The Walls of Jericho

Wolf Drive

There’s a distant roaring. Rhythmic and persistent. It lulls me, so it takes a while before I realize it’s the hungry ocean calling to me. I bask in the warmth of the radiating heat on my skin, then breath in the scent of the sand, the sea. It’s clean. Male. Delicious.

Only I’m not on the beach.

I realize this as I feel a warm hand slide over my belly. Strong fingers curl around my hip. I shudder feeling warm breath on my neck, then erupt into tingling gooseflesh as a warm tongue glazes over the hollow behind my collarbone.

Channing.

When I open my eyes, he’s smiling down at me. His head’s propped on his hand, his elbow on the pillow beside my head. God, he’s so gorgeous.

As if he reads my thoughts, his grip on my hip tightens.

“Did it work?”

He chuckles softly, the first sparks of the white-blue whorls flickering to life in his beautiful blue eyes. “I couldn’t say for sure, since it didn’t happen to me. But I think so.” Scooting me up against the hard lines of his body, he ducks his head and swipes his tongue over his mark again.

We both shudder, our soft sighs of pleasure are tangled and harmonic.

“What happened?”

His scarred brow flicks upward. “You don’t remember?”

I blush, and my body begins to tingle with a fierce afterglow. A warm ache starts low in my belly, yearning for him. God, just how much more does my greedy womb think it can take in one day?

Above me, Channing inhales deeply, and his nostrils flare. It’s clear from the lazy circles his fingers make on my skin that he can see my blush, even in the darkness of our room, and he knows the reason for it. He slides one heavy leg over mine, then separates them with his knee. “Well?” he urges, his voice low and husky, ringing just slightly with alpha compulsion.

“I remember us—.” A fevered flush prickles over me again. “You know.” I gasp and arch as his hand zeros in fast on command central, and he plunges two thick fingers inside me. They slick immediately, meeting no resistance as they slide in.

He dips his head and I moan when he nips and holds the tender flesh in the hollow of my collarbone, the two square inches of my skin he claims exclusive dominion over. He softens the pinch by kissing that spot afterwards, and the smooth muscles inside me clench around his fingers. “Ah,” I can hear the smile in his voice. “So you do remember me emptying all my seed inside you.”

“Um, yes.”

“Good.” In a single fluid motion, he shifts himself between my thighs, caging me as he supports his upper body on his elbows. The mingled scent of our s*x drifts soft in the air from his still wet fingers. It makes me want him again. My core spasms eagerly. “You tolerated it better than I’ve seen some humans do.”

“What does that mean, Channing? What happened? You bit me. I felt the venom burning in my veins, then everything went dark.”

“That’s about it,” he says, scooting himself a little lower so he can swipe his tongue over the soft crest of one breast. It tears a shudder from me and a hot trickle of fresh fluid slicks the tender tissue between my legs.

“You had another massive climax. Convulsing so hard that if there had been anything left in my sack, you’d have sucked it out of me.” He inhales deeply, exhaling with a contented, “Mmmm. God, it was good. Then you relaxed, like you went to sleep. You’ve been out for about a half hour.”

“That’s it?” I catch his strong jaw between my two hands and force him to look at me. “Seriously? That’s it? How do you know it worked?”

“Can you see me?”

Confused, I peer at him. “What do you mean, ‘can you see me’? Of course I can see you, you’re four inches from my face.”

He chuckles and it grates on my nerves. Seriously. “Look around you, Jericho.” Turning his head, he guides my gaze to follow. “Read the label on the fireplace.”

“Why?”

“Just do it.”

“It says: ‘Warning. Burn hazard. Hot surface. Do not touch’,” I snap. “Not that that little gem of helpful information is the least bit relevant.” 

Well, maybe it is. Right now I'm pretty damn hot and he probably should take warning.

Shifting his weight to one elbow, he brushes one of my hands aside. Then he presses the fingers he had inside me over my lips. The smell of our s*x saturates my nose, overwhelming every other sense I possess and overriding all conscious thought. 

My eyes slam shut and I groan, opening my mouth to suck them into it. I’m not sure anything has ever tasted so good. Between my legs, I clench and the ache becomes desperate when I feel him begin to swell and grow hard against the inside of one thigh.

“It’s pitch black in here, Jericho,” he whispers. “And if I’m any guess, that’s twelve point font and fifteen feet away, yet you read it clearly.” He slides his fingers out of my mouth to the tips, then pumps them in and out a few times. “But the definitive test is that, once the venom has catalyzed the full transformation, in the presence of your mate, all you can think about is breeding.”

I freeze. Opening my eyes, I disregard his fingers and peer about the room. It looks like it’s late sunset in here, not the dead of night. But I can tell by the starring and halos around the streetlamps visible in the distance that it is, in fact, the middle of the night.

Channing isn’t lying about the other thing either. That whole filling-me-with-his-come, f*****g-a-baby-into-me thing was sexy as all hell. It’s also all I can think about and I’m ready to do it again and again until he succeeds. “Huh. This is kind of wild.”

“Wait until you see the moon,” he laughs.

I arch my hips against his. “Um, Channing. Do you think you could oblige?”

“What? Oh. Hell yes.” Lifting himself into a plank, he positions the rounded tip of his member against my swollen wet petals, then eases into me gently, all the way to the hilt. “God, you feel so good, Jericho. I could live between your legs and never want for anything.”

The hot length of him filling me eases the vicious ache inside, and it gets damn near perfect when he sets up a regular rhythm, languidly pumping in and out. The constant massage against my insatiable inner walls arrows an immediate and intense pleasure through me as thus obliged, I take every bit of his hardness inside hungrily. “Oh, thank God,” I moan, grasping his hips and pulling him to me with each sweet stroke.

“I’ve been thinking a lot lately, babydoll.” Cupping his huge hands around my shoulders, he immobilizes me, in turns, thrusting fast, then slow and making full use of my eager body. He lowers his head so his lips are beside my ear. “Did you hear me?”

“Thinking. Ab—about?” I gasp. I really wish we could have this conversation some other time, when I’m not overcome with lust and unsatisfied need, and shamefully, all I can think about is being filled by him.

“I want to give up being Alpha.”

“What?” The words tunnel into my consciousness like a high-speed borer. My hands slide up the gorgeous muscles along his back to hook over his shoulders and it almost derails my train of thought again. Pulling, I force him to look at me. “Wait. What? What are you talking about?”

He slows the pace to a crawl, then brushes a few tender kisses over my lips. “I don’t want to be Alpha of Avernus. It’s miserable work. I hate all of it. The more I think about it, the more stupid it is.”

I have to give myself a second as he bottoms out at the end of me, “I—oh yes! like that!—I—wait—I don’t understand,” I whimper.

“I don’t know why we’re fighting.”

“Who? We're not fighting. Who’s fighting?”

He chuckles, sliding all the way out of me. “The dragon and the werewolves. I don’t see the point in the fighting. The only one of us still alive to remember why this is going on is the dragon. Clearly, he's not engaging Avernus. It's us hunting him. I don’t know why I’m fighting someone else’s war.”

“That’s—intelligent. Especially for a beefcake.”

“You’re going to pay for that.”

“Yeah?”

“Oh yeah.”

I cry out in pleasure as he rams himself into me, driving me fast and hard right up to the precipice of climax. Channing tenses overtop of me, holding himself back and me with him.

“I’m serious, Jericho,” he says a few harsh pants and a few seconds later when he’s regained some control. He starts up the slow rhythmic thrusts again. “I want to live long enough to have and raise kids. I want to take you somewhere where the pace of life is slow and we can savor every moment of each other and just live. I want to take you someplace like Ireland.”

Involuntarily, my hands grip on his shoulders as he begins to move fluidly, in and out, in and out, but his words keep cutting into the blissful emptiness in my head. “Wait—Ireland? What?”

“Yes, Ireland.”

I bite my lip to refrain from cursing vehemently and giving my impatience away. “Okay. Stop. Stop,” I order.

Immediately, Channing’s hips still. “What’s wrong?”

“What’s wrong? Seriously?” I’m sorely tempted to tell him I don’t care what his existential crisis is because right now I’m in the middle of one of my own. Except that’s neither mate-like nor loving. It sure as hell isn't very satisfying. I groan in frustration. “Never mind. I can’t take it anymore. Just spit it out. What you’re thinking. Tell me. Then you have to find something else to do with your mouth.”

Above me, Channing’s expression is blank. He stares at me for a long minute, and I stare back as the silence stretches into the open space between us. From somewhere outside, an actual cricket chirps noisily. Then he snickers and we both burst into laughter.

“God, I love you.” He dips his head and kisses me tenderly, stealing my breath away. “I want you to come to Ireland with me. Next time we go.”

“To Ireland.”

“Yes. I’ll show you what I mean.”

“Ireland?” I know he’s stopped moving, but at this point, I’m so s*x-crazed, about the only clear point of focus for me is the place where we’ve merged and how good it feels when he stretches me open and fills me up. “You do know I’ve never been out of Crossroads, don’t you?” 

I give a light testing squeeze to his erection inside me and it draws out an exceptionally rewarding breathless groan from him.

Bingo. Conversation override action initiated.

“Oh God,” he pants as I do it again, then again. “All—all the more reason you should come. I’ll book for both of us next week,” he says in a garbling hurry.

Without further ado, he restarts his hips, and the movement is powerfully intoxicating. Drunk on the fantastic sensations he’s generating, I don’t feel quite lucid. I also don’t want it to stop.

“Wait. Are we done talking?” My core throbs with unappeased lust, unfocused and primal, but I can’t take another stop and start. I'm one-hundred percent certain I'll explode.

“God, you feel so good around me, Jericho,” Channing groans.

I get the distinct impression he didn’t hear a word I just said. Good. Turnabout is fair play.

“You’re so tight and wet, like you can’t get enough when I fill you.”

I’d say we’re definitely done talking.

“Channing,” I whisper.

He answers with a mindless, “Hmm?”

“Give it to me.” Then I surrender myself to the flood of sensations as Channing’s wolf drive takes over. 

But I’m still aware enough to recognize him tensing over me. To enjoy the feel of his full weight crushing down upon me as he shoves his huge paws under my hips, levering himself into me for a last glorious thrust. The ecstasy of release fuses us together in every way possible, more perfectly and blissfully than ever before.