Lyra's POV
At eighteen, all of my girlish dreams had come true.
The moon goddess mated me to the man I had loved for as long as I could remember—Alpha King Kael, ruler of the Northern Lycan territory. Then, by the will of fate, I had also become his wife.
That was everything I ever wanted, until I realized my dreams came with a cruel caveat.
I was his wife and his mate, yet he'd never held me as either, never tried to. Even now, as his knee nudged my thighs apart and his lips crushed mine with a hunger that made my heart race beneath the walls of my chest, I still wasn't truly his woman, nor his mate. I was still just the daughter of his late friend and beta, the girl he raised after her father died.
"I am sorry, Lyra," he breathed against my lower lip as he pulled it below his teeth and suckled on it, while his fingers slid inside my pants. "I shouldn't be doing this, but I can't help it. I just fucking can't."
Delicious tremors zinged through my veins like liquified electricity as his finger met my sex, always dripping for him. He teased my walls gently, his nails grazing the wet flesh.
Then suddenly, he withdrew his fingers from my sex, as if it had just burned him, his eyes deepened in hurtful realization of something. I looked into the steel gray mass of hurt and guilt while I sat on the vanity table, still burning for his touch, and I wanted to scream at him that I was no longer the little Lyra he had raised. I was a woman now, his mate, and I loved and craved his touch. But I knew from experience that nothing could ever get through the wall of guilt he'd built around himself.
I held back the burn of moisture behind my eyes, while my heart shattered cruelly inside of me. After today, the only other time he might ever wander into my room again could be never.
Why can't I be his woman as I was fated to be? Why can't he love me as one?
He touched his fingers, now slick with my juices, and his eyes deepened with self-deprecation. "I am sorry, Lyra." He said, his Alpha voice, low and tight, I barely heard him. "I shouldn't have—"
"You should, Alpha King," I interrupted him. I sniffed to keep back my tears. "I am your mate and woman."
"But, Lyra. You know I can't do this. I swore to Draziel that I would protect you, and not fuck.." he paused. "..not marry and sleep with his daughter—" his words trailed to a whisper when I started loosening the buttons of my shirt, until I freed my breasts.
His eyes latched onto them instantly, the steel grey sharpened with so much brightness to fill a room as his wolf roared to fore, hungry for its mate. Val, my wolf, also writhed in despair in my stomach, burning from the need for his touch.
I waited for him to move for me. Instead, he shut his eyes tight, calmed his wolf, and looked away, veins strung tight over his neck. "Put your clothes back on, Lyra. I shouldn't keep seeing you like that," he grunted.
"I won't," I answered defiantly. I had never challenged him, but I just couldn't stand it anymore, not after he had just awakened the need for him inside of me. I had tried to understand his pain for four good years of our marriage, four years where I'd been his queen only in name, never once kissed or touched until he wandered into my room today.
He'd always sealed himself off because of his pain, but shouldn't my own pain matter too?
My fingers trembled slightly on my pants as I took them off and my panties, throwing them into the room.
He caught them before they could fly off. The veins around his neck tightened so hard, they almost ripped through, his eyes still away from me. "I told you to put on your shirt, not take off your pants, Lyra," he nearly snapped at me, and stopped. He could never get angry at me, no matter how much he tried.
"I feel like taking them off," I replied.
He threw my clothes back to me. "Just put them back on, Lyra. You are unsightly like that," he grunted. "Don't make me regret coming to see you,"
"What about my own regrets, Kael?" I answered, and I kicked the clothes away from me. I adjusted myself on the table while the cold air barreled into me from all sides. "What about me… and am I that ugly that you can't look at me right now?"
"You know what I think about that, Lyra," He grated roughly, jaw clenched, highlighting further the V-ness of his jaw. Even from the side view, he was incredibly handsome for a man of 36, and fourteen years older than me.
"I don't," I said. "Tell me, and to my face."
I just needed him to turn. Once he did and his wolf saw me naked, it might grow berserk, and then he'll be unable to resist me.
"You are the most beautiful girl… woman, I know. But you are more beautiful when dressed," he said with a stiff smile.
I sneered at the kindergarten trick. Just when would he understand that I was no longer that Lyra that sauntered after him with tiny legs and arms, I was a woman now, with needs and feelings.
"I'll give you privacy, get dressed, Lyra, and come join me for dinner," he turned towards the door.
I pretended to slip on the smooth surface of the vanity table, and I screamed out my lungs. I wondered why I hadn't thought of that since. He turned back instantly at my cry, face tight with worry.
"Lyra," he yelled. The worry on his face calmed when he spotted my smile of triumph.
His muscles rippled hard against his shirt as he tried to look away, but I had already caught the bright spark in his eyes, as his wolf struggled to remain on me. His jaw tightened so hard I could hear it ticking very hard.
I watched him eagerly, my chest heaving, then my heart sank into the recesses of my stomach when he finally turned away. He moved just a foot towards the door, and then stopped. He swirled around, and the steel grey pair brightened with so much lust and desire again.
Starved of his mate for years, he was having so much trouble controlling his wolf.
He snatched me from the vanity table, and I collapsed against his chest, my nipples like hard rocks, straining the thin fabric of his shirt.
"You know how hard I have been fighting this, Lyra."
"How about you don't fight it anymore." I stroked his jaw gently with my fingers.
"But..." He moved to argue again, but his lips just hung in place, unmoving. Then, without warning, he seized my lips in his and rode me fast to the wall.
My back met the cold wall with a thud, and instead of whimpering at the pain, I chuckled at it, my insides radiating with so much excitement I felt like I was going to burst.
While his lips sucked on mine with a ferocious hunger, his hands grabbed my breasts. He squeezed them gently, rubbing them against each other. A moan crashed out of me before I could help it, and he swallowed it with his kisses.
I arched my breast into his hands. "More," I breathed, "I need more of you, Kael." I was burning with so much hunger.
He pulled away from my lips then, making a wet trail of tender kisses down my neck, until he got to my nipples. His lips fastened against one, while his fingers twirled the other like a dial.
Millions of sensations slammed into me all at once, all with a force like a tsunami. I shivered and writhed, riding my back against the wall, my head thrown to the ceiling as my vision blurred off to faint traces of flying stars. I licked my lips from the strange, delicious bliss that devoured me as the sensations thrived.
He spun me around and pressed me flat to the wall with a firm grip on my shoulder. With his other hand, he raised my hip until my ass was arched up to level with his pelvis.
A zipper opening stung the room sharply. Immediately, a large force was probing my sex. I was so wet and tight for him, and his enormous length filled me up. My sex wrapped around him like a second skin, feeling every muscle as he pushed deeper and deeper into me, until his sac was slapping my clit.
Raw, low, and delicious moans tore from me. Pleasure rippled through me until I was a mass of flesh and bones held together only by desire, and his hand pressing me hard to the wall.
His free hand gripped hard to my hip, keeping me steady for his thrusts. But nothing could ever prepare me for the brutal wave of sensations that swarmed me as he slammed brutally into me.
The slaps of our hips filled the air as he drove in and out of me in brutal, yet precise thrusts, that made me crazy for more, and more, until I was moaning out the words like a prayer.
"Are you a virgin, Lyra. You are unusually tight." He breathed against my bare back; his breath was like velvet against my skin. I shivered at the delicious feel of him around me.
"Yes," I moaned gently.
I realized I should never have said that when he suddenly grew rigid inside of me, his thrusts stopped. "You mean I am the first man that—" that familiar tinged of guilt clouded his voice, and once again, all the hope I had so carefully constructed in favour of our relationship crashed cruelly to the floor again. My heart fell.
The anxiety of that truth must have affected him, because suddenly, his cock stiffened harder inside of me, and hot heat swarmed me as his seeds shot through me. He quickly pulled away as if he'd committed the world's biggest sin.
"That I was a virgin doesn't mean we can't—"
He dropped back from me so fast, as if being so close to me burned him. "I am sorry, Lyra. I shouldn't have…" he snatched his pants from his feet, put them on, all without looking at me, and he turned fast for the door.
"Kael! Alpha King Kael! Alpha King," but all I got was the loud slam of the door.
The room emptied to just me alone, as it had always been for years now. I collapsed against the wall, and the tears I thought I had exhausted after four years of enduring everything fell down my cheeks, stinging my eyes so badly that it burned.