The kiss didn’t end.
It deepened.
Julian’s cold mouth pried Kristen’s lips apart with ruthless precision, his tongue sliding inside with the same unhurried, possessive confidence he brought to everything else.
The faint, sharp points of his fangs grazed the soft flesh of Kristen’s tongue, a delicate threat that sent a shiver cascading down his spine.
Julian tasted of chilled mint and something darker, something ancient and intoxicating that made Kristen’s head swim.
His inner wolf, which had been howling for blood moments before, suddenly fell silent, stunned into submission by the sheer overwhelming sensation.
Kristen’s hands, still pressed uselessly against Julian’s marble chest, curled into fists, clutching at the fine fabric of his suit jacket.
He meant to shove.
He meant to snarl and bite and reclaim some shred of his dignity.
But Julian’s other hand slid around his waist, fingers splaying wide over the small of his back, and pulled him flush against that long, lean body.
The contact was electric.
The chill of Julian’s form against his own furnace heat drew a broken, involuntary moan from deep in Kristen’s throat, the sound swallowed greedily by the vampire’s conquering mouth.
Stop this, his mind screamed.
Fight back.
He’s the enemy.
He owns you now.
But his body had never known pleasure like this.
The touch of the women and men alike, who had tried to have him didn’t feel like the devastating, all-consuming fire that Julian’s cold touch ignited in his blood.
Every brush of those icy fingers against his back, every stroke of that clever tongue against his own, sent sparks racing down his nerve endings, pooling low and heavy in his gut.
His cock thickened, pressing painfully against the zipper of his jeans, and he knew Julian could feel it—could feel the hard, traitorous length of him digging into the vampire’s hip.
Julian pulled back just enough to break the kiss, a thin, glistening strand of saliva connecting their lips.
His crimson eyes were half-lidded, burning with a dark, gloating satisfaction as he surveyed Kristen’s wrecked expression.
The wolf was panting, his lips reddened and slick, his golden eyes glassy with unwilling arousal.
“There it is,” Julian breathed, his voice a low, sinful caress.
His hand slid from Kristen’s back, roaming slowly, deliberately down over the curve of his ass.
He cupped one firm cheek, his cold fingers kneading the taut muscle with possessive appreciation.
“I felt it the moment I touched your ear.
The way your body just…
melts.
You’re weak to pleasure, aren’t you, my darling Alpha?
A man who has spent his whole life fighting, dominating, and no one ever thought to simply make you feel good.”
Kristen shook his head, a desperate denial that died on his lips as Julian’s hand squeezed harder, pulling their hips together in a slow, grinding roll.
The friction punched the air from his lungs, his mouth falling open on a silent gasp.
His hands flew from Julian’s chest to the edge of the counter behind him, gripping the cold quartz for dear life as the vampire’s hips pressed forward again, grinding against his aching length with maddening precision.
“S-Stop talking,” Kristen managed, his voice a wrecked, gravelly rasp.
“But you don’t want me to stop, do you?” Julian murmured, leaning in to trail his cold lips along the line of Kristen’s jaw.
Each kiss was a small, chilled point of fire against his overheated skin.
“Your body is singing for me.
Your heart is racing so fast I can count every beat.
And your scent—” He inhaled deeply, a shudder of hunger rolling through him.
“Your scent has gone so sweet, Kristen.
Sweet and hot and desperate.
You’ve never felt anything like this before, have you?”
Kristen couldn’t answer.
He couldn’t form words.
Julian’s mouth had reached the sensitive spot just beneath his ear, and when the vampire’s tongue darted out to trace the delicate skin there, the alpha’s knees buckled.
Julian caught him easily, pressing him harder against the counter, his thigh sliding back between Kristen’s legs to hold him upright.
The pressure against his groin was relentless now, a firm, unyielding ridge that Kristen found himself rutting against in tiny, helpless movements.
“Look at you,” Julian whispered against his throat, his fangs grazing the wildly fluttering pulse point.
“The mighty Alpha, grinding himself against my thigh like a bitch in heat.
And I’ve barely even touched you.”
The degradation should have enraged him.
It should have summoned every ounce of his alpha fury.
But all it did was send another wave of scalding pleasure crashing through him, his hips bucking forward shamelessly.
His inner wolf, that proud and untamable beast, let out a low, keening whine of pure submission.
Julian chuckled, a dark, velvety sound. New chapters come out on g.com first.
“That’s your second weakness, I think.
You’ve never been given pleasure before, so you have no defenses against it.
You’re like a starved man at a feast.
It would be almost tragic, if it weren’t so exquisitely entertaining.”
His lips continued their downward path, tracing the corded tendons of Kristen’s neck.
He lingered at the juncture where throat met shoulder, the spot where Kristen’s scent was strongest, where the blood ran closest to the surface.
His tongue lapped at the salty skin, and then Kristen felt the unmistakable sharpness of fully extended fangs pressing delicately, threateningly, against his flesh.
A sound escaped him—half moan, half sob.
His whole body tensed, caught between the animalistic instinct to flee and the drowning, mindless need for more.
Julian’s fangs pressed harder, just shy of breaking skin, and Kristen felt the vampire’s entire frame go rigid against him.
Julian’s breath came in harsh, ragged pants, a terrifying loss of control from a creature who had been nothing but composed.
The vampire was trembling, every muscle coiled and shaking with the effort of restraint.
Then Julian wrenched himself back.
Kristen’s eyes flew open.
He hadn’t realized they’d closed.
He saw Julian, his beautiful, marble-carved face twisted into a mask of agonized hunger.
The vampire’s lips were drawn back, his fangs fully extended and glistening in the dim light.
And there, on his pale, elegant throat, a thick vein pulsed visibly, straining against the skin as if it might burst.
The effort of holding back his bloodlust was written in every rigid line of his body.
His crimson eyes were wild, half-mad with want, fixed on the pounding pulse in Kristen’s throat with an almost religious desperation.
He’s holding back.
He’s starving, and he’s holding back—for me.
The sight undid something deep inside Kristen.
That visual alone—the sight of this apex predator, this ancient, terrifying creature of the night, trembling on the edge of his control because he chose not to take what he so clearly craved—snapped the fragile thread of Kristen’s restraint.
A violent, full-body shudder seized him, every muscle locking up as a bolt of white-hot rapture detonated at the base of his spine.
His back arched off the counter, a raw, wounded cry ripping from his throat as his climax slammed into him without warning, without a single touch to his aching cock.
The orgasm tore through him in pulsing, uncontrollable waves, his release spilling hot and wet into the confines of his jeans, soaking through the denim in a spreading patch of shame and ecstasy.
He came undone just from the sight of Julian’s straining vein and the memory of fangs against his throat.
For a long, suspended moment, there was only the sound of Kristen’s harsh, shuddering breaths and the pounding of his own heartbeat in his ears.
His legs were useless beneath him, his body still trembling with the aftershocks of a climax so intense it had briefly whited out his vision.
He clung to the edge of the counter like a drowning man.
Then Julian’s voice cut through the haze, low and dripping with condescending wonder.
“Well, well.
Look at that.”
Kristen forced his eyes open.
Julian was staring down between their bodies, where the dark, spreading stain on Kristen’s jeans was unmistakable.
The vampire’s nostrils flared, drinking in the scent of wolf and sex and completion.
When his eyes lifted to meet Kristen’s, they were blazing with triumph.
“You came,” Julian said, the words slow and deliberate, each syllable a tiny dagger of humiliation.
“I hadn’t even touch your cock yet you spilled in your pants like an untried pup.”
Kristen wanted to die.
He wanted the marble floor to swallow him whole.
His face burned with a blush so fierce it rivaled the heat still radiating from his spent body.
He tried to summon anger, tried to tap into the familiar well of rage that had always been his shield, but it was empty.
All that was left was the bone-deep, shattering vulnerability of a man who had just had his deepest weakness laid bare and exploited with surgical precision.
“Please,” Kristen whispered, not even sure what he was begging for.
Mercy.
Silence.
Death.
Julian’s smile was a thing of cruel beauty.
“You really are starved for it, aren’t you?
So beautifully attuned to my touch that your body gives itself to me without any effort on my part.” He stepped forward again, slotting his body against Kristen’s limp form and pressing a soft, almost tender kiss to his burning cheek.
“If this is how you fall apart from a simple kiss, I cannot even begin to imagine the desperate, sobbing mess you’ll be when your rut hits.”
His rut.
He hadn’t even thought about his rut.
The biological imperative that seized every unmated alpha wolf once a season, turning them into mindless, rutting beasts desperate to breed.
He would be trapped here, in this vampire’s den, when it came.
Trapped with Julian.
The vampire must have felt the tremor of dread that passed through him, because his smile only widened.
“Oh, yes.
I’ve been reading up on werewolf biology.
Fascinating stuff.
A week of uncontrollable, burning need.
You’ll be helpless, won’t you?
And I’ll be right here.” His fingers traced a lazy pattern down Kristen’s chest, stopping just above the waistband of his soiled jeans.
“I wonder how many times I can make you come before you finally beg me to claim you properly.”
Kristen opened his mouth to retort, to summon some shred of defiance, but no words came.
His throat was raw, his body was wrecked, and Julian was already stepping back, smoothing down the lapels of his suit jacket as if nothing had happened at all.
Julian delivered a light, condescending pat to the damp curve of Kristen’s ass, the sound sharp and humiliating in the quiet kitchen.
“Come along, little wolf.
Let’s get you upstairs.
You’re a mess, and as delightful as you look standing there in your own ruin, I’d prefer to continue this conversation in more comfortable surroundings.”
He turned and began walking toward a sweeping marble staircase that curved up from the far end of the foyer.
The golden light from the chandeliers caught the elegant lines of his silhouette, making him look like some dark prince ascending his throne.
Kristen stood frozen for a moment longer, his legs threatening to give out, his soiled jeans clinging coldly to his skin.
Every instinct screamed at him to stay put, to resist, to claw back some scrap of his autonomy.
But his body was still humming with the aftermath of that devastating pleasure, and a small, treacherous part of him wanted to follow.
Wanted to see what other dark, sinful wonders those cold hands could wring from his flesh.
“Don’t make me wait, Kristen,” Julian called without turning around, his voice echoing lazily through the grand hall.
“The bedroom is at the end of the east corridor.
The master suite.
We’ll be sharing it.”
Kristen’s heart stuttered.
“Sharing?”
Julian paused at the foot of the staircase, glancing back over his shoulder with a look of pure, predatory amusement.
“Of course.
We are married, after all.
Did you think I’d tuck you into a guest room like a visiting cousin?” His gaze swept down Kristen’s trembling body, lingering on the evidence of his shame.
“No, my darling Alpha.
From tonight onward, you sleep in my bed.
I want to feel every nightmare that makes you twitch.
I want to hear every broken sound you make when you dream.
And I want to be right there, next to you, when you wake up hard and aching and so very, very desperate for my touch.”
He resumed his ascent, his footfalls silent on the marble steps.
Kristen looked down at his hands, still gripping the counter.
They were shaking.
He was shaking, all over, a fine tremor of exhaustion and fear and something far more dangerous—anticipation.
His wolf was silent, curled up somewhere in the depths of his psyche, thoroughly subdued.
With a ragged breath, Kristen pushed himself upright.
His legs held, barely.
He shuffled forward, his boots heavy on the polished floor, leaving the safety of the kitchen island behind.
The staircase loomed before him, Julian’s receding form a dark beacon drawing him inexorably upward.
Step by step, the Alpha followed his vampire husband toward the bed they would share.
And the iron gates of the estate, far beyond the grand windows, stood cold and silent under the moon, sealing him inside his cage.
2000 words of pure smut (☆▽☆) phew!
hope it got you hot and bothered (◠▽◕)