The tall ceiling of the big hall was loaded with dense air of pine smoke and cooked meat and raw, hostile smell of ruling wolves. It was a smell Akira used to know.
Today, it was the smell of the enemy.
Three years.
Three years of building a new life, clawing her way to the top of an alien pack's hierarchy, for everything to be torn from her in such a humiliating way: standing in the lion's den as an ambassador, and not a supplicant. Her breasts rose in a metronome against her flesh, but her own face was a cold, sculpted mask. She would not give them anything.
And then she saw him.
Remus was standing on the other side of the corridor, head above the pack behind him, shoulders straining the black material of his fitted shirt. He was the very image of Alpha: strength, fury, and a heart-stoppingly cruel, brutally beautiful face that even now, after everything, sent a perilous spurt of heat straight to her core. His stormy blue eyes raked over the sea of delegates and fastened on her. The buzz of the background receded into the abyss of his anger.
He glided through the crowd with the sinuous flow of a shark cutting through water, wolves parting silently to give him room. He did not stop until he was a breath away, his presence a palleting weight which commanded obedience.
"Look at what carrion birds have brought before me," he snarled, the words a low, killing growl that vibrated within her very bones. Neither spoken in privacy, nor to the hall altogether, it was nevertheless an open butchery of her pride. "Did they hope sending their newest whore would appease me?"
Akira did not flinch. She raised her chin, looking at him with a firm gaze. "I am here to discuss border rights, Remus. Not to relive history again."
"All things with you are history, Kira." He said the old nickname like a curse word. "The history of your betrayal. The history of your lies. And now, the history of you spreading your legs for my enemies to sit at a table you never earned."
The insult stung, but it also added fuel to the smoldering fire of anger. "You sent me away with nothing at all except the clothes on my back and charges you never made clear. What was I to do? Die in the snow to soothe your pride?"
His hand shot out, not to strike her, but to close around the side of her jaw in a vice, jerking her head up to his eyes. It was an act of raw intimacy, a brutal mockery of a caress. The hall was totally silent now.
"Your being here is an insult," he growled, his thumb driving viciously into her lip. "You come into my den, with markings from another pack on you, reeking of another Alpha's dominance. You are a shame."
"Then send me away,' she dared, her throaty voice enthralled in passion, her breathing entwined with his. The anger was there, yes, but beneath it, a spark of pure lust was goading her sensibility. This was their dance to ever perform. Fury and desire, all twisted into one unbreakable unit.
A sly predator's smile crossed his face. He leaned in close, his mouth against the rim of her ear, and spoke, so that she could alone hear. "Oh, no. I have much better things in mind for you. You've always been useful for something, haven't you?"
He released her jaw, his hand falling to wrap around her wrist. "The negotiation is rescheduled for tomorrow," he told the room, his order not to be debated. And with that, he drew her out of the great hall, through stone halls she remembered in her sleep, into the icy correctness of his private chambers.
He shut the door behind him, the slamming causing a gunshot-like echo. He thrust her from him, and she staggered back, grabbing at her wrist, panting for air.
"You wish to negotiate?" he snarled, moving towards her. "We'll negotiate. These are my terms. You will go on your knees and beg for the cock you betrayed. And if you're a good little slut, perhaps I'll consider not starting a war over the fucking riverlands."
The crude word ought to have shamed her. But it only made her pussy clench tighter, another spurt of wetness streaming through her underwear. This was the Remus she recognized. The one who hid a desperate, possessive hunger behind an act of meanness.
"Go to hell," she gasped, but the courage was a thin disguise.
He was on her in an instant, slamming her into the cold stone wall. He was a furnace, his body pinning hers. "We're already there, darling. Now, we negotiate. The safeword. Now."
The demand, so clinical in the midst of the chaos, was the hottest thing she'd ever heard. It was the thread of consent that would allow them to burn down completely.
"Embers," she gasped out.
"Good." His mouth landed on hers in a brutal kiss. His tongue tore through her mouth, whiskey-flavored and angry. She kissed him back just as hard, her teeth scraping his lip, and left a fleck of blood that tasted of copper and victory.
He ripped her blouse open, buttons scattering across the ground. His lips freed hers to fasten onto a nipple below the lace of her bra, biting just on the right side of pain. She screamed, her head falling back against the wall.
"So much slut," he growled into her skin, his fingers tearing at her dress. "Coming back, staring at me with those stubborn eyes, aware of what you were doing. You wanted this. You wanted me to set you straight."
"I hate you," she groaned as his fingers found her damp panties.
"Oh, you're going to fuck someone you claim to hate?" he jeered, pushing his fingers deep into the fabric and tearing it off. "Classic slut." Two fingers were shoved into her pussy suddenly, curving inward, discovering that sweet spot with unerring accuracy. She screamed, her hips jerking against his hand.
"You're dripping for me," he growled, watching his fingers pistoning in and out of her. "After everything. Your body still knows its master."
"Fuck you," she panted, but she was grinding against his hand, desperate for more.
He withdrew his fingers, bringing them to his mouth and sucking them clean, his eyes never leaving hers. "Mine."
In one swift, muscular movement, he spun her to the wall, pushed her hips against it and out of his pants released his cock. It was as hard and menacing as she remembered, its soft head already slick with his need. He pushed the tip into her pussy.
"Beg," he commanded.
"No," she growled, but she was pushing back against him, impaling herself an inch with his cock.
"Beg, Akira. Or this ends now."
.
The threat of denial was too great. "Please," she screamed out, the word torn from her throat. "Please, Remus. I need it. Fill me with your cock, daddy. Please!"
With a feral snarl, he pushed himself into her hilt-deep in one brutal, beautiful stroke. She was blinded, a white blaze of pain-pleasure so sharp her knees gave out. He clasped her hips to him, not giving her time to adjust before he began fucking her in earnest.
It was a hard, unyielding rhythm. Every hard bump of his hips into her, the balls clanking off her clit echoing obscenely through the air. He grabbed her hair, wrenching her head back, his face at her throat, biting and sucking bruise marks that would last for days.
"Fucking you intensely means nothing," he snarled, plunging into her with a force that shook every bone in her body. "I still hate you."
"I hate you too!" she screamed, the words lost in a cry of despair as the package of pleasure inside her grew and built. She felt the pressure building, a wave of sensation building to crash deep inside her body. "Oh god, there, right there, don't stop, please don't stop!"
"Gonna cum, you filthy betrayer?" he taunted, his pace quickening. "Gonna squirt all over the cock of the Alpha you left for dead? Go on, do it. I want to feel it."
His words were the final trigger. The leash snapped. A gush of hot fluid poured out of her, moistening his cock, his thighs, the floor, her own trembling legs. She cried out his name as the tearing spasms of her orgasm tore through her, her vision blurring at the edges with the intensity of it.
Feeling her clench around him, milking his cock in her squirting orgasm, was his undoing. With a final, thrusting surge that buried him as deeply as he could, he shouted and came, his own orgasm burning and throbbing in her. He collapsed against her back, his body shaking, his breathing harsh in her ear.
They stood there for minutes, the two of them on the wall, arms around each other, the only sound their slow, heavy breathing. The anger had burned out, leaving coals.
Slowly, he pulled out and turned her around . His face was no more a mask of anger but of something else, something more complicated, more weary. He didn't say a word. He lifted her up instead in his arms, took her to the big bed, and placed her down. He fetched a warm, wet cloth and cleaned her thighs with aching gentleness, then fetched a glass of water.
"Here," he said, his voice rough but not unkind. "Drink."
This was the aftercare. Spoken not in soft words, but in actions. She drank, watching him.
He sat on the edge of the bed, running a hand through his disheveled hair. "The negotiation stands. We'll discuss tomorrow."
She understood. The humiliation had been their language. The hate-fuck, their treaty. And within the ensuing silence, there was a new pact in the making. One of shared, angry and total ownership.
"I still hate you," she whispered, but the words had no bite to it.
There was a ghost of a smile on his lips. He leaned forward, planting a kiss on her forehead.
"I know," he breathed. "So do I."