Honored Vow (36 page)

So I was standing apart from the group when Domin and Logan came to join everyone after they had bathed and changed.

There was applause from every corner, the priest was there to greet my former maahes, and Jamal was close at his side. Their exchange was warm and genuine, and when the others asked permission to approach, it was granted.

Yuri was being patient, not wanting to muscle his way through, but the second the priest allowed others close, he moved quickly through the crowd and flung himself at my former maahes. I watched Yuri’s jaw clench before he buried his face down in Domin’s shoulder, trembling only slightly. Mikhail was there, then, and Danny, Andrian, and Taj, and Yusuke, with her hand in Crane’s. My tribe embraced Domin, and I was happy and sad. I would miss him, and I had just gotten around to truly liking him.

It was Domin’s moment, and I was glad, because he was restored to his birthright of semel in splendid, legendary style. But me being there, adding my voice, was meaningless. It didn’t matter, not really. I was only critical to one man, and he was all I saw.

Logan squeezed Domin’s shoulders as he walked by him, giving him that affirmation of closeness before he left. He didn’t pause to speak to anyone else.

The sepat was over, and so was anyone else’s dominion over the semel-netjer. We were both free.

His eyes were warm gold as he came forward, and I noticed the fluid stride, the play of flexing, rippling muscles, and the clench of his jaw.

He didn’t speak, and as he strode toward me, I noted the silence that fell over the assembled throng. There was not an eye not on Logan Church, and in that second, I understood what the priest had wanted.

Logan looked like a king. He had the demeanor of royalty; you noticed strength and power, a virile, pulsing energy that took your breath away. The man was a rock; he looked like shelter and home and safety. It could not be taught, the look, the bearing, the charm… it was pure intuition, and Logan had it. Everyone there but the man’s own tribe had only ever seen him in panther form or werepanther form, or bound and wounded, before that moment. They had never been treated to the breathtaking golden man before them.

Normally my mate did not put himself on display. He usually downplayed his own power, beauty and magnetism. But he was free of the madness, free of the threat of Sobek, of becoming something he never wanted, free of rules and tradition and law. He was going home, and everything that had been taken was returned to him. So he was glowing with pride and happiness and overwhelming relief. It was rolling off the man in waves. People were transfixed, and even though the priest of Chae Rophon was there, and the phocal and the newly made semel-aten, for a moment in time, the only thing anyone saw was Logan Church. And he didn’t have eyes for anything or anyone but me.

The crowd parted for him, and he covered the space between us in long strides.

I lifted my arms to receive him and heard his breath catch as he reached me.

“Jin,” he growled, and I moaned my pleasure into his ear as he reached me, grabbing me tight and crushing me to his chest.

“Oh God.” My whimper was torn from me.

“My mate,” he breathed down the side of my neck, which raised goose bumps on every inch of my skin.

When he lifted me, hands on my ass as he walked me away from the others, toward the mouth of the cave, I wrapped my legs tight around his back. “This isn’t seemly,” I told him.

“I don’t give a fuck,” he told me, increasing his pace, the temperature dropping the further we got. “We’re no longer important to anyone but each other, and that’s how I like it.”

“I wanna go home,” I whined into his shoulder, nuzzling my nose into the crook of his neck, my lips seeking skin, wanting to kiss and lick, suck and nibble.

“Fuck, you feel good,” he groaned, tightening his arms, savoring the closeness, inhaling my scent, holding me so tight.

“Wait,” I ordered him when I realized that we had passed through the gate that led outside. The cave was deep, and so from the sentry point, the entrance was another hundred yards away. There was snow on the ground that blew in before you actually hit open air. “You can’t go outside in just your ceremonial robes, you’ll freeze to death.”

He was wearing white silk and brocade pants and an intricately woven tunic that would offer no protection at all. The boots, like the ones I had been given, were the traditional Mongol ones with the upturned toe, but whereas mine were red, his were black. But still, the wool socks would offer only minutes of protection from the frigid arctic temperature outside.

“I’ll be in our ger in a few minutes. If I’m carrying you, I can’t freeze. You’ll keep me warm.”

“Logan—”

“No,” he told me. “If I don’t get to be alone with you, I’m gonna lose it. I need everything to be over, I’m barely holding it together.”

I shut up, held him tight, and let him tramp through the powder with me wrapped around him. And he was strong, but he was still quaking with cold by the time we reached the ger.

Inside, I put him by the stove, grabbed blankets, and wrapped him up before I stripped out of my parka and hat and dropped down into his lap, straddling his thighs.

He snuggled me close, and we just sat there for a long time, just breathing together, sharing body heat in silence. When his scent finally started tickling my nose, my hands burrowed up under his shirt, sliding over the washboard abs.

“You want this off?”

I nodded.

He reached over his back and pulled the shirt off, his eyes locking on mine when he finished. “Touch me.”

Immediately my fingers trailed up his rippling torso to his chiseled pectorals.

“Now you.” His eyes narrowed, became slits of molten gold as he stared at me. “I want skin too.”

I peeled myself from my cocoon of warmth slowly and enjoyed watching him lick his lips, swallow hard, and stare at me with pleading eyes as I stripped off my layers of clothing. Anyone who came in would have thought the look was carnal, but it was comfort that he was starving for, and closeness, and simply me. He craved my body wrapped around his as tight as I could be, like a second skin. He fisted his hand in my hair and pulled it forward, burying his face in it, inhaling deeply.

“I always know I’m okay when your hair is in my face and I can smell you all over me.”

“Logan,” I said breathlessly. “Promise me.”

“I will never, ever leave your side again. I swear it.”

I was holding him to that.

“I need you… closer,” he almost snarled, but it was low, frustrated, not menacing in any way. He was uneasy.

“What’s wrong?” I asked gently.

He shook his head.

“Talk to me.”

But he couldn’t, or wouldn’t, say what was troubling him.

“You need something more?”

His eyes lifted to mine.

“What do you need?” I stared into all that gold. “To claim me?”

His thick gold brows furrowed, and I started to have a flicker of understanding.

“Do you need to know that you’re mine?”

“Yes,” he said, his voice breaking with relief that I understood.

“Shall I show you?”

He wasn’t sure what I meant.

“Do you trust me?”

“Of course.” 

I rose then, walked to where my things were, and returned, lube in hand. I could tell just from the subtle change in his gaze that he understood. I recognized the uncertainty on his face, but he didn’t give voice to it, and I was touched by the depth of his faith in me. “Will you give yourself over to me, to my care?”

He took a quick nervous breath and nodded.

I had done it in the past, topped other lovers, but never had it meant anything to me, having been instead something that was asked of me that I had simply complied with. It was not instinctive for me; I was built emotionally and mentally to be submissive, but that didn’t mean I had to be. And this was my mate who had asked with beseeching eyes to be claimed. We were men first, but we were also animals, and because of that, sometimes words were not enough to mend the soul. Sometimes it required action and the joining of flesh.

Logan always gave so much of himself to me—love, compassion, whatever I needed, he provided—and now I wanted to return to him and do for him as he had always done for me.

Slowly, carefully, I untied the drawstring on his pants, and when I tugged on them, he lifted so I could slide them off. Immediately, I bent and took the tip of the flared head of his cock into my mouth.

“Jin.” He shivered, inhaling my scent, the flood of pheromones rolling through him, soothing and arousing at the same time.

As I took in more and more of him, inch by inch, sucking, licking, nibbling, I heard him call my name many more times. I slid my hand up his chest, pushing him down with gentle pressure until he was flat on his back making groaning, whimpering noises that left no doubt that he had given himself completely to me, to whatever I wanted to do.

His cock popped out of my mouth at the same time I lifted his knee, showing him what I wanted. He bent them both as I opened the tube and squeezed the icy liquid into my palm. Before I coated my fingers, I rubbed it in my hands, warming it, and then leaned over and took his cock down the back of my throat. Normally it was Logan preparing me, loving me, making me burn with need for him. I realized in that instant how deeply I wanted him, the craving to make the man mine almost overwhelming. And I knew that it was the same for him, because I had felt it when he made love to me, every single time.

My name was a hoarse whisper as I slid up and then sank down, sucking his cock hard, his hand in my hair as he moved it aside so he could watch.

Tenderly, I slid the tip of a finger around his furled entrance. He tensed, but he didn’t pull away, and as I swallowed the long, hard, thick length of him, tasting precome before my cheeks hollowed out with the force of the suction, I felt him relax against my tender onslaught. I used my other hand to stroke his balls, lift and play with them, and he whimpered as I pushed inside. He was so tight; never had the man been breached before, and I was determined to reward his trust in me even as I marveled at the faith.

His muscles pulled me deeper inside, and as I pressed forward and up, curling my middle finger, I felt him shudder.

“That feels so good.”

I smiled around his pulsing shaft and eased out slowly before adding a second finger, going just as slowly as I had the first time, this time making measured circles, pushing in, easing out, over and over, pegging his gland, and finally scissoring my fingers apart as he began to pant. I was gentle but insistent, relying on past experience as well as the memory of the many times that my mate had brought me to release in this exact same way.

When I again allowed his heavily dripping cock to slip from my lips, I looked down at him, checking his gaze for signs of anything but heat. His eyes were heavy-lidded, he looked drugged, and I noticed his hands fisted at his sides in the blankets.

“Are you okay?”

His wet parted lips, the slow rise and fall of his chest, and his beautiful ass with my fingers buried inside of him to the knuckle—the man was giving me heart palpitations.

“Shall I ride you?” I asked, giving him his out. All he had to do was take it.

“I….” He swallowed hard and just looked at me, and I understood that my question, suggestion, was not what he wanted or needed.

“Logan,” I said, running my finger over his gland, watching him go rigid under my hands, one now sliding from balls to head of his cock, the other inside of him.

“Please, Jin.”

I drew back, added more lube before I stroked a third finger into him. When I bent once more to the cock that was straining for me, he stopped me before I deep-throated him, only my tongue catching the drops of precome.

“Am I yours?” he asked me.

“Yes, only mine.”

He eased forward then, off my fingers, and I could tell that sliding free was a hard decision to make, because they had felt good. Rolling over onto his stomach, he then lifted his ass for me, spreading his knees at the same time, offering the virgin pink puckered hole.

“I want to see your face,” I told him.

“I wanna be marked and fucked and taken,” he rasped back. “Make me yours.”

I didn’t wait for him to change his mind. I leaned forward, not caring about the lube, and licked over his entrance with my hot, wet tongue.

He trembled hard, and the moan was loud.

“No one but me,” I told him.

“Only you.”

The second time, I spread his cheeks and pushed inside of him, past the tight rings of muscle, deep, scouring him, pushing in, licking, sucking, nibbling, tasting him, feeling the effect that my ravenous assault was having, the relaxing of his inner walls.

When I was sure he was close to climax, I coated my own throbbing cock and straightened up, leaning back, my thumbs spreading the cheeks of his beautiful taut ass before I pressed against him.

“Oh God, Jin, I don’t wanna come without you inside me… please.”

His hole was lubed and stretched and ready for me, I had made sure.

“Push out,” I directed and then slowly but without pause pressed into him.

He was still so tight, and his muscles resisted me, clamped around me like a fist, fighting the imminent breach, but when I took hold of his cock and stroked him, all at once they relaxed, and I was suddenly buried to the balls in his ass. He felt amazing. All that slick velvet heat wrapped around me was almost too much; it took everything in me not to come.

The tremor that ran through him stopped me from moving even though I wanted to pull out just enough to slam back inside and thrust until I came.

“Logan, you feel so good,” I told him before I let my fangs fall, upper and lower, curled over that beautiful, broad muscular back, and sank my teeth into the soft skin where his shoulder met his neck.

It could never be the mark he had given me, for that was the dominion of only a semel, their birthright to brand their true-mate, and my bite would not even leave a scar, but still… he needed to know I wanted to. All the simmering, thrumming desire that had built in me, he had to know that it was all because of him and that he belonged only to me.