Sliding one hand down the front of her body, past her navel and down in between her legs, I spread the lips of her pussy and shoved my knot deep inside of her. It was almost ready to be stuck, I just needed Perrie to do her part.
My thumb worked at her swollen clit and I felt Perrie’s breathing speed up as we kissed, her fingers tightening on my hair as she held our faces together.
Then the walls of her pussy were tightening around my knot, locking us together as I pulled away from Perrie’s seeking mouth, my own mouth held open by the drive to bond.
My eyes scanned Perrie’s body, trying to figure out exactly where to bite her. My first inclination was to bite her on that perfect back of hers, but I didn’t want to permanently mar the perfect expanse of it with more than bruises.
No, I wanted the mark to be somewhere that couldn’t be covered easily by a shirt so that all of the horny alphas on her college campus knew she belonged to me and I would make them disappear if they so much as looked at her sideways.
Perrie’s pulse thrummed in her throat as she continued to come, oblivious to my thoughts and I zeroed in on the spot on her neck just underneath the side of her jaw.
Perfect, my inner alpha purred and I didn’t need any more encouragement.
My teeth sank into Perrie’s neck, the pressure in my teeth dissipating almost immediately as the hormone in them began to seep into her body.
My heart hammered in my chest as we stayed locked together, Perrie’s back arching as she came a second time around my knot and her scream echoed off of the vaulted ceilings of my bedroom.
Then I felt a second heartbeat pounding alongside my own: it was Perrie’s. Emotions that weren’t my own started to filter down what felt like a mental string connecting us together.
We collapsed down into the bed, Perrie still knotted against me as I began to nurse the mark, sealing it and making sure it took.
As we lay together, I felt more swelling emotions and worked to try and pick them a part. Pleasure was easy to figure out, it rippled out of her in heavy waves as she gave my scalp gentle scratches where she’d quite nearly pulled my hair out from the roots while we were making love.
Then there were other emotions that felt like guilt and worry.
“I’m sorry for going to Kailey’s house tonight. It was stupid and I should have known there would be more to it than playing board games,” she whispered, her voice hoarse. “I guess I’ve learned college parties aren’t for me, after all.”
I still hadn’t heard the full story about how my mate had gone missing tonight and a growl rippled out of me at her words. I wasn’t anywhere near done with my rut, but my instincts were temporarily sated by the fresh bond mark on Perrie’s neck.
“What would have happened if someone really had taken you?” I asked, finally managing to find my words after communicating in grunts and growls for the past hour.
Perrie turned to look over at me, her face still flushed. “I know that you’d come and find me. Both you and Rhodes.”
I scoffed at that. I’d been almost two hours away dealing with a shitstorm that had barely just begun. None of this would have happened if I hadn’t forced her to marry me.
Maybe in another life Perrie had good parents and no cancer and she was happily married into a boring but nice pack that all worked nine-to-fives. Maybe she ran a photography business or maybe she did whatever the hell she wanted to because she was far away from the five families and the rest of the fucked up world that lurked just under the surface of the city streets.
“Sometimes,” I started, trying to find the right words to say. “Sometimes I wish that I could just leave it all behind.”
“Leave what? The Keane family?” Perrie frowned. “Sweetheart, you ooze Keane gold through and through, I can’t imagine you doing anything else.”
Perrie’s endearment temporarily distracted me—she’d called me it a couple of times, but only ever in passing like she was trying it on for size.
“I don’t know about that,” I said, threading our fingers together and holding our joined hands up so that our wedding rings could shine in the dim light of the room. “I always thought living in a nice little house somewhere in the country with no other houses in sight would work for me.”
“And a bunch of birds to go with it?” Perrie teased with a grin.
“You and Rhodes are still convinced that I like birds that much?” I asked, frowning at her as she let out a little giggle that sent shockwaves of stimulation through me.
The haze of my rut was slowly starting to seep back in again and I knew it wouldn’t be long before I needed her more.
“Well the doves and swans at our wedding, not to mention the entire empty falconry on the property that Oona told me you built yourself don’t do a lot to disprove that theory do they? I’m surprised you don’t have a chicken coop anywhere.”
“Who knows, maybe I’ve got a whole flock of them in the basement,” I joked. There were no birds in the basement, just holding cells, but Perrie didn’t need to know about those.
“Why do you like them so much? Did you own a bird when you were little or something?”
I shook my head. “My father never tolerated pets without purpose, no. But on my mother’s good days we’d go down to the water and feed the ducks.”
It was one of my few good memories of her and they usually only happened in the summer when the sun was out for longer and the oppressiveness of her tower didn’t seem so bad.
“We used to sit and watch them until they flew South at the end of the season, it was really nice.”
When I was really little and still believed in the good in the world, I used to imagine myself flying away with them to a place far away from the Keane estate.
Then, after my mother died when I was thirteen, I never went back to see the ducks again.
“That’s nice,” Perrie said, stretching her arms over her head with a yawn, her back pressing into my chest. “Maybe we’ll have to go watch them next year when they come back.”
The brush of her skin against mine was enough to remind my inner alpha that we were still, in fact, the middle of a rut.
“There’s no time for sleep right now, pet,” I purred in her ear as my knot deflated enough to let my still hard cock slide out of her tender pussy. “We’re not anywhere close to being done.”
Twenty Two
“Perrie,” Rhodes’ voice was the first thing I heard when I finally woke up again with every inch of my body feeling stiff and sore as gentle hands lifted me from the messy bed that had been my home for the past day… or had it been two days?
