The Lord of Near and Nigh: Shifter MC Novel (Pureblood Predator MC Book 2) (36 page)

“I don’t know.
Her
.”

“The All Encompassing?”

“Everyone seems to think so.”

“What do you think?”

Aaron shakes his head, frustrated. “I don’t know what to think anymore. The stories and myths. It’s all bullshit. The Stricken are prey. There’s no such thing as the First Fallen. He’s like…their god. They worship because they’re weak.”
 

Either he’s incredibly stubborn or lying. Okay, maybe both. Aaron knows exactly what I am. He’s just afraid…of telling me or of admitting it himself. “What does she look like? My…creature?”

Aaron looks me in the eye. “You’re beautiful.”

“Am I?”

“The most beautiful being I’ve ever seen.”
 

“Tell me. Please.”

“You don’t remember? The wind? The black clouds?”

“Everything’s vague. Blurry.”

Aaron looks puzzled. “Whatever it was…called you,” he says after a long silence.
 

“Called me?”

“Yeah. He’s tracking you.”

“Tell me, Aaron. Tell me what you saw.”

He does, and when he finishes I feel numb and very far away, like a person who’s suffered trauma retreating from the world. Aaron might not want to believe. But I do. I’ve lived my creature’s power.
 

I remember what Connor and Star said to me.
 

Murder the First Fallen and the creatures vanish.
 

All of them.
 

“Are there more…like me?” I ask.

Aaron shrugs. “I think so. I think that’s who you saw in that dream, crossing the frozen plain, calling your name. They’re coming to you, Lil. Your brothers and sisters. The Risen. They’re lost and alone, and he wants them. Somehow…you’re stronger together. Like a pack. But if your brothers and sisters choose to bend to him…I think he’ll be released from his cage. He’ll Become.”

“But why now?” I ask. “Why has he returned?”

“Because she has. I think…my mark woke your creature, and your creature, his sister, woke him.”

I lift my fingers to the still-tender bite mark.
 

Aaron flashes me a shy smile. “About that. I didn’t mean—”

I lift a finger to his lips to shush him. “You
did
mean.”

“Oh, I meant to bite you. Fuck yeah. Just not…you know…to bring about the end of the world.”

“The…
what
?”

“The end, Lil. If he Becomes. The Age of Discord. The Stricken are already evolving. Growing more powerful as he does. Breeding. If that continues—”

“Fuck. That.” I say, remembering Al Kusch and the black-blooded monsters that stormed Trish’s house. I think for a minute, then ask: “Why’d she wake him? My creature?”
 

“To destroy him forever. She despises him for what he did to her mother. She wants him dead.”

“That’s understandable.”
 

But I know she doesn’t just want her asshole brother dead.
 

She wants to feed on him.

Connor
, I think, remembering the text message he sent, asking me to meet him at the biker bar on a night that feels like a decade ago. Connor started this. He wanted me to meet Aaron. He knew I’d fall for the outlaw biker, maybe knew Aaron would mark me. The bastard’s been using me for his own ends. Feeding me half-truths. But Connor said the First Fallen is his father, August Lerrick.
 

I don’t know what Connor is, but I know he’s
not
my brother.
 

So Connor’s wrong or he’s lying.
 

Either way I need to find August Lerrick to find out.
 

“Lily? What are you thinking?”

“I might know who he is,” I say. “I might know who the First Fallen is, and I might even know
where
he is.”

Aaron lifts his knees and lays his head on them. “You need your pack, Lily. If any of this is true…the Fallen is too powerful to face alone.”

“Am I alone?”

Aaron lifts his head and smiles. “No. You’ve got a mangy dog scrambling at your heels.”

“I kind of like mangy dogs. No pretensions. No expectations. Give ‘em an occasional treat and they’re happy.”

Aaron smiles, leans close, brushes his lips against my cheek, then kisses the corner of my mouth, runs his fingers through my hair. “The world’s fucked, Lil,” he whispers. “Even the moon’s wrong. This is the only thing that still feels right.”

“It
is
right,” I breathe as Aaron’s lips trace to my ear, then gently down my neck. His scent is driving me mad, and even through my exhaustion my need for him builds: my midsection floods with warmth, my palms clam up, my heart races.
 

“You know what happened the last time we fucked?” I say, moving closer to him.
 

“You had a giant, earth-shattering come?”

“I had several. And after?”

Aaron kisses down my neck, brings one of his strong hands up to cup my breast, runs his thumb across my hard nipple, then says, “We rode my Harley into the mountains.”

“Yeah. And then you dumped me in the street. Remember
that
?”

Aaron winces and pulls away, clutching his head. “It was wrong.
I
was wrong. Time and time again I’ve been wrong, Lil. It’s like I’m stuck in a swamp, trying to find solid ground, and it’s just over there, I can see it, but whenever I manage a step closer it slips away. I’m sorry for what I did to you. If I could do it over…” Aaron’s face hardens. “I’m tired of regrets,” he says, staring into the fire. “I used to believe it was possible to live without them. Free. Living like a straight road knifing across the desert. No deviations. No hesitation. A pure, driven, clean life. What a fucking child I was.”

He’s shutting me out. I know he’s worn raw by his brother’s death and the loss of his pack. Moments like what Aaron’s experiencing leave us open to the world, and that’s dangerous, because half the world wants to hurt you and other simply doesn’t care. In these moments a single word or gesture can hurt or heal, and I know I don’t want to hurt this man more than he’s been hurt already.
 

I can either forget about what he did and move on…or ask him out of my life forever. You either forgive or you don’t. That’s what forgiveness is: the courage to say you still believe.
 

Still hope. Still trust.

“I still believe,” I say, “and I forgive you.”

Aaron gasps, cups my face in his hands and kisses me for a long while, tender and fierce all at once, and there’s something needful in how he holds me, something new, and I kiss him back, his lips taste of tears and he smells like the wind rushing across an alpine ridge and then I grip his jacket and pull him onto me, the firelight flickering across his face, highlighting his stern chin and sculpted jaw and wounded eyes, and he presses into me, his weight not oppressive but freeing, comforting, and then we’re struggling with our clothes, laughing and tearing the damned things off while kissing one another.
 

I lift my shirt over my head and Aaron kisses across my breasts, down to my nipples, runs his teeth across them, sending a sharp tingle that lances down to my midsection and another blast of heat races through me and I’m holding his head and pressing him to me, running my fingers through his hair as he kisses my ribs and stomach and lower still, into the soft swell of my pubic mound, then gently down long my inner thigh.

“Take these
off
,” he says, tugging at my jeans.

And I do. Quickly.
 

He slips his shirt off and leans back, admiring me naked beneath him, and I can tell by his expression how much he wants me, how much I mean to him, and seeing that desire in his eyes makes my cunt warm and wet. There’s none of the self-consciousness and worry I’ve often felt when naked with men. No fear of being judged. No being compared to whatever the latest definition of beauty might be.
 

I
am
beautiful, and with Aaron I feel it.
 

I run my hands across his muscular shoulders, down his pecs, down the ripples of his abs, then tug at his belt.
 

“Your turn,” I say.

Aaron shakes his head no and lifts my left leg, kisses along the arch of my foot, across my calf, behind my knee, up my inner thigh until he’s inches from my aching cunt. Then he pauses, the teasing bastard, and simply holds me there, waiting, and I can’t help myself, my hips arch beneath him, pressing to him, and I moan for him to kiss me, please please kiss me you fucking bastard, and Aaron laughs and kisses across the soft mound of my pubic hair, then down my wet cunt, gently parting my folds with his tongue, then up across my clit…he plants the barest intonation of a kiss.
 

My hips tremble at the feel of his tongue on my clit, and I slam my eyes closed and hold his shoulders, trying to steer him hard onto me. Aaron laughs quietly—a soft, easy laugh that I’ve never heard before, a laugh that makes me realize how much I still have to learn about this man, how we’re one step away from being strangers, and the thought of learning him, of discovering him, makes me want him even more.
 

Aaron runs his tongue over my cunt, working lower, kissing along my folds, then gently back to my clit, and then he takes my hot bud between his lips and the pleasure has a stinging edge to it that’s nearly too much to bear; I dig my nails into his shoulders and clamp my teeth shut to stifle a moan because he has my clit between his lips and he’s flicking his tongue across me slowly, like he has all the time in the world and he well might…but I don’t: the first rush of my come arrives quick, with little warning, an electric shock that makes me lift my hips off the floor and clamp his face into my cunt and then I’m moaning, no longer caring who or what hears, and Aaron reaches under me and slips his finger inside my cunt, presses against my g-spot at the exact moment my first come fades, building another one deeper, and the pleasure is a rolling wave beneath the earth’s surface, bringing a tidal wave onto a far away beach.
 

“Your cock,” I say. “Give me that gorgeous cock.”

Aaron sits up and smiles. “You sure?”

“What? Am I
sure
? Of course I’m sure!”

“You sure?”

“Fuck. You.”

I scramble for his belt, snag it and pull him close. He’s kneeling beside me, and all I can think about is how badly I want that perfect cock in me, and when I finally manage to undo his stupid fucking jeans his heavy cock springs out, the tip already glistening and wet and he’s even larger than I remember and oh fuck me I want him, the man has the most beautiful cock, thick and gently curved, and I pull him into my mouth, he’s hard and soft all at once, hot, throbbing, and I lap my tongue across the sweet wet head of his fine cock, sucking the slippery pre-come from him.

Aaron pulls his pants to his knees and I hold his heavy balls in my hand and try and fit his impressive length into my mouth, and then the next moment I’m begging him to fuck me, falling onto my back and opening my legs. His eyes light up at the sight of my tender pink cunt. He growls deep in his throat and tears off his jeans and then we’re naked together,
finally
, and I reach down and wrap my fingers around his cock and steer him toward me.

He pauses for a breath, the hot tip of his cock pressed against my clit, driving me insane, then with a single long, slow thrust he opens me wide, his cock buried deeper than I imagined possible. My breath comes in quick, staccato bursts as I try and relax into the size of him.

“Oh my fucking god,” I whisper, wincing slightly as his hard balls press against my asshole. “Oh my oh my oh my.”

Aaron lifts himself on his elbows, raising the angle he’s in me, raking his cock across my g-spot and this time the pleasure isn’t sharp and electric, its bone-deep, a tribal drum sounding through a dark night, a joyful celebration and frightened plea at once.
 

I grip Aaron’s tight ass and hold him in me, wanting to feel all of him for a moment longer, and when I release him he slips his cock away slowly; him leaving makes me feel empty somehow, so I clutch and moan and hold his hips. He slips into me again, harder this time, more urgent, and we moan and gasp together, our lips pressed tight. Then he looses an animal snarl and I know he’s finished holding back, done giving me time to ready myself.
 

Aaron slips his hands under my hips and buries his face in my breasts and whispers that I feel perfect, that I feel wonderful, and then he thrusts into me, building into a powerful, demanding tempo. His cock slides across my g-spot with every thrust, making me moan and shudder and scream for more, and then another come slams into me. I wrap my legs around my man and shriek and pull him tight, rock against him, throwing myself on his giant cock while bright colored stars bust in my vision and then he’s fucking me again, he’s close now, his cock hardening still more and we moan in wild abandon, pawing and kissing and biting at one another, our sex and animal unchained and roaming free, and with a final powerful thrust that sends my ass scooting along the cold stone floor his come arrives, the fiery liquid racing through his balls and along his cock to explode in me, filling me with liquid heat, and I cry that I love his hot come, that I need it, that I want it all, and him coming sets off a third powerful orgasm that’s so raw and tender it feels someone’s touched me with red-hot metal.
 

Aaron falls onto me. I hug him close.

Right now this closeness is enough.

It’s more than enough.
 

A
NIK
’
S
MEMORY
OF
me returns slowly.
 

It’s like a part of him doesn’t want to remember.
 

He spends much of the day sleeping, and when he’s awake he’s often in his animal, hunting with Pimniq. They ask me to join but I refuse. I know they need this time together, and although I haven’t known Anik for long I know he’s much happier than he was when we first met.