CHAPTER 208
GISELLE'S POV
They’re watching. They see everything. And now they want me to become a puppet.
The rage hit first, a hot, clean surge that burned away the fear. It was my rage, but the thing inside me fanned it, made it sharper. I brought the phone back to my ear, though the line was dead.
“You coward,” I hissed into the silence. My voice shook, but not from fear. From fury. “You think hiding behind phones and threats makes you strong? You’re nothing. A parasite using underhanded tactics because you’re too weak to face anyone head-on.”
I was pacing now, the short carpet fibers catching under my bare feet. The energy crackled under my skin, a promise of violence. “You want me? You want to turn me into your senseless doll? Then come and get me. Face me. Right now. I have just enough of me left to take you with me. I’ll rip your fucking throat out with my teeth before I let you use me to hurt my family.”
The words were a dare, thrown into the empty air. A stupid, suicidal dare. But it felt good. It felt like me.
The door to my bedroom flew open before I could take another breath. Zarkhan filled the doorway, his face a mask of alarm. Hakkan was right behind him, glasses glinting. Khuraan pushed past them both, his green eyes scanning me, the phone, the room.
“Who were you talking to?” Zarkhan demanded, striding forward. His hand reached for my phone.
I jerked it away, clutching it to my chest. The protective movement was instinctive, and it was a mistake.
“Give it to me, Giselle.” His tone left no room for argument. It was the Alpha, the head of security, commanding a subordinate.
The defiance, the rage, it all curdled into something desperate and sharp. “No.” I took a step back. “You don’t get to take everything from me. I still have responsibilities. My own choices. This is my problem.”
“Your problem is our problem,” Khuraan said, his voice a low rumble. He moved into the room, closing the space I’d created. “We’re in this together. You don’t get to shut us out.”
“I’m shutting you out to save you!” The shout tore from my throat. “Can’t you see? Every time you touch me, every time you try to ‘fix’ me, you get closer to it! I can feel it… it’s hungry for you, too. It wants to taste your strength through me. I won’t let you get infected!”
Hakkan’s analytical gaze was on my face, reading the panic, the sincerity. “The risk of transmission through intimate contact is theoretically low, but not zero,” he said, almost to himself. “The bond is the vector…”
“Theoretical?” I laughed, a broken sound. “Do you want to run that experiment? On yourselves? No. The answer is no. From now on, you stay away.”
I turned my back on them, a clear dismissal. My body was trembling. I wanted them to go. I needed them to go, before I broke down and begged them to stay.
I heard the soft sound of a footstep on the carpet. Then a large, warm hand settled on my shoulder from behind. Not gripping. Just resting. Khuraan’s scent—pine and cold night air—wrapped around me.
“Too late,” he murmured, his mouth close to my ear. His breath stirred my hair. “We’re already infected. With you.”
His other hand came up, his fingers sliding into the hair at my nape. He turned me gently, inexorably, back to face him. His eyes were dark pools of emotion—worry, possession, a fierce kind of love that looked like madness.
“We’re not staying away,” Zarkhan stated, moving to my other side. His presence was a wall of heat. “You don’t get to make that choice for us.”
“It’s not your choice to make!” I tried to pull away from Khuraan’s touch, but his hand in my hair tightened just enough to hold me still. A shiver, unwanted and traitorous, skittered down my spine.
“It is,” Hakkan said, his voice calm as he stepped in front of me, completing the circle. He reached up and carefully removed his glasses, folding them and setting them on my dresser. The action was deliberate, intimate. “Our choice is you. All of you. Even the parts that frighten you.”
Khuraan dipped his head. His lips brushed the shell of my ear. “You can push, little wolf. You can scream. You can try to send us away.” His voice dropped to a whisper that vibrated through my very bones. “We’ll just come closer.”
Then his mouth was on my neck, not a kiss, but a slow, open-mouthed press of heat against my pulse point. A claiming. A stark reminder of the mate bond that thrummed between us, a bond the thing inside me was twisting but couldn’t sever.
I gasped. My hands came up to push at his chest, but the strength seemed to leach from my arms. His kiss traveled up the column of my throat, each press of his lips sending a jolt of pure, undiluted need straight to my core. It was my need. Not the monster’s. Mine. For him. For them.
“Khuraan, stop…” My protest was weak, breathy.
“No,” he said against my skin, the word a warm vibration.
Zarkhan’s hand, which had been on my shoulder, slid down my arm. His fingers traced the inside of my elbow, a feather-light touch that made my muscles jump. He leaned in, his mouth finding my other ear. “You think we’re scared of a little darkness?” he whispered, his voice rough. “We’ve lived in it. We are it. Your darkness belongs to us, too.”
His words were a dark permission, a seductive promise. They weren’t offering to heal the sickness. They were offering to love it. To own it. The fear and the arousal twisted together inside me, a confusing, heated knot.
Hakkan watched, his sharp eyes missing nothing. He didn’t touch me yet. He was studying my reactions, the flush spreading across my chest, the way my breath hitched. A doctor assessing his patient. A mate memorizing the map of his lover’s desire.
“Your physiological responses are spiking,” he noted, his clinical tone at odds with the hunger in his eyes. “Heart rate elevated. Pupils dilated. The fear is there… but it’s not the only signal.”
“Hakkan, please…” I didn’t even know what I was asking for.
“Please what?” he asked, taking a single step forward. Now he was close enough that I could feel the heat radiating from his lean body. “Please make it stop? Or please don’t stop?”
I had no answer. My head fell back against Khuraan’s shoulder as his lips found the sensitive spot where my neck met my shoulder. He bit down, not hard enough to break skin, but with enough pressure to make me cry out. The sharp sting melted instantly into a deep, throbbing ache that pooled low in my belly.
Zarkhan took advantage of my parted lips. He closed the distance and kissed me. It wasn’t like Khuraan’s possessive brand. This was deeper, wetter, more persuasive. His tongue swept into my mouth, tasting me, demanding a response. And despite everything, my body gave it. My tongue met his, a shy, then eager dance. A low groan built in his chest.
I was being surrounded, overwhelmed. Their hands were everywhere now, not groping, but exploring. Zarkhan’s palm slid down my back, pressing me flush against him so I could feel the hard ridge of his erection through his sweatpants. Khuraan’s hands slid from my hair to my hips, his thumbs making slow circles on the bare skin above the waistband of my leggings. Hakkan finally reached out, his skillful fingers tracing the line of my jaw, then down the straining column of my throat.
“You feel it, don’t you?” Hakkan murmured, his finger pausing over my frantic pulse. “The bond. It’s fighting the infection. It’s using this—the need, the pleasure—as a weapon.”
It was true. As their touches grew bolder, as their scents and warmth enveloped me, the cold, metallic presence inside me seemed to recede, confused by the onslaught of raw, positive sensation. It didn’t like my pleasure. It fed on fear and anger. This… this love, this desperate wanting… it was alien to it.
“We can drown it out,” Zarkhan said, breaking the kiss to speak against my lips. His breath was hot. “We can fill you with so much of us, there’s no room for it.”
The logic was twisted, beautiful, and utterly compelling. A cure through saturation. Through sin.
I broke then. The last of my resistance crumbled. A sob escaped me, but it was mixed with a moan as Khuraan’s teeth grazed my earlobe. “I’m scared,” I whispered, the confession torn from me.
“We know,” all three of them said in a ragged unison.
Khuraan turned me in his arms to face him fully. He cupped my face, his thumbs wiping at the tears that had finally spilled over. “One last time?” he echoed my earlier, despairing thought, but his voice held no despair. It held a dark, thrilling promise. “No. Not one last time. The first time of many. The first time we take you while knowing everything. While fighting for you with our bodies.”
He kissed me again, and this time I kissed him back, pouring all my fear, my love, my terrible hope into it. My hands fisted in the soft cotton of his shirt.
I let them lead me the few steps backward until my knees hit the edge of my bed. I sat down, looking up at the three of them, my mates, silhouetted against the bedroom light. They were a wall of muscle, desire, and unwavering will.
Zarkhan reached down, his fingers hooking under the hem of my soft t-shirt. “Arms up,” he commanded softly.
I obeyed, raising my arms. He pulled the shirt up and over my head, tossing it aside. The cool air touched my skin, making my nipples pebble tight against the lace of my bra. Three pairs of eyes burned over me, the hunger in them a tangible force.
Hakkan knelt in front of me, placing himself between my knees. His hands settled on my thighs, his touch cool and sure. “You are the most beautiful puzzle I’ve ever wanted to solve,” he said, his gaze locked on mine. Then he leaned forward and pressed a kiss to the inside of my knee. His lips were soft, his intent devastatingly clear. He was going to take his time.
Khuraan sat beside me on the bed, his arm wrapping around my bare back, pulling me against his side. He nuzzled my temple, his free hand coming up to cup my breast through the lace. His thumb rubbed over my nipple, the friction making me arch into his touch.
Zarkhan remained standing, watching, his hand stroking himself through his sweatpants. The visual of it, of his large palm moving over the obvious bulge, sent a fresh wave of wet heat between my legs.
“Look at you,” Zarkhan said, his voice thick. “Trying to be so brave, so selfless. Giving us your scared, perfect body as a battleground.”
Hakkan’s kisses were moving up my inner thigh, slow, maddening increments. His breath was hot through the thin fabric of my leggings. I squirmed, the dual assault from Khuraan’s hands and Hakkan’s mouth driving me to the edge of coherence.
“I… I don’t want to hurt you,” I managed to say, even as I spread my legs a little wider for Hakkan.
“You won’t,” Khuraan growled in my ear, his fingers pinching my nipple gently through the lace. The sharp burst of pleasure-pain made me cry out. “We’re stronger than you think. And you… you’re ours. Every sigh, every tremble, every drop of your wetness. It all belongs to us. Not to them.”
His words were a claiming more potent than any bite. Hakkan reached the apex of my thighs. He looked up at me, his eyes dark. With deliberate slowness, he hooked his fingers in the waistband of my leggings and the cotton panties beneath. “Lift your hips.”
I did, my body moving on its own, eager for his touch. He pulled them down and off, leaving me bare from the waist down. The cool air was a shock, followed immediately by the heat of his gaze. He didn’t touch me there yet. He just looked, his clinical observation now utterly carnal.
“So beautiful,” he breathed, more to himself than to me. Then he leaned in, and his mouth, that skilled, intelligent mouth, found the very center of my need.
The first flat stroke of his tongue was electric. My back bowed, a sharp gasp tearing from my throat. Khuraan held me tight, his hand moving from my breast to my hair, fisting gently to hold my head still. “That’s it,” he murmured. “Let him taste you. Let him remind you what you feel for us.”
Hakkan’s tongue was methodical, precise. He licked into me, exploring my folds, circling my clit without touching it directly, building the ache to a fever pitch. Zarkhan stepped closer, his hand now slipping beneath the waistband of his sweatpants. I could hear the soft, slick sound of his stroking.
“You taste like ours,” Hakkan said, his voice muffled against me. Then he focused, his mouth closing over my clit, sucking gently.
The world dissolved into sensation. I moaned, long and loud, my fingers tangling in Hakkan’s hair, not to push him away, but to hold him there. Khuraan’s mouth was on my neck again, sucking a mark into my skin. I was floating, tethered only by their touches.
Zarkhan finally shed his sweatpants and boxers, his thick erection springing free. He moved to the side of the bed, his hand wrapping around the base. “Look at him,” Zarkhan ordered, his voice rough. “Look at what you do to him. To all of us.”
I forced my eyes open, hazy with pleasure, to look at Hakkan between my legs. His eyes were closed in concentration, his cheeks hollowed as he sucked and licked. It was the most intimate, most vulnerable thing I’d ever seen. This man, this healer, was worshipping me with his mouth, fighting a war with his tongue.
“I’m gonna come,” I whimpered, the pressure coiling tight and desperate.
“No,” Zarkhan said. “Not yet.”
Hakkan immediately pulled back, leaving me throbbing and empty. I whined in protest, my hips lifting off the bed, seeking his mouth.
Khuraan chuckled darkly. “So greedy. You’ll get what you need. On our time.”
He shifted, pushing me gently so I was lying back on the bed. He loomed over me, one hand braced by my head, the other trailing down my stomach. “We’re together forever,” he repeated his earlier vow, his green eyes burning into mine. “Even if you think you can push us away, we won’t let it happen. So we’ll seduce you. We’ll remind you. Again and again.”
His fingers dipped between my legs, sliding through the wetness Hakkan had drawn out. He gathered it, then brought his slick fingers to my mouth. “Taste,” he commanded. “Taste how much you want this. How much you want us.”
I opened my mouth, my tongue swirling over his fingers, tasting my own salt and musk. The act was deeply submissive, deeply erotic. A groan ripped from his chest.
“Good girl,” Zarkhan praised from beside the bed, his own stroking pace increasing.
Khuraan lowered his body onto mine, the hard length of him pressing against my inner thigh. He was still clothed, the rough fabric of his jeans a delicious friction against my sensitive skin. He kissed me, deep and consuming, and I could taste myself on his tongue.
This was the seduction. Not