Escaping Death

Solana

Even before I open my eyes I’m painfully aware that I’m alone in Hunter’s bed, and I mean ‘painfully’ literally. I feel like I’ve been thrown off the edge of a cliff and have tumbled and crashed into every jagged rock until I fell face first into this bed at the base of the mountain.

There’s an unusual prickling to my skin causing goosebumps to appear and my muscles to contract rapidly. I — I think I’m cold. The halo of sweat on the sheets around where my head was would suggest otherwise. I’m burning up and freezing my ass off at the same time. I’m freezing hot.

I’m sticky with sweat, my skin hurts when I rub it to warm myself, my muscles ache… for the first time in years I actually wish I was home. I’d head straight for the thermal springs and I’d soak myself in the hot waters. The closest thing I have these days to a hot spring is a shower shared between me and five grown ass men.

I max out the hot water in the shower but most of it steams off of me all the same. If it weren’t for the steam coming off the water itself I would have said it wasn’t even warm, it feels tepid at best. Regardless, I feel clean getting out of the shower but dizzy. My hands catch the edge of the sink and stop me from crumbling to the floor.

The combination of shooting pains beneath my skin and my leaden head makes crumbling to the floor a very appealing option. Right as I’m considering giving in to gravity, I catch the scent of pizza…and Hunter. My mouth salivates like I’m some Pavlovian mutt.

I throw on a tank top and shorts, not bothering with a bra and panties. The fewer clothes I have touching my skin the better. I’d go naked if I could.

I thump down the stairs, dragging my feet like they’re encased in concrete. Every step is torture. Every movement hurts. But the scent of food and men is enough to distract me from how very odd my body is behaving.

“Smells good down here,” I do my best to keep the agony from my voice. Walking around the couch would take too much effort at this point so I opt to sit on the back and slide down the couch into Hunter’s lap.

Gods, does he smell good. When his hands touch the bare skin on my thigh I brace for the pain, but instead his touch is like a balm. He soothes my skin beneath his finger tips, the prickles from the chill replaced by warm electricity soothing my aching muscles.

“The pizza?” I hear him ask. His voice sounds distant, like he’s calling out to me from the shore. Gods he really does smell good, he’s always smelled good – like a wildfire. I snuggle into him, into the warmth of his skin and his welcoming scent. I want to do more than scent him, I want to taste him. Who needs food when this delectable morsel is holding me? “I meant you,” I admit to him. I hear his muffled voice speak to me again but his teeth nipping at my ear is all I perceive. My vision is blurry and my hearing is muted, the only senses that are working are touch and smell and they’re working overtime.

Hunter shifts, his hands leaving my body, and the aches and pains return at the loss causing a snarl to spill from my lips. I grip onto him tighter, anything to maintain the contact that eases the ache.

“Solana,” he commands me with a deep rumble that reverberates through my bones making me melt against him. I press my chest against his to increase the contact between us and his leg slips between mine. Before long I’m dry humping his leg because the feeling is so much more than it’s ever been.

Our mouths find one another and something inside me snaps making my wolf surge forward and drive our actions based on her natural animalistic urges. Hunter’s wolf calls to mine, the two of them eagerly fighting for control.

Hunter’s large hands frame my face, doing minimal work to soothe the unbearable ache all over my body. I need his hands all over me, I need his body pressed against mine, I need to get so close to him I could climb inside and become one with him.

My wolf Shae presses me again and I’m so focused on where I want Hunter’s hands to be that I don’t have the strength to fight her anymore. She’s in control now.

At last, Hunter picks me up allowing me to ensnare his hips between my legs. My face is burrowed in his neck, I’m clawing at him as if I could get any closer than I already am. Still, it’s not enough. The pain is beginning to break through despite his touch.

Everything hurts, everything is a blur, and then Ace’s delicious scent fills my nose. Somehow I know he could soothe the ache. It makes me wish that he was here, disappointed that he’s not, and frustrated that I’ve lost control of myself — body and spirit.

Hunter sets me down in Ace’s bed and it seems like he’s motioning to leave, but the pains all over my body demand his soothing touch. No — that’s not quite it, not just his touch. I want to taste him, I need to be filled with him, I need something to douse the fire raging within me.

He doesn’t stop me when I start clawing at his pants and boxers. I practically shred them apart, finally exposing his thick and ready length already glistening with a dew drop of precum at the slit. The sight alone makes my mouth water and thighs clench together a little tighter, the tension in my belly coiling a little more.

His flavor explodes on my tongue the moment my lips wrap around his hardness. Nothing else matters except getting to consume him, to devour him and taste him. I want to taste it all – his body and his release. But he denies me what I want, popping out of my mouth too quickly for me to protest and pushes me onto the bed so I’m laying down surrounded by the scents of all five of the men in this house.

Everywhere he kisses me burns and soothes simultaneously. My skin itches, my body aches. Everything is too much and not enough.

I hear the deep rumble of his voice again relaxing my body into submission. His broad shoulders push my legs apart effortlessly, not that I’m giving him any resistance. He kisses a trail up the inside of my thigh, quelling the ache and adding more fuel to my hungry fire. My hips buck like a wild horse off the bed when his mouth descends between my thighs, running his tongue through my folds and lapping at my wetness.

He groans against my core, radiating shockwaves of desire throughout my body, and he continues licking and sucking until I release on his tongue. I cry out because although it feels so good, my orgasm feels empty. I feel empty.

“Please,” I beg, hoping that he hears me and gives me what I need, what my body demands. There’s no controlling my body – my temperature, my desire, the way my body responds to his touch. Nothing is in my control anymore which is a stark contrast to how I’ve lived my life in the last few years. But despite how things went down, and how long I spent hating him, the irrefutable truth is that I do feel safe with Hunter. I trust his words, I trust his touch, I trust him.

So when he sinks into me, connecting us as one, stretching me in a way only he can, I let go of my futile hold on my control and give into the delicious feeling of his body fitting into mine. His touch cools my skin, his strokes massage my aching muscles, and his release douses the inferno that has been building.

But the relief doesn’t last.

I demand more, and he obliges, taking me again and again with his mouth, his hands, and his cock. He could take me a hundred times and it still wouldn’t be enough. He makes my body glow and hum with pleasure, but the affliction plaguing my body requires a very specific salve.

I need my mate.

I need Ace.

— — —

Ace

The dark of the night obscures the brief panic that flashes across my face before I collect my thoughts and regain control.

“Who?” I question him. This is treacherous territory, Eli and Dean are inside the room feet away, Tate could be anywhere. Solana asked me not to say anything yet, and I happily agreed with her. There will come a time and day when I tell them who she is — or was — to me, but that won’t be until after she’s gone.

“Ace,” he growls, calling me out on my bullshit.

“Can this wait until we’re done here?”

“No,” he responds immediately. “I’m not sure I’ll survive through this conversation,” his words come out choppy, like he’s biting through pain.

“Give me an hour.”

“Fuck, just hurry,” he breathes with relief before I cut him off with the end button.

For fuck’s sake, she can’t go a single day without getting into something. I’d find it amusing if it wasn’t such a headache keeping up with her antics.

Maybe I should have just brought her here with us, it would have made my wolf happier and stopped him from pacing back and forth in my mind. Maybe I need to be firmer with her, make her understand I’m done tolerating her bullshit.

Ha, as if. She’d just dig in her heels that much more. As if my wolf doesn’t adore her fiery spirit and her fight. She glows from the inside out.

I amble my way back inside the room from the balcony. One heavy sigh is all it takes from me for them to know what I’m about to say.

“I’m going to port back home for a minute…” I pause to consider my phrasing, “to make sure they’re not throwing knives at each other again.”

Dean bites back a smirk while Eli wears his shit-eating grin proudly. “I fucking called it! Pay up,” he motions to Dean.

“I’m not bringing her back here,” I reaffirm, but that does nothing to erase their victorious expressions.

I don’t want to leave before Tate comes back so he can hear my reasoning for leaving directly from me and not from the peanut gallery, but something in Hunter’s voice has my wolf whining and pushing me to get home as soon as possible.

“I’ll be back soon,” I hope.

I walk back out onto the balcony and take off into the sky, opting to fly myself back home rather than teleport to give myself time to brace for what awaits me at home.

In the hour it takes me to fly home I must have envisioned a thousand different conversations with Hunter. I mentally prepare for the worst — him killing her in a fit of rage after figuring out that she’s my mate. But more realistically it would be him hating me, hating her, and ultimately deciding to leave. The exact thing I hoped to prevent by not telling them about Sol.

The closer I get to home the more paradoxical my wolf’s feelings become. He’s relieved to be getting nearer to home, but he’s still just as wound up, just as anxious.

I enter the house through the back door and the scent from inside bowls me over where I literally have to clutch the door frame to keep from dropping to my knees.

My wolf surges forward breaking through my control and barrels us through the house up to my room where I find a naked Solana draped over a naked Hunter… in my goddamn bed.

Hunter’s eyes shoot open and soften with relief when he sees me. He holds his finger to his lips gesturing for me to be quiet.

This is what I came home for? So I could find you in my bed fucking my mate? I seethe calmly through our mindlink.

Sol stirs from her sleep and turns towards me, scenting me out, before Hunter can respond. I almost regret my words, almost. Her hair is white, between her ink her skin is littered with scars I’ve never seen on her before, and her eyes are like black holes.

She’s in heat. He links back to me.

My legs carry me to the edge of the bed on autopilot, my hands seek her out and grip tightly onto her when she climbs up and wraps herself around me like a koala bear hugs a tree.

Her nose nuzzles into my neck and she sighs deeply, moaning and melting in my arms.

But when Hunter shifts so he can climb out of bed, Sol growls her complaints and grabs his wrist. “Stay,” she whispers her command. My wolf snarls at first but quickly shuts up when she presses her lips to my neck.

Hunter looks at me like he’s asking for permission, and I can tell from the way Sol looks at him that it would do more harm than good to kick him out, so I nod my approval to him.

He gives us a tight smile, “I’ll be back.”

Solana snarls at his response but he laughs softly. “Right now you need him,” he says and kisses her tenderly on the forehead, “but when I come back we’ll both have you.”

She shivers at his promise, a new wave of her arousal perfumes the already saturated air.

Before he can walk past me and out that door I reach out and grab him by the arm.

Don’t worry, she won’t remember I said that. She’s nearly lost to her heat. He says sadly through our link.

I grip him tighter. You made her a promise. You better come back.

He looks as stunned as I feel at my words. I should be angry that she asked him to stay, I should pull rank and forbid him from coming back, but I can practically feel their bond.

He nods to me, his joy and feeling of relief and acceptance flooding our own pack bond. I release my hold of him and he restates his promise to come back before he finally leaves us alone.

Now it’s just Solana and me. One long look into the flames in her eyes and I’m just as lost to her heat as she is.