The Walls of Jericho

Life Debt

I don’t hear the sound of rain when I wake. When I lift one lazy eyelid, I even find there’s a long, bright beam of sunlight stretching across the floor and along the wall of our room. With a yawn, I stretch, arching my back and enjoying the feel of sleep-stiffened muscles and joints loosening as my body wakes.

Though it starts pleasingly blank, my mind begins to refill quickly with assorted memories from earlier in the day. Most of them merely serve to highlight how much I need to access the Heritage record and DNA databases to help make some sense of all the things I know.

I need to know what’s there about my father’s family so I can understand what, if anything, is significant about my rebirth into the body of essentially my cousin. I wonder if the doubled-up bloodline isn’t the reason I’m so powerful a mage—at least as far as the wolves of Avernus are concerned.  

I need to track my great-great aunt Jillian Jinks' family to the point where Mia and her brother were separated. I know it’s slim, but there’s a chance her younger brother could still be both alive and the oracle I need to help me find Drake’s mate. Or his other option for mate, since I’m not going to be. If her brother's not still alive, God willing, he has living descendants in the seventh or eighth generation who might have the oracle’s Sight.

Before the gap between my arched back and the mattress closes, I feel Channing’s arm slither into it, coiling around my waist with a tightening grip like a python. Once I relax, he rolls me against his side. He removed his shirt when he laid down to nap with me, so there’s no help for it—my hand glazes over the taut muscles of his divine abs, caressing the hard smooth bulges of his chest until it settles over his steady heart and its reassuring throb.

“Good morning.” His murmur is part nuzzle into my hair and part deep inhalation of the scent in my hair. “Or, I guess technically, it’s not morning, but more like happy waking-up-from-a-nap.”

God, sometimes he’s so goofball. A goofball that comes in a fully-loaded, nicely-equipped package. It sets my blood heating. “Morning works. You didn’t have to nap with me.”

“Sure I did,” he counters. “It’s not exactly what I’d hoped you meant when you suggested doing something mindless after lunch, but you know anytime I’m next to you is perfect.”

“When did the big bad Alpha of Avernus start waxing sappy romantic?”

“Beefcakes like me don’t know what words like ‘waxing’ and ‘romantic’ mean, babydoll,” he chuckles.

“Yeah, I doubt either of them turns up much in beer commercials.”

He shifts towards me, his free hand cupping around my bottom. “Although waxing,” he muses, “does conjure a few highly engaging images in my head. Then again, you’re already so smooth and soft— mmm.”

Between us in his pants, the sleeping beast between his thighs begins to stir. Immediately, it gets a wanton and reciprocal response in the form of a warm slick of trickled fluid from my core. His languid movements against me are the slow stalking of prey.

My palm against his chest and the arm it’s attached to stiffen. “Channing, no. Not yet. There are things I need to take care of. There’ll be time for this later.”

“There’s time for it now.” Taking full advantage of the opportunity presented by the arm I’ve braced against him, Channing slips his warm questing paw under my shirt. His fingers splay over my belly, then slide upward. With lethal speed, his fingertips find the soft tip of my breast as his palm cups its diminutive soft fullness. His first teasing, circling caress makes the crest tighten to an aching rigid peak.

Despite my dismay, the warmth in my veins spreads at the absolute conviction in his husky murmur. Closing my eyes, I allow myself the delightful privilege of his raw, hedonistic touch and begin to ponder the merits of his suggestion. Not only is my mate capable, he’s also most obliging—I’m sure the suggestion of a quickie wouldn’t be refused. “O-okay,” I sputter around his heated kisses, growing more urgent as he processes my words. “But quick—ah. You can—you can play a—a full game before we go—go to sleep tonight.”

That comment earns me a low growl of approval. Immediately, he rolls us, moving his hard body beneath me. The body-wiggling, hip-wheeling, giggle-laced task of divesting me of my clothes is accomplished with less efficiency than it might otherwise be, but we both enjoy even the awkward ways it moves us against each other.

Channing kisses at my neck, nibbling gently before taking the tender flesh he’s marked at the hollow of my collarbone between his teeth. It sends a violent series of shivers cascading over my skin, making us both groan in mixed pleasure and desire. In the next instant, he’s rolling me beneath him. For the next several seconds I get to enjoy the view and trace my fingers over his holy abs as he rises to his knees above me, fumbling with the fastenings on his jeans.

He slides the fabric over his hips, allowing his generous erection to spring free. It practically leaps into my hand as he stoops to slide his knees out of his pants, but I don’t get much time to enjoy the velvety clad hardness that way for long. Dipping his head as he kicks himself free of his clothes, Channing mouths the peaks of my exposed breasts and they pucker in the damp wetness his talented tongue leaves behind. Gooseflesh erupts in waves over me and he chuckles. “Mmmm. I like that.”

Unsurprisingly, he turns me over, pushing my hair up to expose my nape. His teeth nip and hold as his hands caress, touching every inch of me, then one strong arm works its way beneath my hips. Reaching for the pillows above our heads, he lifts my hips, quickly stuffing the padded mass beneath my pelvis, raising my bottom to give himself the access he wants to my damp core.

Feathering a series of tickling kisses down my spine that sets me twitching and quivering under him, he lingers at the small of my back, planting open-mouthed kisses there and teasing the strangely sensitive nerves with his tongue. It mimics the movements of his playing fingers along my damp folds wantonly exposed to him. Whimpering, I knot my fists into the bed covers as his fingers stroke and probe, nearly bucking us both off the bed when his thumb glides over the hotly throbbing pleasure button hidden there.

“Mmmm,” he growls appreciatively, dipping a long finger deep inside me.

I gasp, my toes scrambling for purchase on the smooth sheets, trying to make myself more available to him as he simultaneously massages both sensitive spots. “Channing!” I claw at the edge of the mattress above my head when his tongue traces a straight-line path from the small of my back along the cleft between my cheeks, over the hypersensitive puckered hole exposed to him. He flicks his tongue over my slick folds, amplifying the sensual assault against my senses to the pinnacle of pleasure.

He holds me there, hovering on the trembling brink of a massive climax for an eternity of long seconds. “Come for me, babydoll,” he murmurs, the vibrations of his voice and his long tongue probing deep alongside his finger tipping me precariously. Then his fingers apply an extra, gentle pressure to my hyper-stimulated bud and its sister nerves inside me.

My control snaps like the sonic concussion blasts used to trigger avalanches, and my body quakes as the pleasure crashes over me. Against my soft soaked petals, Channing’s tongue laps my oozing wet contentment greedily, kissing and sucking and pumping his finger inside me to keep the pleasure rolling as long as he can.

“God, you drive me crazy, Jericho,” he groans, withdrawing from me and I whimper my objection. “Oh, no, we’re not done,” he assures, planting a reverent kiss against my wet, swollen nether mouth as if bookmarking his place for his imminent return.

Nudging a wider space between my knees, he positions himself in it. “I love how you look, babydoll,” he murmurs, resting a steadying hand in the small of my back as he glides the blunt head of his s*x through my slick folds but doesn’t enter me. “There’s not a single millimeter of you that isn’t beautiful, not one that doesn’t turn me on.”

“I love—,” he gives a soft grunt, then a low groan as he fits the rounded tip of his rigid staff to my eager opening, then presses into me slowly from behind, “—how you look taking me, those sweet lips of yours gripping my every inch like a velvety vice.”

Gasping, I arch at his hard fullness as he enters and retreats, pushes in and pulls out. He’s so much bigger this way, and propped up and exposed like I am, it sends a primal ripple of desire through me when he finally gains his full depth, stretching me open wide to take all of him. When he’s sheathed to the hilt, he molds his body over mine.

His warm paws follow my curves—over my hips, then the nip of my waist, around the widening of my chest then shoulders, and along my arms—to where my hands grasp the lip of the mattress. Lacing his fingers through mine, he closes his fists around my balled hands, securing his control over me from the top and the bottom of my torso. “You okay?” he murmurs, pressing a line of kisses from my shoulder to my nape.

“God, yes! Channing, don’t stop. Please, don’t stop.”

“I promise, I won’t,” he vows in a strained voice. Arching his hips, he withdraws the hot, filling length of himself to his raised head, then flexes, slowly pushing into me once more.

I groan at the exquisite torture of the long, languid stroke. “I need more!” I plead. “So much more!” I don’t think I can stand it if he keeps up being so gentle. “I want it!” I arch, frustrated that there’s no leverage against pillows, then buck towards him, demanding what I need.

 “You’re going to get it.”

He thrusts harder, driving in deep the last couple inches. Inside me, he feels huge, deliciously hard, and, needy as I am, it’s almost enough to tip me into another climax right on the spot. I groan in misery and protest when starts the slow withdrawal again.

“Every inch,” he growls fiercely, his hot breath stirring the light tendrils of my hair at my ear. “I’m going to fill you up, Jericho. Just like I told you I would. You remember what I said?”

“Yes! Yes!” My velvety walls spasm around him, trying to keep him in place. God, he’s a master of dirty talk. I’d never have imagined such provocative, primal words passing his fine lips when he sat at that old, chipped Formica table at Esteban’s sipping soda and flirting with me.

“I’ll give you what you want, if you tell me what I said.” Channing thrusts himself into me, but only a few inches then he stills. “What did I say?”

Dizzy with unsatisfied lust, my panicked mind whirls, barely able to focus beyond the agonizing point where we’re partially joined. “Fill me! You’ll fill me!” I nearly scream in frustration when he chuckles at my ear.

“Details, Jericho. If you want this,” he flexes his hips, pushing another inch deeper inside that’s nowhere near satisfying, “you’re going to ask me for it. And not politely. Make me want it as much as you do.”

I’d never admit to him how much it turns me on, being ordered to say things I’ve never dreamed of saying.  Except it does. A lot. This is where the whole big bad Alpha thing really works fo him. Refusing to admit it only magnifies the appeal, especially when he breaks me down and makes me say it anyway.

With a heavy sigh, he backs out of me. “What a shame. I guess we’re done.”

“No! No!” I plead, tightening my fingers around his and bucking upward to force him back into me, as if my feeble attempts could stop him.

He chuckles at my ear at the absurdity and I fret more. He’s absolutely rock solid inside me and I have no idea where he gets the restraint. From my perspective, he must be ready to explode. The thought of him seeping, dripping inside me sets my core writhing and twisting with unfulfilled need.  

“You said you’d fill me. You promised you’d fill me with your come,” I whimper, hating the words and more turned on than I think I’ve ever been. “Good and deep, you said. Do it, Channing,” I urge. “Pump every drop of your come deep inside me until there’s no room for more. I want it!”

“Sounding a little smug with those demands, Jericho.”

When he chuckles again, I think I’m coming unhinged. Around us, the lights flicker and abruptly his laughter stops. Releasing my hands, he rests one large paw in between my shoulder blades and lifts himself up over me.

“Stop that.” His first stinging whack with his free hand sends a ripple of pain and unadulterated lust rolling over me. I groan, impatient for more. Whatever Channing will give me. All that he’ll give me.

“Oh, babydoll,” he breathes, then lands another stinging whack and the strange pleasure-pain sparks along my nerves directly into my short-circuiting brain. “God, I love those sounds you make.”

Another hard smack and the tingling heat spreading over me is reciprocated by a burning heat inside. I moan again in frustration, “Please, Channing,” I beg, flinching and moaning when the next smack in the same spot really smarts. “Please, fill me with your come.”

Finally finally it’s all he can take. Spurred to action, Channing molds himself over me again and grips the edge of the mattress with me. Plunging into me hard and deep, he drives us both along the bed, and I shudder from the force of his thrusts. For long moments, we both hang at the precipice of climax, desperate and needy. Then he switches the pace of his smooth thrusts and sends me over the edge, spasming wildly.

I cry out at the uncontrollable force of my climax as it crashes over me, shuddering again as he lunges forward, blanketing me with his hard body, sheathing his full length inside. With a low moan that matches mine, he spills his seed in hot jets. Releasing one of my hands, Channing tightens an arm about my waist, holding me firmly in place as he stutters his hips into mine, pouring the last of himself into my womb.

Thoroughly spent, we collapse together, gulping in cool breaths of air. The delightful aftershocks roll through us, from me to him, then back into me and with a soft sighing moan of contentment, I relax beneath him. Channing shifts so the bulk of his weight rests on the mattress, not on top of me, and the chill of the room air makes me shiver again.

“Are you cold? Do you want the blankets?”

“Don’t move,” I order. “I’ll live.”

“Mmmm.” He feathers gentle kisses along my neck and shoulder. “I feel like we did this wrong.”

I snort. “Did it wrong? How do you do this wrong?”

“We should have done this first, then taken a nap. Now, I just want to go back to sleep again, just like this, with me buried inside you.”

“How about we compromise?”

This time Channing snorts. “I’m not sure there’s compromising with you, but I’m a flexible person. Let’s hear this offer.”

“We stay just like this,” I give a test-squeeze of the still deliciously stretched muscles holding his only slightly softer member inside me. It elicits an agonized and wholly satisfying groan from him, “and we’ll talk.”

“You do that thing—oh God, yeah that—again, I don’t know how much talk you’re going to get out of me,” he warns.

“Give it your best shot, beefcake. Do we have a deal?”

“Mmm, okay.”

Inhaling deeply, I let out a long sigh. “Why did Ferdi tell me he’d killed Jillian Jinks?”

Channing’s brows arch. “He didn’t have to tell you.”

“I almost wish he hadn’t,” I retort. “You know it makes it really hard to look at him, don’t you? And having the abilities I do, I was sorely tempted to put him in that invisible vice again and squeeze him until he was dead.”

This time, my mate inhales deeply, letting the breath out in a long slow whoosh through pursed lips. “I’ll say this first: mating me made you the Luna of Avernus, Jericho. You have a lot of power within Avernus, power you haven’t even begun to explore.”

“People keep calling me that, Channing, but I have no idea what it even means or why it matters.”

“It matters because that power is the equivalent to mine in the pack, babydoll,” he continues. “It’s the power of life or death.”

“Are you telling me I could kill Ferdi without question? With no consequences? That you could do that to a pack member?”

He chuckles. “No. You definitely couldn’t kill, regardless of the power of the Luna that grants you exactly that. I don’t have any desire to kill a pack member, no, but if killing one of them is what’s required to keep the rest safe, then I would.”

I stare at him hard, both stunned and aghast. “I’m not a fan of this particular part of the conversation. How about we go back to the part about why Ferdi bothered to tell me he killed one of my family members?”

“Well,” Channing gives a heavy sigh, “I can’t say for sure, but I think he’s struggling. There’s a lot messed up in his head from when his dad and especially his uncle were Alpha. I think he told you as a sign of his trust.”

“I have some bad news for you, beefcake. It absolutely does not make me trust him knowing he indiscriminately killed innocent people because someone else told him to. That's madness.”

“I know, babydoll. I know.” He caresses along my spine with his free hand. “What he gave you by telling you that is a life debt.”

“Uh-huh. How about we pretend I’m a woman who wasn’t raised in a werewolf pack for a minute and you explain that more clearly.”

Channing laughs, then both of us groan as it sends a riot of sensations through both of us at the point where we’re still joined. When the aftershock passes, he nods. “Since you now know, because of his admission that he killed one of your family, he owes you a life in return. Most wolves would take the killer’s life, but in this case, because you’re also Luna, you can take the life of anyone in his family.”

"Anyone in his family?"

"Anyone."