Honored Vow (19 page)

“Logan,” I gasped, writhing under him, panting, begging. He fisted my leaking shaft, tugging and pulling, and I warned him that I was close, so close, and needed him inside me.

My muscles were relaxed and loose, I was dripping precome, and my entrance was slicked with saliva, but still, I felt the chilled coating of lube over my skin before he thrust into me, burying himself in my ass in one easy forward slide.

He felt so good, and my channel clenched around him, the suction strong and tight.

“Oh fuck,” he groaned, easing back only to plunge in harder, deeper, the pressure of his hands on my hips sure to leave bruises.

“Don’t stop,” I pleaded, nearly shouting. “Just keep—Logan!”

He had lifted up, changed his angle, and driven down into me. His long, thick shaft slid over my gland, and I came without either of us touching my spurting dick at all.

“Jin,” he gasped before he filled my ass, the muscles rippling around the length of him as he pushed in and out of me faster, riding the trembling release, my own aftershocks flushing my skin hot and cold at the same time.

He gave himself completely over to me every single time. When our flesh was merged, he belonged to me body and soul, and there was no denying it and no hiding it. He was mine.

“I’m never moving,” he said as he pressed his chest to the long length of my back, licking the sweat from my skin before kissing down my spine.

“Okay,” I murmured, not caring even as he eased from my body so tenderly, so gently.

“Did I hurt you?”

“You never hurt me,” I told him, collapsing down onto the bed, rolling over on my back to look up at him.

The smile he was gifting me with made his gold eyes molten with heat. “Should I lick you again to make sure?”

And amazing as it was, as sated as I was, the thought of his wonderful, talented tongue back in my ass made my cock throb and my ass twitch all over again….

I wanted him; the nekhene ached for him… where was he?

My desire finally permeated my thoughts, dragging me back from the past to the here and now.

The yelling was a surprise.

“
J
IN
!”

I blinked hard, the last of my daydream dissipating from my thoughts. I forgot I had been thinking about Logan, about being loved by Logan. I had started off in another place and wound up back at my mate. Always my mate.

“Jin!”

My head snapped up, and Mikhail was there in front of me, angry, breathing hard, trembling with fisted hands.

“Stop!”

I squinted at him and heard gasps in the room.

He sank to his knees in front of me, and I watched him puddle to the floor.

“Fuck,” Yuri groaned, and I looked for him.

I was surprised that the great room was filled with panthers. Delphine had shifted, as had Markel, Ivan, Koren, which surprised me, and Taj, which shocked me even more.

“What happened?” I asked Mikhail as he knelt at my feet, hands on his thighs, looking like he was doing yoga as he took deep in-and-out breaths.

“Your fuckin’ pheromones happened,” he growled at me as Danny padded over to him, rubbing his chin over the man’s shoulder, licking behind his ear. He was cute, the size of an ocelot, but gold, maybe more of a small cougar.

“Crane,” I gasped, terrified, as I whirled around to look for him. “Where—oh.”

My best friend had not shifted to his panther form, but what was amazing was his enormous grin as he lay there on the floor, spread-eagled.

“Are you all right?”

“Fuck yeah,” he sighed, and I realized from the look on his face that I was looking at a very satisfied Crane Adams.

“You came in your jeans.” I scowled at him.

“I can’t come,” he told me as he rolled his head to the side to look up at me. “I don’t have balls full of jizz anymore, idiot.”

I was horrified at my stupidity, but his smile blindsided me, and then I got it. “You were hard and you had an orgasm.”

He took the baseball cap off his head and scrubbed his still-shaved head—he had decided to keep it military buzz short for the foreseeable future—and then let out a deep breath up from his soul.

“Yes orgasm?”

His eyes were back on mine. “Fuck yeah.”

The recovery time for a human man was long; apparently the recovery for a werepanther took six weeks. And not that he was cured, not that physical and emotional scars could be so quickly dealt with, but to know that he could still have sex—that would go a long way to helping him heal.

“And?”

His gaze stayed fastened on me.

“How do you feel?”

“I feel better than I have in I don’t know how long,” he said, and his eyes were soft.

He looked like him. The fear wasn’t there anymore, the broken shadow in his face was gone, and the smile was all wicked and wild. I made a sound in the back of my throat.

“I missed you too.” He waggled his eyebrows at me.

Only Crane Adams came back from the horror that had been visited on him to the man now sprawled out in front of me. Only him. He was so strong inside and out, and—

“Oh shit,” Mikhail said slowly in disbelief.

“Oh shit, what?” Crane yawned, sitting up and then rolling to his feet.

“Crane.”

He looked at my sylvan, waiting.

“You didn’t shift.”

His squint was fast. “Why would I shift?”

“Jin’s power.”

“And?” He was confused.

“Crane,” Mikhail said, “Jin’s power is nothing to scoff at.”

“Yeah, but it’s still just Jin,” he gestured at me. “I wouldn’t have even had the, uhm”—he coughed and smiled at the same time—“reaction to his scent if my body wasn’t so damn weak.”

“Danny shifted earlier with just a hint of Jin’s power. Taj shifted, so did Markel and Delphine and Ivan. Only you and me and Yuri are still in human form. Even Koren shifted.”

We all looked over at Koren, who was purring loudly as Danny rubbed his muzzle up under the larger panther’s chin.

“Shit,” Yuri grumbled, walking to the front door and throwing it open as Koren charged out of it, Danny seconds behind him. They flew out into the night together.

“I’m sor—”

“Oh for crissakes, Jin,” he groused at me, “I don’t give a fuck who Danny fucks—I care more about Koren.”

Koren?

“Wait. That didn’t come out right. I—”

“What am I missing?” my best friend asked me.

“Crane didn’t shift.” Mikhail’s voice rose on purpose to try and get us all to focus.

And we all turned to look at my best friend at the same time.

“What?”

“Even in your weakened state,” Mikhail began, studying him for perhaps really the very first time, “you didn’t shift. How?”

Crane shrugged. “I dunno. I’ve had a lifetime of feeling Jin’s power run over me. Given, it’s a helluva lot heavier now than it used to be, I can actually feel it sort of push its way inside, but it’s still Jin, so I take a breath and let it do whatever it wants.”

“You’re talking about Jin’s power like it’s a living, breathing thing.”

“Which it’s not, and I get that, but it’s still Jin, right? I mean, you guys like him a real lot, but I love him and so does Logan, and I think that’s why the power doesn’t bother us. Even the nekhene form likes me, I’ve felt it.”

“You’ve felt my power change to nekhene?” I asked him.

“Sure. It’s like your reah power is gentle, soothing, makes me feel good. The nekhene power, it’s like prickly heat on the back of your neck. It comes at me, and I think about you and how I feel about you, and then it calms and feels like reah.”

I was staring at him.

“What?”

“I fight it. I fight the power welling up; I fight feeling out of control… I fight every part of it.”

“Yeah, don’t do that.” He yawned before he smiled at me.

“Don’t do that? This is your sage advice?”

“Yeah.” He burped and blew it out the side of his mouth. “Sorry, the burritos we had for lunch are kinda comin’ back on me.”

The man was unbelievable. Effortlessly he dealt with my new form, my changed energy, because he simply accepted everything about me. Without the fight, there was nothing for the nekhene to rebel against, and so my power, when it encountered Crane, simply gave up and played nice. What the hell?

“So if everyone just stopped fighting, they wouldn’t shift.” I turned to look at Mikhail.

“It’s not that simple,” he assured me. “Crane has how many years’ head start knowing you, knowing your power? The rest of us don’t have that luxury, and we’re cats, our first instinct is not to submit, not to just allow your power to render us helpless.”

“Is that how you feel when you fight my pheromones?”

“Yes.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s not your fault, but you do need to learn to control it. Maybe in the next two weeks before we fly out of here, you should let Crane tell you how to not fight.”

“Maybe,” I said, turning to look at my best friend.

“So….” He smirked at me, gesturing to all the other panthers in the room. “How much apologizing do you gotta do now?”

Shit.

Chapter Eleven

T
HE
flight from Reno, Nevada to Buyant Ukhaa, the airport in
Ulan Bator (or Ulaanbaatar, I wasn’t really sure which was the correct spelling; the tour book I had said one thing and my plane ticket another), took twenty-five hours and twenty minutes. We flew from Reno to Los Angeles and then flew United from there to Beijing and Air China to Mongolia.

The flights were comfortable, and I was glad that Peter had insisted on first class. He said that savings were for rainy days and that Logan would appreciate riding in luxury on the way home after the sepat. I appreciated his unshakeable faith that his son would be home. When I had been almost to the door, my mate’s father had surprised me by grabbing me tight and pulling me close for a hug. After long minutes, he had let me go, stepping back to look down into my face.

“Bring my son home to me, Jin,” he had said hoarsely.

I had promised him, as well as Eva and Delphine and Koren, that I would bring Logan back, along with Domin. They wanted their maahes back too.

Now, as I stood in an international airport of a very modern-looking city—I had stared at it from the air as we landed—the enormity of the task was starting to bear down on me. I was a world away from my life, what I knew, and my power base. The task seemed terrifying.

“Deep breath,” Crane soothed me, hand on my shoulder as we stood in the line, after getting off the plane, to go through Immigration. “Where’s your passport?”

I dug into my messenger bag and came up with it for him.

“And the entry and exit visa?”

“It’s in there.”

“Where’s the customs declaration form?”

“They don’t need that to let us in the country. We’re just supposed to keep that ’til we leave.”

“How long is the visa for?”

“Two weeks.”

“Okay.” He yawned, and because he was calm, I was.

I realized for the millionth time in my life that I could look at Crane Adams and gauge how I should be. I trembled quickly, trying to think of what I would have done without him.

“We’re up,” he said, bumping me with his shoulder as we walked forward.

Once we had our passports stamped and were in the actual airport proper, we had to claim our luggage and then stand in line again, the non-citizen line, to have our luggage clear customs. We had only brought clothes, so there were no duties or taxes to pay, but the whole experience was nerve-racking for me. Just the idea that I could be kept out of the country, kept away from Logan, scared the hell out of me. It was illogical, but I was terrified.

“See, we’re fine,” Crane announced, and just him stating the obvious made me feel better.

The airport was busy, the zoo they all were, and because it looked like almost every other one I had been in, my sense of unease dissipated.

There were supposed to be people there to meet us; the maahes of the tribe of Khertet, Chuluun Borjigin, was the man we were looking for.

“Jesus, it’s even cold in here,” Yuri groused from behind me, looking like he was ready to go dog sledding instead of just leaving the airport.

We were all swaddled up in parkas, beanies, gloves, boots, long underwear, and scarves.

“It’s gonna be worse outside,” Andrian assured him.

“Jin.”

I turned to look at Yuri, and he tipped his head for me. Looking to where he had gestured, I saw the three men cutting through the crowd toward us. Even from where they were, the scent of cat clung to them. The power rolling off of them was daunting.

They stopped five feet from us, and the looks we were getting were less than kind. “Snide” was the word I would have chosen.

“Sain bainuu,” the first man said.

I had no idea I was supposed to have learned Mongolian. Holy crap.

No one said a word until there was a faint clearing of a throat. Turning, I looked at Danny. He smiled faintly.

Was he kidding?

“May I?” He gestured to where I was. “My semel asked me to learn as much as I could of the language.”

Logan had asked Danny to study up. The man thought of everything. “Sure.”