“Why are you scared?” Christoffer asked, his warm, hard body
pressing against her back, sandwiching her between them.

Mirela twisted her head to address him. “If I say I like
that will I be locked up again? Or tied to the bed?” She started to shake. “I
don’t want that.”