Once Betrayed, Twice Shy

An unexpected guest

CASPIAN

I can’t imagine how the f**k I got here.

One minute I was brimming with such flaming hot rage, and the next I’m here, on my knees in front of her with the ruined fabric of that dress clutched in my fists and her soaked panties tossed somewhere behind me. The scent of her hits me like a fist to the chest—sweet and sharp and so f*****g irresistible it makes my mouth water. My mate. Mine. The bond is a live wire under my skin, screaming at me to take, to claim, to bury myself so deep inside her that neither of us remembers where one ends and the other begins.

I look up at her face and something in my chest cracks open. She’s staring down at me with those wide, dark eyes, lips swollen from my mouth, chest rising and falling too fast. The bra is still shoved under her breasts, leaving them bare and flushed, n*****s tight and glistening from my tongue.

The torn dress hangs off her shoulders like a confession. And between her thighs she’s bare, slick, the soft pink of her cunt already shiny with how much she wants this.

I don’t ask. I don’t give her time to think.

I lean in and drag the flat of my tongue straight up the center of her, slow and filthy, tasting every drop. The sound that leaves her throat is broken, half a moan, half a gasp, and it goes straight to my c**k. She’s already so wet it coats my lips, my chin, and I groan against her like a man in the desert having his first drink of water. My hands dig into the soft flesh of her thighs, spreading her wider so I can see everything—the swollen c**t, the pretty little hole that clenches when my breath hits it.

“f**k,” I mutter against her skin, the word rough. “Look at you.”

Then I stop talking. I seal my mouth over her and suck.

Her hips jerk hard. One of her hands flies down and fists in my hair, the other bracing against the wall behind her. I work her with my tongue the way I’ve wanted to since the second I first scented her—long, deliberate strokes that start low and end with a hard flick over her c**t. Every time I do it her thighs tremble around my head. I slide one hand up, two fingers circling her entrance, feeling how she flutters, how she tries to pull me deeper even while she’s still shaking. I push them in slow, curling them just right, and her head falls back against the wall with a soft, broken cry.

I f**k her with my mouth and my fingers like I’m trying to crawl inside her. The wet sounds fill the quiet room—obscene, rhythmic. Her taste floods my tongue, sweeter than anything I’ve ever had, and the bond howls in approval. She’s close already. I can feel it in the way her walls clamp down around my fingers, in the desperate little rocks of her hips against my face. I suck her c**t between my lips and flutter my tongue over it, harder, faster, while my fingers work that spot inside her that makes her legs buckle.

“Caspian—” My name leaves her on a shattered breath.

I don’t stop. I can’t. I suck harder, curl my fingers deeper, and she breaks.

Her whole body seizes. A high, helpless sound tears out of her throat as she comes on my tongue, pulsing hard around my fingers, soaking my mouth and chin. I keep licking her through it, slower now, gentler, dragging every last tremor out of her until she’s shaking and gasping and trying to twist away because it’s too much.

The second the last wave leaves her, everything changes.

Her hands shove at my shoulders—hard. Not the desperate grip from a moment ago. A real push. I rock back on my heels, still on my knees, still tasting her on my lips, and look up.

The expression on her face hits me like a blade between the ribs.

It’s not pleasure anymore. Not even the dazed afterglow. It’s something colder. Wider. Like she’s just woken up from a nightmare and found herself in the middle of it. Her eyes are glassy, but not from coming. From the moment the haze cleared and she remembered exactly who I am. Who dragged her into this. Who she still hates.

Regret. Disgust. Both of them sit plain on her face as she stares down at me, at the man on his knees with her come still shining on his mouth.

Something ugly and sharp twists in my chest.

I push to my feet slowly. My hands are shaking. I don’t trust myself to speak. The bond is still roaring, still demanding I finish what I started, but the look on her face is louder than any of it. She’s recoiling. From me. From what we just did. From the fact that she let her own mate put his mouth on her and make her shatter.

My own mate is disgusted by me.

The realization lands like acid. I lost control. Completely. The second I got her alone I ripped her dress open, put my mouth on her t**s, dropped to my knees and ate her like a f*****g animal. I didn’t even wait. Didn’t give her space. Didn’t ask. And now she’s looking at me like she wishes she could scrub the memory off her skin.

Heat floods my face—shame, rage, both tangled so tight I can’t tell them apart. I’m livid at myself. At the bond. At the way she still smells like me and pleasure and the fact that none of it was enough to keep that look off her face.

I don’t wait. I can’t.

I turn away from her without a word, without looking back, and walk straight to the door. My c**k is still hard, aching, pressed tight against the front of my pants, but I ignore it. The embarrassment is worse. It burns under my skin. I need air. I need distance. I need to get the f**k out of this room before I do something even more irreversible.

I yank the door open and step into the hallway, shutting it hard behind me. The sounds of the gathering filter back in—laughter, low conversation, the clink of glasses—but it all feels distant. My pulse is still hammering. Her taste is still in my mouth. I drag the back of my hand across my lips like that will erase it, but it doesn’t.

I take three long strides down the corridor, trying to put space between me and the door, between me and the woman who just looked at me like I was something foul, when a familiar voice cuts through the haze.

Low. Dry. Amused in a way that has never once been kind.

“Hello, there.”

I freeze.

The voice is one I haven’t heard in years. Not since the night everything went to hell and the blood between us turned permanent. I turn my head slowly.

He’s leaning against the far wall like he’s been waiting there the whole time, arms crossed, that same half-smile that never reaches his eyes. Same height. Same dark hair. A face that carries a resemblance very much like mine

My brother.

And just like that, the night gets a whole lot more worse.