The Walls of Jericho

Forgiveness

Channing draws his knees up under him between my feet. It widens the gap between my slim thighs, opening a space there that seems made for him, that belongs to him. With nothing else to do with them, my fingers seek the sculpted wall of muscle that’s his chest, then they splay as I flatten my palms against him. I like to say that there’s nothing soft about him, but that simply isn’t true. There’s an adoring, tender man inside—all raw nerves and bruised compassion—and I swear it’s impossible not to love him for it.

As his tongue tangles with mine, then disentangles to unite another wet and pleasurable way, I crawl into his lap. Captive to his pain, to the mental anguish of divided loyalties—his pack? or me?—he doesn’t wrap his arms around me, doesn’t pull me against him as he usually does. He doesn’t demand or even chase my kiss. His body’s tense, his powerful muscles coiled and at the ready.

Guilt floods through me over that. For knowingly making him a battleground. Because he’ll tear himself apart trying to meet the expectations of his pack while trying to appease me too, trying to reconcile my diametrically opposed views. My mate is a man tortured, a man being drawn and quartered, and that’s my fault. My eyes burn with hot tears and in my belly, a heavy rock settles into my stomach. God, I’m a horrible person.

Channing’s warm sand-salty ocean scent billows moodily into the space between us when I urge him to lift his arms, allowing me to pull his long-sleeved t-shirt over his head. It makes my feminine core wrench with a hard, hot twist of demanding arousal to see, to touch. I rub my jaw along his, ignoring the tingling burn of his faint stubble against my smooth skin as my hands slide over the perfection of his warm, smooth chest, the bumpy ridges of his glorious abs.

Wrapping one large paw around my jaw, he separates our mouths, but only barely. “Are you trying to kill me, Jericho?” he whispers, his expressive blue eyes locked to mine.

For a long minute, I’m hypnotized by the white-blue whorls of alpha glow spinning around his dilated pupils. In that moment, I realize what he’s told me all along. It doesn’t matter what I answer. He’s prepared to die for me. Resigned to it. That’s what being his mate means to him.

A hysterical little laugh bubbles up inside me, a complex concoction of dejection, fear and desperation. I barely manage to quash it. It takes entirely too many drawn-out wasted seconds before I can pull myself together, shake off my terror and reply, “Never.”

The word is loud against the tranquil quiet, and Channing shudders. Beneath my palms, I feel the hastening of his heartbeat and his breath comes a little faster. His hands close on my body, and his mouth opens against mine.

He feeds there, his lips hungry and demanding, as he devours my breathless moans. His body heat sears my hands, singes my fingertips pressed against the solid strength of him, but I don’t stop touching him. With each caress, I communicate my desire, my determination not to push him away. Not to destroy what’s become us.

His muscles tighten at my touch, telegraphing his unspoken enjoyment. Then his hands are on the move, sliding up my calves. For a moment, he grips my thighs, his fingers almost bruising through the denim of my jeans. Then he stretches them wider around him, clutching my bottom and crushing me hard against his hardness.

I grip him with my legs, and released of responsibility to hold me to him, Channing’s hands slide frantically over my ribs. His warm palms cup my barely-there breasts and he groans into my mouth feeling the berried tips perked and hard for him. The sound is an electric shock to my system, and sets my core roiling, slick and hot.

His body slants to one side, bearing me with him, abandoning our sitting position for the reclined one offered by the floor. The myriad nerves on my scalp tingle as he tangles the waves of my hair around his fingers, then tightens his fist. His mouth is rougher, more insistent against mine as he surrenders his misery, forsakes it for love and physical satisfaction.

The rapid puffs of our harsh breaths fill the silence of the room along with the sounds of our mouths sealing together and releasing passionately. His hand slips from the silken tangle of my hair, caressing a purely sensual path along my spine and I arch to him. His palm flattens along my ribs up under my arm, and his thumb caresses beneath the slight swell of my breast. It draws a shuddering groan from us both. Then his fingers gather the thin fleece of my hoodie, tugging it upward until the ribbed hem is knotted in his hand.

When his fingers find my bare flesh, my loud moan breaks the hushed silence. I tense with the tingling pleasure, and Channing’s hand stills. He doesn’t release me though. Instead, his grasp tightens possessively.

You’re mine.>

Blindly, he reaches out, his fingers fumbling along the floor until he finds the backgammon board. With a rough shove and the clatter of upset pips and the tumbling dice, he slides it out of the way. Then he rolls me beneath him. He captures my mouth again as his weight bears down on me, forcing my willing legs to part.

I wrench my mouth from his, uttering a groan of agonized pleasure as he sets up a frictioned rhythm—his hard body moving against mine. His erection bulges insistently through his clothes, unerringly finding its reciprocal in the hooded button of pleasure between my thighs. He rubs it roughly through my clothes, building an insistent exquisite pleasure purely because he can. His muscles ripple beneath my hands with each movement as if urged by the hitching, stuttering breaths he drags from my lips. Then he stills to an eager quiver as the climax he’s engineered crashes over me and I writhe beneath his powerful body.

“Tell me you want this,” he rasps. “Not him. Me. Us. Tell me.” His hands tremble, trying to tug my hoodie off of me and there’s a sense of urgency to his every movement. He doesn’t bother finishing, just leaves my wrists tangled in the sleeves above my head, as his desperate mouth closes over the taut tip of one breast now exposed to him.

“I—want—you,” I gasp out, delirious with the sensations he’s flooding over me. “No one—no one else.”

Channing’s fingers fumble with the button on my jeans. Once he’s released it, the zip descends fast, and I shiver hard when his hand slips inside my clothes against my skin. Tracing along the elastic band of my panties with one fingertip, he slips first one, then the rest of his questing fingers inside the flimsy fabric. He gives a rough groan against one breast finding me wet and ready to take him.

His body stiffens against me as first one finger then a second glides inside my warm silky wetness.  My name is a husky growl, then he abandons sucking the tips of my breasts to hardened points. An agonized moan of frustration escapes me when his fingers leave.

He chuckles, grasping the waist my jeans. Dragging them down my legs, he struggles when the bunched fabric gets stuck against my shoes. He inhales a steadying breath, trying to slow himself down and starts to work on the laces with his hands.

“Mmm,” he rumbles, licking a twisting hot path through my soft folds spread before him like a buffet, to nudge the aching swollen bud hidden between them. My fingers thread into his hair, holding him to the spot. Against my flesh, the vibration of his voice nearly sends me over the top again. “I know you’re close, babydoll.”

I cry out, bucking to his searing mouth, as he sucks the sensitized nub, raking it gently with his teeth and barely notice when one shoe slips off my heel and thuds softly on the floor. With a low soft moan, he works me over with his tongue, firmly, vigorously, and my body clenches fiercely, urgently, lingering on the brink of suffering and exquisite release. The electric sparks he teases out of me blister into a sweet, heady burn. My fingers tighten in his hair, pressing hard against his scalp. I don't know how long I can hold out, and I’m desperate to make this last.

“I have to have it,” he murmurs, pausing to flick the hooded pleasure button with his tongue before diving deep into my sopping opening, tasting me from the inside. “Come again for me, Jericho.”

The fiery glow inside my core coils and swirls, the pressure building as he whips my swollen bud into a frenzy with delicious swipes of his tongue, driving me to the edge of madness with my own desire. I gasp, my every nerve clanging and clamoring, red-hot with hunger, desperate with need.

Every movement of his tongue throbs through my body, pounds in my head and pulses at the point where we connect. My other shoe hits the floor, then suddenly my legs are free. My knees pull up to my chest, my thighs wrapping his head and he shoulders my heels unconsciously. “Channing!” I pant, aching to be filled, my thighs cramping as I arch to his mouth.

He slides a finger into me, pushing deep, then with a second finger and a third, stretches me open wide. I squeeze my eyes shut, when the tip of his fingers tease, flicking, massaging so gently, stimulating every cell in my body by using only these two bundles of sensitive nerves. Irresistible floods of pleasure course through me, then I tremble, bowing with the undeniable force of the amazing climax he demands from me.

With a breathy sigh of satisfaction, he eases his fingers from inside me. He maintains the waves of my climax as long as he can with slow licks of his tongue caressing gently around my slick folds. Keeping me hovering at the bittersweet edge of my own desire. “Channing, I need—.”

“I know.” The words are terse, and behind them, I can hear he’s coming undone. He eases one hand between my thighs, prying his head free of them, then gets to his knees in the space between. He stops me with a firm hand and a warning arch of that scarred brow when I try to close them while he kicks off his own shoes and unbuttons the closure on his jeans.

The blunt tip of his engorged s*x springs free as soon as he starts to slide his clothes off. It shines, coated slickly with his thick precome and right then, I have to taste him. He’s perilously close to his own climax already, and he hadn’t even been inside me yet. I get my elbows under me to sit up.

“Not this time,” he growls, stiff arming and pinning me to the floor. Looping his elbows underneath my knees, he jerks me across the floor, dragging my hips up his hard thighs, the soft fuzz of his leg hair tickling my backside. Channing licks his lips eagerly, tipping his erection down with two fingers, angling himself to my wet opening. Then buries every hard inch of himself into my aching core, pulling my body onto him like a glove.

“Oh God, yes!” I moan, grateful to be filled at last, and above me, Channing growls his agreement.

Letting me slide down his thighs until only the tip of him is wedged inside me, he pauses, watching the soft hole spasming around him. Then with another rapid jerk of his arms beneath my knees, he thrusts into me, unrelentingly hard. My body sucks at him, clamping and wringing around his rigid shaft, willing him deeper into me, frantic and determined to feel his thick sticky satisfaction explode hotly inside of me.

Another thrust, this one harder, and the next, wilder and more uncontrolled still. My nether lips grip around his member, eager for the needful, harrowing final thrust and the feeling of his warm seed spurting into me. I gasp for breath with each hard stroke as he pulls me onto him. Completely unrestrained, he pounds into me, thrusting again fiercely, and again more violently, and again tempestuously.

My body trembles, anticipating blissful satisfaction, and another ferocious climax spirals upward toward release, wildly out of control. Another thrust and ripples spread through my aching core. Channing’s eyes squeeze shut and he chokes out an agonized moan through clenched teeth, his last stroke stuttering the last inch to bottom out inside me.

Our climax, denied for so long, explodes through my body and into his like a raging inferno. It crashes through each of us, blistering in hot torrents of pleasure along electrified nerves. I quake and tremble around him, squeezing his buried member hard. With a guttural roar, Channing’s control snaps, his orgasm unleashing in hot jets of spurted satisfaction inside of me,

 “Ride it all the way, Jericho,” he commands, thrusting once more and emptying himself entirely into my deliciously sore insides. I shiver with delight, feeling his release pooling inside me, coating us both as we bask in the afterglow.

I lose track of time as we pant together, the roar of blood past my ears slowly dimming. Channing shifts us together carefully, remaining buried inside, until we’re stretched out on the floor together. The heat of his body covers me, his weight supported on his elbows. With tender fingers he gently tucks the damp hair from my face into my hairline, then caresses my cheek. The white-blue whorls spin slowly as he gazes down at me.

“Promise me something?” he whispers.

I smile. “Depends on what it is.”

One side of his fine mouth curls up in a lazy smile. “Fair enough. Promise me that you’ll judge him fairly. That you won’t just cling to this because he’s the last. Everything else I can forgive you for, but not that. If you’re going to force me to evaluate him fairly, you have to agree to do the same.”

“Okay."