Chapter 51 Need and Ash
Trigger Warning
This chapter mixes explicit sexual detail, dubious consent, and mistaken identity, particularly with graphic sex acts where a character doesn’t know who they’re intimate with.
Kier’s POV
The door was still vibrating when the silence finally swallowed me. My cheek throbbed where Sable’s palm had landed, a bright brand of heat that refused to fade. For a long breath I only stood there, palms open, fingers twitching with the urge to haul her back and kiss her until she submitted.
The wolf inside me paced, claws raking bone. Ours. Bring her back. Finish what we started.
I jerked my hands into fists. “No.” The word scraped my throat raw. If I chased her now, I wouldn’t stop. The city would watch their ironclad CEO turn feral in an elevator bank. I needed control. I needed distance. I needed release.
I staggered to the bathroom and twisted the shower handle hard enough the pipe protested. I stripped mechanically, each button, each sleeve peeled away like a small surrender. The cheek she’d struck burned even beneath the cold glare of the vanity bulbs.
I didn't wait for the water to warm. I stepped into the shower under the spray, the first shock stole my breath. I braced my hands against the wall and let the water batter me, willing it to beat the hunger out. It didn’t. Images returned with vicious clarity—the way her body had arched into mine, the sound she made when my lips found her throat, the tremble in her hands when she grabbed my shirt and dragged me lower.
My head dropped forward. The wolf was a low earthquake inside me, endless and old. The cold numbed skin but not need. Not the bond’s pull. It pulsed hot and constant, the drumbeat that had ruled me for five long years.
I was so lost in the thought of Sable, I reached for myself for release. I stroked my cock imagining Sable there with me. Us finally together as one finally claiming her. Thats when I felt lips wrap around me. I looked down and chestnut waves bobbed in front of me. Her hands grabbed my hips pulling me into her.
"Sable" I moaned as she sucked me in. Her tongue wrapping around the tip of my cock with each pull out of her mouth.
When I was close I pulled her up, turning her back to me. I bent her forward lost to her, I sheath myself in her, holding still as her tight wet core throbbed around my cock. Her moans filed the air desperate for my touch.
"Fuck, Sable you're so wet." I panted.
She started to move back and forth on my cock. My hard length filled her completely. I grabbed her hips and pumped into her rough from the anger, the need to release was animalistic. The sounds coming from us filled the air keeping me energized.
When I felt her orgasm on my cock I pumped
harder, faster, until I released my self in her. I grabbed her hair to pull her to me the need to sink my teeth into her and claim her was driving me.
A mouth lifted toward mine.
I paused—only a fraction, just a breath where sanity tried to claw up from the well. The scent wobbled, wrong around the edges. Not storm and cedar. Sweetness.
Something in me pricked, but the wolf drowned it. The mouth tilted higher, a question turned into an answer.
A flicker of alarm sparked through the haze. My wolf recoiled realizing before me.
“Liora,” I said, and the name shattered the spell.
She flinched, but only a beat. Then she tried to smile as if the word had been a term of endearment. “I called you name and when you didn’t answer, Kier. I thought—"
“You thought wrong.” My voice came out low, dangerous, almost unrecognizable even to me. I let go of her wrist like it had burned me.
She pressed closer anyway, the movement slick in the spray, trying to force my body to forget what my mind had just found. “You were calling for her,” she said, and there was triumph and venom in equal parts. “But she left you. Again.”
Rage detonated so fast the world went white around the edges. Not only at her, but at myself—for letting frustration drag me to a place where need could blur lines.
I moved in a single, precise step that put space between us. Liora’s hands slid off my chest. She caught the wall to keep from slipping, breath choppy, eyes widening at the shift in temperature—the switch from heat to frost.
“Out,” I said.
Water pounded, relentless. Steam curled up like smoke from an extinguished fire.
She lifted her chin, defiant because it was all she had left. “You’ll never have her without paying the price for it. The council will—”
“Out,” I repeated, every syllable a blade. The wolf crowded my voice, but I kept him on a tight chain. My control was a shard-studded thing; if I slipped once, I would end this wrong, and there would be no going back.
She hesitated, reading me the way pack learned to read an Alpha whose patience had reached the cliff’s edge. Then she slid the glass door shut and retreated. The bathroom door clicked a heartbeat later.
I braced both palms against the tile and let my head drop. The water had long since burned into a numb ache. I swallowed air that tasted like metal and rain.
She had come back. She had been on her knees in my living room an hour ago. She had slithered into my shower now. She had crossed a line. And it would be my job to make sure it is one she never crosses again.
“Never again,” I told the water, the tile, the wolf pacing behind my ribs.
The vow steadied something inside me. Not enough to soothe the ache, not enough to erase the ghost of Sable’s mouth from mine, but enough to pull me back from the brink.
I shut off the water. The sudden quiet rang in my ears. Drops pattered from my hair to the floor, a faint, domestic sound at odds with the ruin in my chest.
In the fogged mirror, a man stared back at me with a fresh, angry welt high on his cheek where Sable’s hand had landed, and a deeper mark in his eyes that had nothing to do with skin. My wolf stared out from behind them, unrepentant. He was angry and hurt from Liora's actions causing us to betray Sable.
Sable no doubt felt the betrayal through the mate bond. I wanted to burn the world down to avenge her. To make Liora pay for what she has done.
I wrapped a towel around my hips and stood very still until the urge to tear the door off its hinges and hunt her faded to a manageable roar.
Sable had run from me again. Fine. She could run.
But I would not mistake anyone for her again. And when I caught her—because I would—I’d beg for her forgiveness. And plead for her to choose me.