The bedroom door had barely clicked shut when Julian was on him.
Kristen found himself spun and pressed against the heavy wood, the vampire’s lean body a wall of chilled marble at his back.
Cold lips descended on the nape of his neck, and Kristen arched into the touch with a broken gasp, his hands scrabbling for purchase against the carved panels.
He could feel every inch of Julian through their clothes—the hard planes of his chest, the uncompromising ridge of his arousal digging into the swell of Kristen’s ass.
“You’ve been aching for this since the car,” Julian breathed against his skin, each word a frozen kiss.
His fingers made quick work of Kristen’s jeans, shoving the damp denim down his thighs with impersonal efficiency.
“Don’t bother denying it.
Your scent has been screaming take me for hours.”
Kristen whimpered, a sound he would never have believed himself capable of making.
Julian’s hand wrapped around his cock, and the chill of that palm against his feverish flesh wrenched a sob from his chest.
He bucked into the grip, mindless, already leaking.
“That’s it,” Julian purred, stroking him with maddening slowness.
“Such a needy little thing.
I’m going to open you up, Alpha.
I’m going to sink so deep inside you that you forget your own pack’s name.”
Kristen felt cool fingers, already slick, pressing at his entrance.
He should have been ashamed of how easily his body yielded, but there was no room for shame—only the blinding, consuming need for more.
Julian pushed inside, one finger, then two, stretching him with a patience that bordered on cruelty.
Kristen’s forehead thumped against the door as he moaned, long and wrecked.
“Please,” he heard himself beg.
“Please, Julian.”
The vampire withdrew his fingers, and Kristen nearly wept at the loss.
Then he felt the blunt, cold head of Julian’s cock pressing against him, and his whole body went taut with anticipation.
Julian entered him in one slow, inexorable thrust, the frigid length of him spearing Kristen open and filling him so completely that stars burst behind his eyes.
Julian didn’t wait.
He set a rhythm that was deep and devastating, each stroke dragging against that secret place inside Kristen that made his vision spark white.
One cold hand pinned Kristen’s hip to the door; the other wrapped around his throat, tilting his head back.
Julian’s fangs grazed the hinge of his jaw.
“Come for me,” Julian commanded, his voice a dark velvet thunder.
“Spill yourself on this door while I take what’s mine.”
The coil in Kristen’s belly snapped.
He cried out, body convulsing, his release splashing hot against the wood—
Kristen jolted awake, a strangled gasp dying in his throat.
Sunlight streamed through the tall windows, gilding the rumpled charcoal silk sheets twisted around his legs.
The air smelled of him—sweat and salt and the unmistakable musk of spent arousal.
He looked down.
The front of his boxers was soaked through, a cooling, sticky mess plastered to his skin.
A wave of mortification crashed over him so violently that his stomach lurched.
He had come in his sleep.
Again.
And this time he’d been dreaming of—of him.
Julian’s mouth, Julian’s hands, Julian buried inside him while he begged like a—
He wrenched his gaze toward the other side of the bed.
Empty.
The pillows were undisturbed, the duvet unruffled as if no one had been beside him all along.
Julian had woken and gone.
A long, ragged exhale shuddered out of Kristen’s chest.
Relief, sharp and immediate, loosened the knot in his ribs.
At least he wouldn’t have to face those knowing crimson eyes while the evidence of his own depravity was still wet on his thighs.
He swung his legs out of bed and padded barefoot toward the en-suite bathroom, peeling off his soiled boxers with a grimace. Visit novelping.com for the full chapter.
The bathroom was a study in white marble and warm gold.
A rainfall showerhead the circumference of a dinner plate hung from the ceiling above a seamless glass enclosure.
Twin vanities stretched along one wall, their countertops bare except for a single black orchid in a crystal vase.
A deep soaking tub sat beneath a frosted window, and the floor was heated, warming the soles of his feet as he stepped inside.
Everything smelled faintly of cedar and bergamot—Julian’s scent, woven into the very walls of this place.
Kristen stepped into the shower and let the hot water pummel his aching shoulders.
As steam billowed around him, his mind drifted backward, unbidden, to what had actually happened last night.
He had followed Julian up that sweeping staircase, his legs still unsteady, the damp patch on his jeans a constant, humiliating reminder.
The master suite at the end of the east corridor was cavernous—a king-sized bed draped in charcoal silk dominated the center of the room, beneath a chandelier that dripped with glittering teardrops of crystal.
Tall French windows were veiled in heavy velvet drapes, and the air carried the same cool, elegant hush as the rest of the estate.
“The bathroom is through there,” Julian had said, gesturing lazily toward a set of frosted glass doors.
“I’ll give you a moment.
I have a few calls to make.”
Kristen had nodded stiffly, waiting until the vampire’s silent footsteps receded before slipping into the bathroom.
He’d meant to be quick—rinse off the shame, scrub the scent of his own capitulation from his skin.
But the shower controls were a sleek, featureless digital panel.
No knobs, no levers.
He pressed a symbol that looked vaguely like a droplet.
Nothing.
Another that resembled a crescent moon.
The lights dimmed.
A third, and a jet of icy water shot from a side sprayer, drenching the marble floor.
He stood there, naked and dripping, and wrestled with his pride.
Calling Julian for help felt like a surrender all its own.
But the alternative was standing in this glacial palace of a bathroom until he froze to death, too stubborn to ask for basic human warmth.
He cracked the door open.
“Vance.”
The word had barely left his mouth when the door swung inward.
Julian leaned against the jamb, his crimson eyes immediately dropping to roam over every inch of Kristen’s bare, wet body.
He hadn’t even waited for Kristen to grab a towel.
Kristen’s arms flew to cover himself, his face flooding with heat.
“I—can you just—the shower doesn’t work.”
“It works perfectly,” Julian said, his voice rich with amusement.
His gaze traveled from Kristen’s blushing throat down the planes of his chest, the ridges of his abdomen, lingering on the half-concealed vee of muscle at his hips.
“Why so shy?
We’ll be seeing far more of each other soon.
You have a lovely body, Alpha.
It would be a crime to hide it.”
He stepped forward, reaching past Kristen to brush his fingertips against the panel.
A cascade of warm water immediately rained from the ceiling fixture.
Julian was so close that Kristen could feel the cold radiating off his suit, a startling contrast to the steam beginning to curl around them.
Those ice-pale fingers drifted down, not quite touching, just skating the air above Kristen’s hip.
“There,” Julian murmured, his lips quirking.
“All fixed.”
Then he left, closing the door behind him with a soft click, and Kristen was left standing under the hot spray with a mortifying, insistent hard-on that no amount of cold water would banish.
In the present, Kristen groaned and pressed his forehead against the wet marble wall of the shower.
His cheeks were burning even now, the memory as vivid as if it were happening all over again.
‘Well, that was pathetic’, his wolf drawled lazily inside his skull.
Kristen’s eyes snapped open.
“Where the hell were you?” he hissed under the rush of water. This chapter is updated first at g.com.
“All that talk about being a big, bad, untamable wolf, and you rolled over and showed your belly the second he touched us!.”
A pause.
Then, almost petulant: ‘He smelled… good’
“He smelled good?,” Kristen repeated flatly.
“He smelled good, so you just—what?
Decided to let him humiliate us?
He called me a bitch in heat and you practically wagged your tail.”
‘You didn’t seem to mind’, the wolf shot back, though its mental voice had gone sulky and defensive.
‘You were the one grinding against his thigh like a pup.
I merely… followed your lead’.
Kristen snorted, scrubbing shampoo into his hair with more force than necessary.
“Some Alpha you are.
Next time he touches us, maybe try baring your fangs instead of your belly.”
The wolf didn’t answer.
But Kristen could feel it there, curled in the back of his consciousness—subdued, yes, but not ashamed.
If anything, it felt like he was waiting for something, and that terrified him more than Julian’s fangs ever could.
He stepped out of the shower, toweled off roughly, and pulled on a pair of gray shorts and a black tank top from his duffel bag.
The clothes were simple, practical—nothing like the opulence surrounding him.
He finger-combed his damp hair and caught his reflection in the misty mirror.
Golden eyes stared back at him, still a little too bright, a little too wild.
Let’s get this over with.
The grand foyer was even more imposing in daylight.
Golden morning sun streamed through the towering arched windows, setting the marble floors aglow and catching the facets of the chandelier in a thousand tiny prisms.
Kristen’s bare feet were silent on the cold stone as he drifted through the halls, peering into rooms that seemed designed for no purpose but to intimidate.
A library lined with leather-bound books.
A formal dining room with a table that could seat thirty.
Everything was achingly beautiful and still so..
lifeless, like walking through a mausoleum decorated by a billionaire.
He found Julian in a sun-drenched living room at the back of the east wing.
The vampire was lounging on a deep emerald velvet sofa, one arm draped along the backrest, a half-empty glass of something dark on the low table before him.
Spread across the table was a veritable feast—fresh pastries glazed with honey, a platter of cured meats and cheeses, a bowl of ruby-red strawberries, a carafe of orange juice, and a silver pot of steaming coffee.
It looked like breakfast for a visiting dignitary, not a prisoner.
Julian looked up the moment Kristen crossed the threshold, and his smile was slow and indulgent, like a cat catching sight of a particularly enticing mouse.
“Good morning, my darling Alpha.” His gaze made a deliberate, unhurried journey from Kristen’s bare shoulders down to the hem of his shorts.
“A tank top and shorts.
How thoughtfully you’ve dressed.
It’s as if you want me to peel you out of them.”
Kristen’s stomach flipped, but he forced himself to hold Julian’s gaze.
“I dressed for comfort.
Nothing more.”
“Of course you did.” Julian gestured lazily to the sofa opposite him.
“Sit.
Eat.
You’ll need your strength.”
The promise in those words was a dark, honeyed thing, and Kristen felt his wolf stir with something that was not quite alarm.
Stupid mutt.
He sat, and the morning light poured over them both like a gilded cage closing its door.
I mean…
The REAL penetration scene will be hotter.
I would have offended myself if that was the real sex scene¯_(ツ)_/¯ This is turning into more porn than plot, I promise I have plot…sexy, tensiony, angst type of plot୧(＾ 〰 ＾)୨